So What

Author: Franklin K.R. Cline

Publisher: Vegetarian Alcoholic Press (2017)

Each poem in So What is entitled “So What,” which speaks to the idea that everything is a contribution to the singular endless stolen poem of history. As an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation questioning the validity of American ideals, Cline’s lyric and prose poems interrogate his complicity in imperialism. This long-awaited volume of colloquial verse from a rising Native American voice maintains eloquence, poignancy, and humor throughout— think a tribal Frank O’Hara.

"Franklin K.R. Cline is a unique, new voice in Native American poetry. His personal and confessional poems celebrate everyday life in all its raw, domestic, and intimate dimensions. Love and sex, beer and buffalo wings, sports and television, the weather and Milwaukee, all appear within memorable lyric and prose poems. In the end, this work reaches to reclaim everything that has been stolen by America: the land, the sky, the rhythms of our humanity." 

–Craig Santos Perez