Reviews 71 order, Boyer shows that Reed not onlyuses the black heritage to help America find its bearings again but also celebrates the vitality and similarities of all Americans. Like Reed, however, Boyer seems tentative. Why must we endure Reed on Christian failings and Christian intelligence? Christianity has no mo nopoly on either violence or smart weapons, as the Middle East proves daily. Deplorable too are Boyer’s210 (count 'em) manneristic contractions; example, “it’sthis desire . . . that’s . . .central.”Reed’sstyle’sbetter. So’s Peter Wild’s, though he’s also contraction-addicted. Wild’s Ann Zwinger, though—“though”being one ofhis favoritewords—iseminently read able, informative, and ofvalue to traditionalists. Wild sketches his subject’slife, offers an essaywhich isa bit preachy and too lengthy (at 20% ofhis total text) on the nature essay genre, and then moves to “Zwinger’s Solution” and “Zwinger’s Books.”Her solution is to write old-fashioned nature books and in them to combine descriptions ofnatural localeswith personal anecdotal bits— all with painterly detail, self-deprecation, humor, irony, and “uncanniness.” Wild shows that in her books Zwinger “strikes an admirable blend of the amiable and the informative,”as she records her canyon hikes, river trips, and Bajajaunts, and depicts seasonal changes in her beloved Colorado. The de tailed discussion of Windin theRock: TheCanyonlandsofSoutheastern Utah(1988), with which Wild closes, demonstrates that Zwinger can “re-create her impres sions ofthe trip [down Honaker Trail] and reenact on the page the restorative powers she feels in nature.”Wild’s sophisticated, poetic prose can be as admi rable as that ofhis subject. ROBERT L. GALE University ofPittsburgh A Coyote Reader. Edited by William Bright. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 202 pages, $30.00/$13.00.) A CoyoteReaderis a solid piece ofwork throughout, a good introduction to Old Man Coyote of Native American legend. The preface draws essential distinctions between European “animal stories” and the “personages with names like Frog (or) Coyote” who appear in native American tales; this is followed by a brief but essential discussion of translation. Then come three general chapters on, respectively, tricksters, Coyotein European literature, and Coyote’smythic background. Each ofthe followingfourteen chapters explores one of Coyote’s many aspects, and each ends with a brief but informative discussion of the relationship (or lack thereof) between the actual biological animal and Old Man Coyote. Chapters include: thewanderer, theworld-shaper, the glutton, the loser, the oudaw, the pragmatist, the survivor. In addition to traditional narratives (many freshly retranslated as narrative poems), the text 72 WesternAmerican Literature includes fine contemporary narrative poems by Leslie Silko, Peter Blue Cloud, Simon Ortiz and WendyRose, aswell as byGarySnyder, DavidWagoner,Jarold Ramsey and Dell Hymes, among others. Bright’s own discussions are supple mented byessaysor excerptsfrom Snyder, Ramsey, and PeterCoyote. The book concludes with an excellent bibliography. Bright’s preface makes it clear that he stands firmly with those who have “proposed ‘ethnopoetic translations’ which present the texts as a form of ‘measured verse’and which recognize the lineas a basic unit.”Of the generally acknowledged leaders of this school, Bright prefers (and practices) the more “poetic”versions ofDell Hymes overwhat one might call the “verse drama”of Dennis Tedlock; none of Tedlock’s versions appear here, while Hymes is represented by both translations and original verse. Similarly, contemporary author Leslie Silko’spoetry isincluded, but such fine prose as “Coyote Holds A Full House In His Hands”isabsent. Bright doesn’t simply neglect prose versions. He praises faintly Jarold Ramsey’s Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature ofthe Oregon Country as “the best ofthe prose translations ofCoyote stories despite the tendency ofprose to lose much ofthe feelofNativeAmerican originals”and suggests (in afootnote) thatBarryLopez’sGivingBirthtoThunder, SleepingwithHisDaughter: CoyoteBuilds North America is “to be avoided” for its lack of “stated provenance” and the “extreme license” with which its narratives are retold. Thus, while A Coyote Readeroffers a fine exploration ofCoyote’smany incarnations, Bright’sdistrust ofprose keeps him from offering a fully representative selection of contempo rary approaches to Coyote narratives, whether original or in translation. Nonetheless, A CoyoteReaderjoins the smallgroup ofessential Coyote books on my shelf (where it may sit uneasily, given Bright’s opinion of some of the others on...