Sherman Alexie is a poet as well as a writer of short stories, novels and films. A Native American, Alexie was born in 1966 on a reservation in the State of Washington. As in the case of most Native American writers, Alexie's writing is largely concerned with the historical and cultural experiences of his people. However, many of his poetic works also deal with issues that are deeply personal. This paper will be focused on three poems by Sherman Alexie: "Sister Fire, Brother Smoke," "Grief Calls Us to the Things of the World," and "I Would Steal Horses." These poems will be examined through the lens of psychoanalytic literary theory. It will be argued that these poems demonstrate Alexie's struggle with personal issues that are universal in nature rather than being bound to a particular cultural viewpoint.
Although Sherman Alexie's poems often deal with Native American themes, they are concerned with deep personal issues at the same time. Regarding the treatment of Native American cultural themes, Ron McFarland notes that Alexie has "a strong historical sensibility" (254). This is seen in how Alexie's poems frequently refer to the historical oppression of the Native American people and the impact of that history on Native Americans in the present day. A similar argument is made by Lynn Cline, who says, "his work carries the weight of five centuries of colonization, retelling the American Indian struggle to survive, painting a dear, compelling, and often painful portrait of modern Indian life" (197). However, it is also evident that Alexie's poems are concerned with psychological issues. In an interview with Ase Nygren in the journal Melus, Alexie claimed that his writing was initially inspired by personal matters rather than political or social ones (152-153). As further claimed by Alexie, "I write autobiographically" (Nygren 156). In doing this, Alexie presents his personal perspective on the kinds of situations that are exp...