Dissolve

Review by Booklist Review

Winner of the American Book Award, Bitsui skillfully translates many aspects of his Navajo heritage into verse, and this new collection is no exception. It is perhaps a more ambitious undertaking, as it consists of an initial, short poem, The Caravan, followed by Dissolve, a multisection poem that comprises the rest of the book and overflows with abundantly imaginative imagery ( the flattened field is chandeliered / by desert animal constellations ) and arresting depictions of familiar sensations, like that of saltwater masks sweating / on our smeared faces. The result is a complex and ephemeral combination of contemporary concerns ( we wear slippers of steam / to erase our carbon footprint ) and poetic objets d'art: Jeweled with houseflies, / leather rattles, foil wrapped, / ferment in beaked masks / on the shores of evaporating lakes. Interrupting the hallucinatory flights are injections of wry humor: How self-indulgent that moon always looking down. As with his contemporary dg nanouk okpik (Corpse Whale, 2012), the only way to read Bitsui is to trust his poetic momentum and embrace his brilliant work.--Diego Báez Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bitsui (Flood Song) traverses his native Southwest in a third collection that pulls from DinAc (Navajo) tradition and exhibits a geologic sense of scale, wherein the human dissolves into landscape and landscapes morph and pixelate in turn. He opens with "Caravan," a single urbanized poem about pulling an alcoholic brother out of a bar and back to the reservation: "The city's neon embers/ stripe the asphalt's blank page/ where this story pens itself nightly." But it's merely the stage setter for the eponymous remainder of the book: a long, interlocking series of brief, evocative, shardlike lyrics that defy narrative order, optical clarity, or object-oriented stasis. Here, children are "suckled by shadows" and "hand-stitch starless skies/ to their temporary faces," "a noose glimmers above the orphaning field," and "Wave patterns shade the eyes of ants/ from which we continue to watch:/ moons, suns, nights,/ pulled/ one pill at a time." The formal integrity of Bitsui's lines enables seamless transitions from the momentary to the timeless, from each disorienting and dazzling idea to the next: "the flattened field is chandeliered/ by desert animal constellations." Bitsui's exhilarating poetics lay in the blur of time, the slow and sure slide from ghostlike ideas into haunted-looking things, in constant erasure and redrawing: "No language but its rind/ crackling in the past tense." (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Bitsui, author of the American Book Award and PEN Open Book Award-winning Floodsongs, uses precise, sharply visual imagery to examine the Native American identity and its cultural survival in the contemporary world. Alienation, loneliness, life on the reservation, and the destruction of the natural world form the main themes of this book-length poem sequence, which is pervaded by a sense of grief over our severed kinship with nature and the painful fading of its throbbing forms to a blur: "A lake, now a tire-rut pool/ leaves bitter aftertastes/ on single-roomed tongues." Bitsui deftly blends -personal and contemporary experience with an understanding of his Navajo heritage, creating a world filled with things that are continually shedding their old garments and transitioning. At the same time, his quest to reconnect with life's vital powers, within and around us, reveals the shroud that modern life has spread over them: "Strangers to our breath/ we wheeze in dying trees/ then take the shape/ of toothless mouths suckling/ the driest month's driest branches." VERDICT Bitsu goes beyond the local, using intense observation to explore broader issues of politics, spirituality, and the fragmentation of human life. Recommended for all poetry readers.-Sadiq Alkoriji, Broward Cty. Lib. Syst., FL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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from "Dissolve"On limbs of slanted lightpainted with my mind's skin color,I step upon black braids,oiled drenched, wormingfrom last month's orphaned mouth.Winged with burning--I ferry themfrom my filmed eyes, wheezing.Scalp blood in my footprints--my buckskin pouchfilling with photographed sand.No language but its rindcrackling in the past tense.(Untitled) An elegy hands me a busy signal,its handle broke me from my tooth.I chew its answersuntil I taste cracksin the chromeoutline of a sky (without hands).Notice: every link in the trail to hereis a bullet's path to back there.(Untitled)A hovering smeartrailing desert washesfenced in with a murder of mirrorsillumines the eating groaning over us.Nibbling blades of winter light:the goat's bleating leased downwindpastures among foals dripping outof hollowed-out dictionaries.Jeweled with houseflies,leather rattles, foil-wrapped,ferment in beaked maskson the shores of evaporating lakes.This plot, now a hotel garden,its fountain gushing forth--the slashed wrists of the Colorado River.(Untitled)There's a way out--walk the dirt road into cerulean dawn,tap the windows of cars and trucksrattling down highway 77with clear fingerprints,and clasp the nine eyes of the desertshut at the intersection of then and now.Ask: will this whirlwindconnect to that one,make them cousins to the knife?Will lake mist etchedon flakes of flood-birthed moonlight,hang its beard on a tow truckhoisting up a buck,butterflies leaking from its nostrils,dark clouds draining off its cedar coat?(Untitled)Ladders follow us from minesin which our quiveringstretches hospital gownsinto looms of lightning.We shake ground deer hooves,on the four directions of forgive,while tire-lit flames gropethe underside of a spider web's webbed thinking.Nearing sandbank,gray hair bending out of it,a witness witnessed--maps of jet fuel residuedraining mosquito humon the beginnings of our eyes.(Untitled)A phantom arm feelingwants them to return their feet.Falling from their cut hair:hearth sounds sunlightingthe hallway back to then.Will their torched nameswalk again as lake water?Will they charge a feeto re-sharpen the hornsof our dull speech?(Untitled)Ladders follow us from minesin which our quiveringstretches hospital gownsinto looms of lightning.We shake ground deer hooves,on the four directions of forgive,while tire-lit flames gropethe underside of a spider web's webbed thinking.Nearing sandbank,gray hair bending out of it,a witness witnessed--maps of jet fuel residuedraining mosquito humon the beginnings of our eyes.(Untitled)Cranes pass as swansthrough tunnels underneath this dreaming,I breathe it in.Cave paintings stammering from their speech of clear waterhoof this chamber quiet,I breathe it in.Charred cradles, tethered to anchors,molt beside bleached saddles,I breathe it in.The dark before me--unfolded from bead-pressed earth,sparkles, howls, whistles,I breathe it in. Excerpted from Dissolve by Sherwin Bitsui All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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