SOURCE: Lincoln, Kenneth. “Blackfeet Winter Blues.” In James Welch, edited by Ron McFarland, pp. 95-106. Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, Inc., 1986.

In the following essay, previously published in 1982, Lincoln discusses the influence of Blackfoot Indian tradition on Welch's poetry.

They shook the green leaves down, those men that rattled in their sleep. Truth became a nightmare to their fox. 

He turned their horses into fish, or was it horses strung like fish, or fish like fish hung naked in the wind? 

Stars fell upon their catch. A girl, not yet twenty-four but blonde as morning birds, began a dance that drew the men in green around her skirts. In dust her magic jangled memories of dawn, till fox and grief turned nightmare in their sleep. 

And this: fish not fish but stars that fell into their dreams. 

This poem, “Magic Fox,” opens Riding the Earthboy 40 (1971), Welch's collected poetry, in...