Swallowed Light

By Michael Wasson

• Nimipuutímpt, the language of the Nez Perce, is a critically endangered language, with fewer than 50 fluent speakers left in the world.
  
  
• Swallowed Light is written in both English and Nimipuutímpt.
  
  
• When asked to come up with a reason why he writes, Wasson said “I write because all my storytellers are dead.”
  
  
• This poetry is opulent and dreamlike, rich and visceral. The world Wasson creates is a world one cannot help but be drawn into.
  
  
• With this first full-length collection, Wasson is an exciting emerging voice in contemporary poetry.
  
  
• Wasson wrote Swallowed Light from the Japanese village in which he currently lives. He has a complex relationship with the idea of home, telling LitHub “I long to earn my way towards some sense of home.”
  
  
• Wasson grew up on the Nez Perce reservation, raised mostly by his grandfather.
  
  
• He names Natalie Diaz, Ocean Vuong, Eduardo C. Corral, and Sherwin Bitsui as major influences on his poetry.
  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781619322530

Book preview

Cover: Swallowed Light by Michael Wasson

Swallowed Light

MICHAEL WASSON

Logo: Copper Canyon Press

COPPER CANYON

PRESS

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Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

na’íicyawa

for my mother

when it dawns for us

it is growing dark for you.

c’éewc’ew

Contents

Title Page

Note to Reader

___

Aposiopesis [or, The Field between the Living & the Dead]

I

Ezekiel 37:3

Swallowed Prayers as Creation

Ant & Yellow Jacket

Resurrect

Testament #90

O. unilateralis s.l.

Self-Portrait as 1879–1934

I Say After-Rain, You Say hahalx̣páawisa

Gather Up the Bones & Arrange Them Well

Portrait with Smeared Centuries

On the Horizon

II

Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

A Boy & His Mother Play Dead at Dawn

Wintering / he’elwéhtse

Years Later, na’pláx̣, in the Yard, Asks Me to Rename Him

The Exile

paq’qatát cilakátki

Close to Each Other with [a/the] Body

Self-Portrait as Collected Bones [Rejoice Rejoice]

Ligature

This Faithful Purge, on Behalf of Your Heavenly Father

Self-Portrait as Article 1[1]. [Treaty with the Nez Percés, 1855]: Cession of Lands to the United States

III

Face-to-Face with One of the Gods

Your Still-Life Is No Longer Still

A Poem for the háawtnin’ & héwlekipx [the Holy Ghost of You, the Space & Thin Air]

Self-Portrait toward a Fugue [No.___ in ___ ♭ Minor]

[Untitled]

World Made Visible

The Bones of Us

This Dusk in a Mouth Full of Prayer

A Soliloquy Would Imply That the Stage Is Empty

On the Aggrieved

I Am Another of Yourself: Hand-Pounded Bark, Handmade Paper: Sumi Ink: Gayle Crites: 2016

___

You Are There, Almost, without a Name, without a Body, Go Now

Notes

About the Author

Books by Michael Wasson

Acknowledgments

Copyright

Special Thanks

—

APOSIOPESIS [OR, THE FIELD BETWEEN THE LIVING & THE DEAD]

& forgive me

for I cannot

tell you how

to begin

but here

is the body

like the urge

to pray—

your mouth

already gone.

& we never

said you: a boy

woman

man—only

the animal made

with two hands

& lost

in the field

waiting

for human life

to reenter

as if through

a door

broken—&

yet the dead

who love

you—who

are still

remembering

the touch

of blood-

warmed skin—

abandon