"There Is a Right Way"

Abstract

James Weichs Riding the Earthboy 40 remains watershed work in American poetry more than thirty years after its initial publication in 1971. Some would argue it has maintained its prominence be cause it accomplishes an historically and materially genuine confes sional regionalism that Welch's mentor at the University of Montana, Richard Hugo, professed but never quite achieved. Others would say that Welch's book remains vital because it initiated new era in Native American poetry. There were other important works by Native poets prior to Riding the Earthboy 40?significant poems by N. Scott Momaday and Duane Niatum?but none collected into single book with the intercultural impact of Welch's compilation.1 On the jacket of the 2004 Penguin edition, Sherman Alexie calls Riding the Earthboy 40 one of my true holy bibles. Joy Harjo cites it as a touchstone for generation who were figuring out poetry that had to be assembled from broken treaties, stolen lands, the blues, horses, fast cars, and long rough nights. I would like to explore why this collection of lyric poetry, published by writer who would be come much more famous for his novels, remains so influential, both within American Indian literary circles and among broader group of readers and writers who consider it an essential part of the larger American literary canon. Riding the Earthboy 40 enjoys this range of effect, I believe, because James Welch turned his early and amazing grasp of the Euramerican lyric to the real-world ethical questions that engaged him as young American Indian man in 1960s Montana. His collection remains pow