Changing Is Not Vanishing - by Robert Dale Parker (Paperback)

About the Book

Previously published in hardcover in 2011.

Book Synopsis

Until now, the study of American Indian literature has tended to concentrate on contemporary writing. Although the field has grown rapidly, early works--especially poetry--remain mostly unknown and inaccessible. Changing Is Not Vanishing simultaneously reinvents the early history of American Indian literature and the history of American poetry by presenting a vast but forgotten archive of American Indian poems. Through extensive archival research in small-circulation newspapers and magazines, manuscripts, pamphlets, rare books, and scrapbooks, Robert Dale Parker has uncovered the work of more than 140 early Indian poets who wrote before 1930.

Changing Is Not Vanishing includes poems by 82 writers and provides a full bibliography of all the poets Parker has identified--most of them unknown even to specialists in Indian literature. In a wide range of approaches and styles, the poems in this collection address such topics as colonialism and the federal government, land, politics, nature, love, war, Christianity, and racism. With a richly informative introduction and extensive annotation, Changing Is Not Vanishing opens the door to a trove of fascinating, powerful poems that will be required reading for all scholars and readers of American poetry and American Indian literature.

Review Quotes

"A remarkably rich and dense collection of poems. . . . Overall, the collection brings together the work of more than 80 poets from John Rollin Ridge to Alexander Posey to Lynn Riggs with complete bibliographies given for each poet represented in the collection. . . . This tremendously valuable book further erodes the idea that what may be called Native American literature is only to be found in the contemporary period."-- "American Literary Scholarship"

"A truly significant publication. This book fills a huge gap in our knowledge of the history of writing in the United States and Indian country. This is a book that I wish had been published decades ago, and scholars in a number of fields owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Dale Parker."-- "Michael A. Elliott, Emory University"

"An excellent book, uniquely recovering materials of great importance in the field. The scholarship and research are exemplary and impressive: I learned a lot from it and was happy to learn it."-- "Carter Revard, Washington University in St. Louis"

About the Author

Robert Dale Parker is James M. Benson Professor in English and Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the editor of The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.