FICTION

THE GIVING EARTH: A John G. Neihardt Reader, Edited by Hilda Neihardt Petri (University of Nebraska Press: $25; 300 pp.) John G. Neihardt (1881-1973) is best remembered for “Black Elk Speaks,” his ghostwritten autobiography of a Sioux holy man who participated in the Ghost Dance revival and fought at Wounded Knee. This sampler of Neihardt’s poetry and prose won’t change posterity’s judgment--”Black Elk” remains his most significant work--but it does resurrect the outlines of a long and varied literary career.

Born when the West was still wild (“The Giving Earth” includes his account of a boat trip down the untamed Missouri River in 1908) and surviving to witness (and sympathize with) the student protests of the 1960s, Neihardt clearly was a strong and original personality. This book is evidence, though, that without genius, even strong and original personalities can barely dent the literary conventions of their time.

Neihardt began as a lyric poet, with echoes of Emerson and Whitman, then wrote short stories influenced by Twain, Crane, Norris and London. He devoted nearly 30 years to “A Cycle of the West,” a series of epic poems in rhyming couplets--”The Song of Three Friends,” “The Song of Hugh Glass,” “The Song of Jed Smith,” “The Song of the Indian Wars,” “The Song of the Messiah”--whose shrewd psychology and scrupulous observation of nature struggle to transcend their old-fashioned form.

What this book does, finally, is show the elements in Neihardt that came together in “Black Elk.” The Nebraskan had mystical leanings, a love of the land, a heroic conception of individual character and a deep respect for Indians and their culture. Even the 19th-Century flavor of his prose fit the voice of Black Elk, who, according to Neihardt’s daughter, Hilda, announced when the two men first met in 1931: “He has been sent to learn what I shall teach him.”