Book excerpt: Poetry. Native American Studies. A superb collection of poems rooted in remembering the past, and transcending the confinement imposed by poverty. As Robert Kelly writes in the introduction: "Reading Celia Bland's poetry, especially the acute lyrics in this book, I have the feeling of being taken by the hand of a sensitive quiet guide and shown time after time quick narratives, microtomes of life, that speak their own word. Word of a town, maybe, of a family, or a race, or perhaps even, after reading, the sense of a nation-word that has been spoken." "Never in the midst of this world of disorder is the poems' music given short shrift. Each piece is infused with it...That attention to beauty in the language spills over into the world it's describing, so that this world of despair still shimmers. The reader lingers in the state of decay and somehow finds it achingly beautiful, like the moldy old house the speaker inherits along with these memories."--Gretchen Primack, Boston Review "Adroit syntax, crisp imagery, and disasters both personal and public define the poems in Celia Bland's collection CHEROKEE ROAD KILL. Her poems have the air of history about them, whether family history, the haunted past of the Cherokees, or the present slipping away, moment by moment."--Garin Cycholl, Rain Taxi "CHEROKEE ROAD KILL is an important book, written by a poet in total command of her powers."--Jonathan Blunk, Georgia Review