ADVANCE PRAISE for HALCHITA RED

Oh, this book. With gritty intimacy, cinematic poetics, and clear-eyed devotion, Paige Buffington transports us through memory and dream to a place where time might be told by the migration of cranes. Where the elders tell stories and sing Johnny Cash and the AM radio plays All Navajo, All the Time. Where warm corn cake just pulled up from the earth is shared and the boots leave red prints. Buffington explores not only what is home, but who is our home? Who leaves? Who returns? And how do we carry home with us wherever we are, marked forever by its wounds, its gifts, its landscapes, its heartbreaks, its language, its traditions, its love. So quietly, so surely, Halchita Red transported me.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Unfolding and host of The Poetic Path

In Halchita Red, Buffington offers a text — or rather, a voice — a sepia light, a visceral reminder of what has survived with its beauty intact, despite what 400 years of colonization continues to attempt to disappear. Halchita Red is an oxidized-iron record spinning, a multi-generational, Native narrative of loss, grief, heartbreak, hope, and beauty. Buffington’s poetry, with it’s rich somatic subtext, gives the us a way to identify with her experience — in a way we can feel.

—David Anthony Martin, author of The Ground Nest, Bijoux, Deepening the Map, and Span

SYNOPSIS:
Paige Buffington’s Halchita Red is a cinematic series of poems & prose poems drawn from memory and sampled fragments of conversation—external and internal—as an antidote to the record becoming warped or lost. Paige Buffington's family is originally from Tohatchi, New Mexico. She is Navajo, of the Bear Enemies Clan Born for White People. In Halchita Red, Buffington offers a text—or rather, a voice—a sepia light, a visceral reminder of what has survived with its beauty intact, despite what 400 years of colonization continues to attempt to disappear. This work acts as a reliquary of words and stories finding their way home. Buffington's cinematically-expressed sentiments are simultaneously gorgeous and gritty —"Water at our waists, red sand in our hair."—images that set the scenes and moments as in-between, expressing resilience in the face of colonization and generational trauma. The father says, "The smartest ones leave this place," while simultaneously the elders remind us that, "we would never be alone as long as we took care of each other." The lines of these hybrid prose-poems are a memoiric magic which "throw bees in the mouths of our dogs for protection, spit in their mouths so they’d never leave."

In his book, There There, Tommy Orange states, “We are the memories we don't remember, which live in us, which we feel," and in Halchita Red, Buffington persuades the reader to "remember the taste" and scents of many things, including potatoes, boiled coffee, cigarettes and sand. The background soundtrack is of wind through clothes on the line, Waylon Jennings and Stevie Nicks, bird-patterned skirt-hems sweeping dust. Like wild horses in the rain, the reader is asked to "place your mouth to the cold," as Buffington does, and to imagine "the valley of grass as your bed." We return to grandmother, remember father, meet the despair of those returning from the upside-down mirror-landscape of service in Iraq. The memories are countered by the sense that love, family and community, are fields fallowed by war through estrangement, separation, fragmentation—all the dark ways in which war lingers insidiously inside those who return home after service. This field, like Halchita Red itself, is the field where the narrator continues, nonetheless, to sow seeds.

Halchita Red is a record of oxidized-iron spinning, a multi-generational, Native narrative of loss, grief, heartbreak, hope, and beauty. Buffington's poetry, with it's rich somatic subtext, gives the us a way to identify with her experience—in a way we can feel. Hitchhiking, jukebox, constellations. Drawn lines. Collecting both pollen in jars and scars, at the edges of worlds. Mixtapes, red-tailed hawks. Counting minnows, counting stars. In a life learning how to grow old in red willow valleys, we should “repeat the words like cedar and meadow, cicada” and remember grandmother's spirited advice, “be careful, but keep going.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paige Buffington is Navajo, of the Bear Enemies Clan, born for the White People. Her family is originally from Tohatchi N.M., a town sitting at the base of the Chuska Mountains in Navajoland. She received an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2015. Hashtags accompanying her poems have included “American West,” “memory,” “family,” and “desert Southwest.” Her poems can be found in The Dine Reader, Narrative Magazine, Honey Literary, and Contra Viento, among others. Her poem “From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque” was awarded the 2023 Zocalo Public Square Poetry Prize. Her essay, “What Are You Looking For?” was selected as a finalist for the 2024 Waterston Desert Writing Prize. She currently lives in Gallup, N.M. She teaches Kindergarten near the Rock Springs,Yatahey, and China Springs communities.

"Steven Wesley Law captures the essence of the American wilderness with a voice that merges the precision of a journalist and the soul of a poet."

—David Anthony Martin, author of Bijoux, and The Ground Nest

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“Steven Law is an observant and lyrical writer who evokes the wilderness experience in clear clean prose that is sometimes amusing, sometimes profound, and always delightful."

—Tim Cahill, founding editor of Outside magazine

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"In the style of a good campfire yarn, Steven Law’s Gone wanders the deserts, canyons, waterways, and shorelines of the American West with an eye for wonder, a voice full of humor, and a never-ending thirst for the elusive moments of spiritual transcendence that only occur in the wild. Budding backpackers, kayakers, surfers, anglers, and river rafters will love this book."

—Melissa L. Sevigny, author of Brave the Wild River

In Gone, Steven Wesley Law captures the essence of the American wilderness with a voice that merges the precision of a journalist and the soul of a poet. Through activities like backpacking, snowshoeing, sea kayaking, surfing, rafting, and fishing, Law transports readers to the heart of nature's splendor. His essays, infused with personal reflections and vivid descriptions, offer a visceral experience of America's diverse landscapes, from the arid deserts to the misty coasts.

Law’s storytelling invites readers to slow down and savor the beauty of the natural world. His desert excursions, highlighting the practice of Sabaku Yoku, or Desert Bathing, are particularly evocative. Here, one can almost feel the cool relief of shade beneath a juniper, the pulse of ozone in the air, and the soothing warmth of the sun. His narratives make you reach for your water bottle and relish in the scent of coffee brewing on a camp stove.

The sea kayaking sections envelop you in the mists and rains of the Pacific Northwest, where you encounter black bears, orcas, and the formidable power of the sea. Law’s detailed accounts make you feel your muscles straining against the wind, seeking refuge in the lee of a small island. His surfing tales echo the freedom and exhilaration of a teenage beach-bum dream, where the pursuit of the perfect wave takes precedence over all else.

In his backpacking adventures, Law's meticulous division of gear into Essentials & Transcendentals reveals a thoughtful approach to embracing the wild. Gone is not just a tribute to the American West’s beauty and serenity but a celebration of its spiritual power. Law’s writing encourages readers to reconnect with nature, offering a path to discover their own moments of reverence and adventure.

There is a refinement of power in the relation of the awe Law finds in the wild, what might be considered by some to be its spiritual or sacred power—that of unity and connection— encouraging readers to reconnect with the natural world and discover their own moments of reverence and adventure. Steven Wesley Law’s Gone is a masterful exploration of awe, wonder, and reverence, making it a must-read for anyone seeking to experience the transformative power of nature.