Poem “Gahé Dzíł Mountain Spirits” named Colorado Author League’s Poem Finalist
You can read the entire list of the Colorado Author’s League Winners and Finalists here
The poetry collection is(ness) is all about capturing the importance of time and presence. Much like taking a snapshot of moments in stillness, similar to a photograph or painting. These poems reflect the meaningful existence and presence of my experiences over the years and in dreams, even though they can sometimes be complex to interpret without retribution or containment. The collection seeks to show what the poems represent in terms of “meaningfulness” and the essence of a greater existence. The poems are all about the moments and the quality of presence within those moments.
Every time I have heard Crisosto Apache read their poems, I have been moved by grace, intelligence, and vulnerability. This new collection confirms my impression of ambition to dwell with the best poetry has to offer us, from celebration to provocation to remembrance. Lines in “San Francisco, California, 1962” about the “brave young soul” that lives beyond old age stay with me. In “Snow Falling In C Minor,” the poet’s name and history become a traveling music, a heritage. I am moved, too by these late lines about light:
the weight of reflection reminds the eyes to seek
what is behind the mind so that a spark can be lit
a dawn for what can be expected in a yucca basket
or buckskin pouch summoning the blessings
and gazing through all awaiting pollen of bodies
Poem by poem, is(ness) builds a vivid poetic atlas. It is a powerful, sometimes harrowing, and always beautiful book.
David Mason, author of Ludlow and other books
In is(ness), Apache’s words are born in the moment, inviting us to be (t)here too, communing with place, with being, and with memory. In lines like “…yesterday’s light/is not yesterday” we are reminded that time is not as linear as Western thinking would lead us to believe. In this expansive time, Apache wanders in all directions through the wide-open spaces of their life; what is, what will be, and what was inextricably braided together. is(ness) is an invitation to live a more curious existence, to embrace the “penumbra”: the something between shadow and illumination. This is a collection of deep listening, of a devotional attention. Crisosto points our gaze towards something ever-precious: The Present.
Apache both summons and makes a place for (is)ness, a poetics that moves beyond predictable orders of form, narrative, and prosody, and marks an important turn in Ndé-Diné poetry for intimacy and vulnerability, thereby altering possibilities of imagining and knowing our experiences, possibilities, agencies, and futures. ,I. is(ness),/I. brings exhilarating affirmation that Ndé-Diné poetics bends toward metaphysical responses to the stark, colonial ungrounding of Indigenous worlds, family, lives, love, bodies, places, and belongingness and faces these imaginatively.
Meet the Author
Crisosto Apache is from Mescalero, New Mexico, on the Mescalero Apache reservation. Crisosto is Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the Salt Clan, born for the Towering House Clan. Apache attended and earned an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing. Crisosto is also an editor-at-large for The Offing Magazine. Apache’s books are GENESIS (Lost Alphabet) & Ghostword (Gnashing Teeth Publishing), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s 2023 Betty Berzon Emerging Writers Award and a finalist for the 2023 Colorado Authors League Award in poetry. Apache is also a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
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