The Cherokee Lottery: A Sequence of Poems [Paperback]

William Jay Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2000

For the first time in poetic form, The Cherokee Lottery treats one of the greatest tragedies in American history, the forced removal of the Southern Indian tribes east of the Mississippi. When gold was discovered on Cherokee land in northern Georgia in 1828, the U.S. Government passed the Removal Act, and 18,000 Cherokees, along with other southern tribes--Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks--were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma territory. Herded along under armed guard, they traveled in bitter cold weather and as many as a quarter died on what became known as "The Trail of Tears."

In powerful poetry of epic proportions, which Harold Bloom has called his best work, Smith paints a stark and vivid picture of this ordeal and its principal participants, among them Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, and Osceola, the Seminole chief.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Smith's sequence of moving, extraordinarily visual poems brings us to the heart of one of the nation's greatest tragedies and, many say, sins--the "removal" of the five civilized tribes, via the Trail of Tears, from their homelands in the eastern U.S. to the Oklahoma territory. Part Choctaw himself, Smith uses several different voices in the sequence, such as those of an old Choctaw on the trail, remembering the "buzzard man" who presided over funeral rites, while mourning the many who died without such appropriate ritual; the great Choctaw chief, Pushmataha, who traveled to Washington in a failed attempt to gain a hearing for his people; and artist Charles Banks Wilson, sketching the last of the purebloods in the melting pot of Oklahoma. Many of the poems appear in the book's signature stanza, a lopey, three-line, roughly pentametric form that sounds sometimes reportorial, sometimes Shakespearean, sometimes both at once. Moving, humane, unforgettable. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"William Jay Smith has been one of our best poets for more than sixty years, and The Cherokee Lottery is his masterwork; taut, harrowing, eloquent, and profoundly memorable." --Harold Bloom

"[This] is a powerful collage of occasions having to do with the "removal" of the southern trives to the west, and each glimpse is made striking and poignant by the pen of William Jay Smith. The book tells much that I had not known, and tells it with compelling art." --Richard Wilbur

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Curbstone Books (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880684667
• ISBN-13: 978-1880684665
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,768,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive, memorable collection., June 6, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cherokee Lottery: A Sequence of Poems (Paperback)

The impressive and memorable poetry comprising The Cherokee Lottery explores the forced removal of the Southern Indian tribes east of the Mississippi when gold was discovered on Cherokee land in northern Georgia in 1828. Journey to the Interior: He has gone into the forest,/to the wooded mind in wrath;/he will follow out the nettles/and the bindweed path.//He is torn by tangled roots,/he is trapped by mildewed air;/he will feed on alder shoots/and on fungi: in despair//he will pursue each dry creek-bed,/each hot white gully's rough raw stone/till heaven opens overhead/a vast jawbone//and trees around grow toothpick-thin/and a deepening dustcloud swirls about/and every road leads on within/and none leads out.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars REVIEW QUOTES, August 29, 2001

By 

Curbstone Press, Jantje Tielken, Editorial As... - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cherokee Lottery: A Sequence of Poems (Paperback)

"THE CHEROKEE LOTTERY [is] a magnificent sequence that celebrates the Indians of the famous Trail of Tears....This is as fine in its way as similar poems by Robert Penn Warren, and it is an appropriate poem to have been written by a former Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress." --World Literature Today
"Smith accomplishes a remarkable poetry of fact and documentation..." --Publishers Weekly
"The richness of these poems makes the multi-layered task of memory a luxurious task." --Real Change
"William Jay Smith has been one of our best poets for more than sixty years, and THE CHEROKEE LOTTERY is his masterwork: taut, harrowing, eloquent, and profoundly memorable." --Harold Bloom

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A exceptional book of poetry ..., December 17, 2000

By 

Roben Campbell (Still River, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Cherokee Lottery: A Sequence of Poems (Paperback)

William Jay Smith was unknown to me as a poet or author before I picked this book up in a local library. "Cherokee Lottery" is an exceptional and refreshing book of poetry, a real pleasure to read. There is nothing tedious and overwrought here. The book begins with an invocation, and obviously the muse served the writer well. Each poem presents a chapter of historical fact and allows the reader to digest it without dipping into excessive negative pathos. The reader is brought to a new awareness of just what the plight of the southeastern Indians was. William Jay Smith has a great feel for language and how it sounds. In many ways I think this is the book of poetry I have been waiting to read for years. Now I want to read everything else he has written.