The definitive collection from a groundbreaking Native American poet whose work traces the fault lines between past and present, real and surreal, comedy and tragedy to unveil a transcendent new vision of the world Hailed by the Bloomsbury Review as "the nation's foremost contemporary Native American poet" and by Sherman Alexie as "the best poet in Indian Country," Ray Young Bear draws on ancient Meskwaki tradition and modern popular culture to create poems that provoke, astound, and heal. This indispensable volume, which contains three previously published collections-Winter of the Salamander (1979), The Invisible Musician (1990), and The Rock Island Hiking Club (2001)-as well as Manifestation Wolverine, a brilliant series of new pieces inspired by animistic beliefs, a Lazy-Boy recliner, and the word songs Young Bear sang to his children, is a testament to the singularity of the poet's talent and the astonishing range of his voice. "I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that Ray Young Bear is the best poet in Indian Country and in the top 46 in the whole dang world. Sacred and profane, profound and irreverent, his poetry pushes you into a corner, roughs you up a bit, maybe takes your wallet, and then gives you a long kiss goodbye." -Sherman Alexie "Ray Young Bear's work is the gift of an anguished imagination marked with grief and wild humor. His writing alternately lashes and heals, but ultimately instructs from a deep vision of the world." -Louise Erdrich "These are remarkable poems. I read them over and over again, and I become more and more convinced that they proceed from a native intelligence that is at once ancient and contemporary, straightforward and ironic, provocative and insightful. The poet speaks from a kind of timeless experience; his voice is the voice of the coyote or singer of Beowulf or the inventor of words. The Invisible Musician is a work extraordinarily rich and rewarding." -N. Scott Momaday "It was clear from Ray Young Bear's earliest poems that he was a poet of great ability. He has gotten better. The physical detail is ground, and there are mysterious interminglings of water and air that hold the worlds together. The Invisible Musician is rightly titled and a fine book." -Robert Bly "[Ray Young Bear is] a national treasure." -Robert F. Gish "Ray Young Bear is magic. He writes as if he lived 10,000 years ago in a tribe whose dialect happens to be modern English." -Richard Hugo "No one, absolutely no one, tells the tribal story