What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned

Many will find Sherman Alexie’s most recent collection of poetry What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned inspiring and entertaining. All sorts of freedoms are taken in a collection which has all sorts of inspiration, and a command of form. Collected are not just the left-centered poems, with there also being blocks of words, odes, and sonnets. He sometimes uses free forms and some shapes on the page one might have not seen before. Alexie remains one of “the major lyric voices of our time,” and is also funny. One will not be surprised after reading these poems that he is also a popular platform performer.

Though traveled, Alexie belongs also to his roots as a Spokane Washington/Coeur d’ Aleve tribe Native American. He has not outlived the telling of his childhood and family history here. His prose and outlook are unpredictable with him being a teller of these tales. One will find here poems that are playful, funny, ironic, but also some that are also bitter, critical, sad, and painful. He is clearly not a person to be trifled with, even being able to get even with his humor. One will find confession, flow of consciousness, and autobiographical material. His humor sometimes is a pungent puzzle.