Crow-blue, Crow-black

Book excerpt: Poetry. LGBT Studies. Native American Studies. Chip Livingston confronts and immerses himself into new cultural territories in his second poetry collection, CROW-BLUE, CROW-BLACK, an examination-critical, colloquial, and personal-of identity in terms of geography, experience, and blood quantum. A southern, gay, mixed-blood poet is thrust into the big-city literary life of the New York School artists in Greenwich Village, yet finds "home" in Uruguay with an Argentinean. CROW-BLUE, CROW-BLACK crosses traditional Native American narrative and incantatory styles with the quick-witted street poems of the New York School. It crosses the border into the southern hemisphere and bears witness to the influence of the Rio de la Plata, the grand capitols of Montevideo and Buenos Aires on its shores. From rural coastal roots to urban urgency and back to the rhythm of rivers and ocean, CROW-BLUE, CROW-BLACK maps the continents of the Americas.