Customer Reviews
Every reading reveals a new layer. - By: , 08 Mar 1999 
Simply, I read it backin 1995 for a course at Santa Barbara City College, & continue to reach for it to get new ideas & perspectives. Also, the interview with Momaday by Charles Woodward--if you can get ahold of it at your library--Momaday describes a memorable moment where he found a new appreciation for the poetic qualities of expletives.
The book is an interesting tale of a group and their fall. - By: , 14 Dec 1997 I enjoyed the book. I especially like the way Momaday wrote the book as if it had been written by three people. Not only did I learn about Momaday's journey to Rainy Mountain, but I also learned about Kiowa myths & legends. It showed the last years of the Kiowas as a people. The book was simple to read, although when thought about, I realized it was more complex. I would reccommend this book to people who like to learn about cultures & their myths.
Rainy Mountain - By: , 05 May 1997 Greawt way of presenting the culture of indians
aboard....
Prose-like poetry - By: , 18 Jan 1997 
The Way to Rainy Mountain is poetry for people who don't usually ready poetry. Personally, I really like the way *very* short stories are interspersed throughout - it's like something you'd hear coming out of the mouth of your grandparents (or great grandparents) as they talk about stuff they remember doing or seeing. There's all sorts of articles written about this poem, & you can see synopsis of them at:
http://users.mwci.net/~lapoz/Momaday.html
A mythic voyage into the Kiowa spirit - By: , 02 Jul 1996 THE WAY TO RAINY MOUNTAIN is a fscinating account of the Kiowa spirit's core through the poet N Scott Momaday's three voices: the collective tribal story-telling voice, the historic voice (based on historical documentation), & the poet's own experiential voice (Momaday retraced the migratory route of his ancestors from Montana to Oklahoma). These three voices work on the reader's imagination to produce a fourth voice on the stage of the reader's mind. THE WAY TO RAINY MOUNTAIN depicts an epic journey of the Kiowa people through space (Montana southward) & time (mythological to modern). The ancient Kiowa's psyche fuses with primal nature be it with dog persons, antelope beings, or the mythological (but very real) creature called Taime.Oncein Oklahoma the Kiowa mastered the horse & became among the best of hunters on the Great Plains. Bravein spirit, sharingin heart, they became a proud people. But European civilization closedin & all but crushed them by killing off the buffalo, killing herds of horses & turning hunters into farmers. Yet the Kiowa people held their vital contact with the landin today's hectic world: "Oncein his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe," writes Momaday. "He ought to give himself up to a particular landscapein his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season & listens to the sounds that are made upon it." Momaday helps the reader do just that--gain an appreciation for the multi-dimensional land of North America.
