Bitsui is a young man, and his poems are very much a young man's poems: Serious to the point of being intense, trying to be about everything at once, and ambitious. Flood Song is a single poem which Bitsui referred to as a song, made up of many movements. His sense of humor only came through in the moments in between poems, when he told the audience "It's getting warm in here, and I'm from Tuscon." After identifying himself as an Arizonan, he added, "Am I acting suspiciously? Please don't tell anyone."
Alexie read after Bitsui, and he praised the younger poet, specifically, for an image from one of his poems about "Bridges dragging behind cities." He said Bitsui was at the forefront of a whole new generation of Native American poets who were coming up, and that later this year, he'd be reading with those poets in venues around town.
And then he read some of his more recent poems, which tend to be heavy on humor and pop cultural references—Donna Summer's 17-minute orgasm, watching a beautiful woman scratch herself behind her ear and then smell her own finger—and in between the poems, he suggested that readings on Capitol Hill were different than readings in Pioneer Square ("Hormones! Musk!") and offered an earnest plug for the TV show Verminators. It was an interesting look at two poets at very different places in their careers. As a high school student, Bitsui wrote letters to an already-famous Alexie about being an aspiring poet. Alexie is fresh from winning the PEN/Faulkner award, and Bitsui will undoubtedly be winning some awards in the years to come; those signed first editions of Flood Song that people walked away with last night are probably a good investment.
