"Unashamedly sharp, hard-hitting, and articulate, Frazier’s poems are ‘flitting blade[s] in / the dark’ that cut away at romantic idealism to reveal Native lives as tender as they are grim." —Studies in American Indian Literature
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“Santee Frazier's debut collection is striking for its incisive delineations of people, places, and time. ‘Like a white-tailed doe hung up by the hooves / still steaming in the knee-deep winter,’ his visceral poems are immediate and memorable.” —Arthur Sze, author of Quipu
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“In Dark Thirty, Santee Frazier—‘a lyricist of the corner’—delivers a world we haven’t seen in a language we never expected to hear.” —Jon Davis, author of Scrimmage of Appetite
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“The poems in Santee Frazier’s first collection, Dark Thirty, are tough and unflinching. In language infused with the attitude of blues—never nostalgic or self-pitying—Frazier explores the harsh lives of people living at the margins with a measure of tenderness that underscores their dignity. The poems handle tough subjects gracefully, moving thematically from issues of sexual exploitation and violence in everyday domestic life to a kind of wonder at the redemptive possibilities of the human spirit rising out of chaos. This is a moving debut.” —Natasha Trethewey, author of Native Guard
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"Unashamedly sharp, hard-hitting, and articulate, Frazier’s poems are ‘flitting blade[s] in / the dark’ that cut away at romantic idealism to reveal Native lives as tender as they are grim." —Studies in American Indian Literature
— -
“Santee Frazier's debut collection is striking for its incisive delineations of people, places, and time. ‘Like a white-tailed doe hung up by the hooves / still steaming in the knee-deep winter,’ his visceral poems are immediate and memorable.” —Arthur Sze, author of Quipu
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“In Dark Thirty, Santee Frazier—‘a lyricist of the corner’—delivers a world we haven’t seen in a language we never expected to hear.” —Jon Davis, author of Scrimmage of Appetite
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“The poems in Santee Frazier’s first collection, Dark Thirty, are tough and unflinching. In language infused with the attitude of blues—never nostalgic or self-pitying—Frazier explores the harsh lives of people living at the margins with a measure of tenderness that underscores their dignity. The poems handle tough subjects gracefully, moving thematically from issues of sexual exploitation and violence in everyday domestic life to a kind of wonder at the redemptive possibilities of the human spirit rising out of chaos. This is a moving debut.” —Natasha Trethewey, author of Native Guard
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