AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

The Poetry Magazine Podcast: Esther Belin in Conversation with Orlando White

(If you notice a mistake in the transcript, please let us know by emailing [email protected])

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Orlando White:

(READS excerpt from “Nascent”)

                                                         above the cap height where breath

pressures tongue against teeth,

Esther Belin: Welcome to the Poetry Magazine Podcast. I’m guest editor, Esther Belin. This week I get the chance to talk with our Orlando White, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and faculty member of Diné College, a tribal college on the Navajo reservation in Tsaile, Arizona. We talked about Diné thought and poetics, and what it means as Indigenous writers to use the English language as a vessel to integrate tribal concepts. Since we’re both from the Navajo tribe, this discussion focuses on sound and breath in Diné bizaad, the Navajo language. Orlando is a master at creating one-word poems. And even though the poem you’ll hear today, “water,” is only six letters long, we barely had enough time to unpack the poem’s complexity.

Esther Belin: (GREETING in Diné bizaad) Orlando, (SPEAKS IN Diné bizaad) for joining me today.

Orlando White: (GREETING in Diné bizaad) Thanks for having me, Esther. Really appreciate it.

Esther Belin: You’re one of the writers I often highlight because you’ve consistently lived and worked on the Navajo reservation. You know, for our listeners, Diné is how the Navajo people describe themselves. And the Diné college where Orlando teaches is the first tribal college from an Indian nation. The Diné college opened in 1968. And most of the students are from the area. You would think that there would be a lot of teachers from that tribe teaching those students. And unfortunately, that’s not the reality. So, tell us a little bit about what was the program like when you first got there, and then what are some changes that you’ve added?

Orlando White: We’re actually, I guess you could say, officially starting the creative writing program here at Diné college. And so that was created by mostly the Diné faculty here. I mean, I think it’s very healthy for our, our community here in our nation. I think that creative writing, in general, poetry in particular, you know, has a really long history with our people. Writing obviously, is a fairly recent thing, but it’s also a really big part of who we are and where we’re from now. I think literacy and, and of course, education, you know, higher learning has, I think has been—there’s a long history with it, obviously it’s pretty brutal, but, I think Diné are very malleable as a people, if you if I should even use that word. But we know how to adapt pretty well. You know, being writers, being Diné writers, that adaptation, I think, you know, that relationship to how things shift and change, right, with, you know, this so-called American society. So, you know, I mean, I think of obviously poets like Sherwin Bitsui, I think of yourself, Esther, I think of Luci Tapahonso. But I also think that people like Irvin Morris and Blackhorse Mitchell, Jake Skeets, Laura Tohe, and a lot of other Diné writers, where, you know, back in the early 2000s, you know, I only knew of you and Sherwin. Like I remember even studying your poetry when I was an undergrad. It wasn’t until I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts that I was like, oh, yeah, you know, there’s, there’s other Diné writers out there, right.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Our relationship to language, it’s a real relationship that we have with our grandparents. And I think that same relationship is also the same relationship we have with the land. So I think it’s the same for language. I think that Diné bizaad, the Diné language is a very, yeah, I always think of it as another person, just like how you and I are talking. I mean, I think language is a person, you know, in the end, I look at letters for example, the alphabet, as individual people, at least in my mind, right? Just like I am a person and you are a person right? And I always use the example of “per” meaning single one, “son” being the root of sound, right. So person, so there’s this constant idea of that we, you know, we are sound. And I think that’s really important for Diné thought and Diné poetics, the idea of sound. So when I think of poems like Sherwin Bitsui’s “tó,” his water poem, really, it’s a visual poem. It’s a concrete poem. So the word itself, “tó,” it’s really about the sound, right? It’s that sound that, when a water is dripping, like after a rainstorm, right, a water droplet dripping from a leaf. And then, you know, sort of landing in a puddle of water on the ground, and that sound that makes, right? And what’s really interesting is, you know, teaching that poem here, at Diné College, with our students being Diné. And a lot of a lot of my students who are the majority of them are not writers or artists, but whenever I bring that poem in, we always end up having, like, a long, almost two-hour conversation about it. I mean, it’s such a spare poem, tó, it just repeats down the page. But somehow my students just, they just get it. Within this one single word, we’re able to talk about, like so many things in relation to water.

Esther Belin: You know, just right now talking about Sherwin’s poem, and teaching it to a classroom of Diné students, and hearing you, you know, describe the conversation, just from our language, and the power that it has, you know, being represented on the page, I mean, just really brought tears to my eyes, honestly, because, you know, that’s what people don’t understand about who we are, as Diné. And it goes back to what you earlier said about, you know, our relationship with education and letters. So the word you used earlier to describe us as malleable, you know, we’re re-forming, we have that ability to reconcile and to heal, and to keep moving forward. That power, you know, helps me every day, because I don’t live on the reservation, you know, I’m in a border town. But just hearing that, I’m blessed with those words, Orlando. That was really helpful for me today.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Orlando White:

(READS “tó” by Sherwin Bitsui)

tó
tó
tó
tó
tó
tó
tó

Orlando White: The poem by Sherwin Bitsui, which is from Flood Song, published in 2009, the opening piece is a visual piece, a concrete poem, titled “tó,” and the word “tó” is repeated down the page seven times, like as if it’s dripping down in the center of the page. And I think it’s a really profound poem for me, because it really emphasizes our poetics as a people. You know, my relationship to language is that I grew up here. I grew up hearing it my whole entire life, and listening very carefully to it, you know, you start to build a closeness to it. You know, I mean, I could go anywhere in the world, and once I hear Diné being spoken somewhere, it makes me happy. You know, it makes me feel like I’m home, you know? Like, I’m actually home, like, back on my homeland and with my family, with my community, so. And so that sound tó, right, it’s very important. And in Diné culture, we have a lot of water clans. So that that poetics, right, I think reveals itself in Sherwin Bitsui’s poem “tó.” It’s really that relationship we have with water as a people. It also reminds me, too, of, I also use one of your poems, Esther, which is “Názbąs,” which is at the beginning of your second book. Názbąs means, like, circle, zero, right, anything that’s round. So I was thinking maybe you could share that with us, Esther, your concrete poem. And I’m curious, you know, I’m kind of curious how you would read this live.

Esther Belin: So the poem that Orlando is referring to is a visual poem centered on the page in the shape of a circle. And the word “názbąs” is written four times to create the circle. Yeah, you know, thank you for that. I usually talk about the poem and show it.

Orlando White: Yeah.

Esther Belin: And then read it as, “názbąs, názbąs, názbąs, názbąs.” And talk about the movement of it, because I always saw that poem as moving on the page. It wasn’t just kind of an anchor.

Orlando White: What’s interesting is the repetition of how it’s used four times. And so even like, the number four, having that, I guess you could say, that intelligence, because, you know, we have four sacred mountains, we have four colors, right? Before this world, there was four worlds before this, right? That intelligence, right, that Diné intelligence, that Diné knowledge, which is really also Diné poetics and aesthetics, right. You know, and like you’re saying, you know, I mean, I feel the same way too, you know, when I teach these poems, you know, by you or by Sherwin, my students just, you know, automatically understand it. It’s really interesting. When I teach to non-Native students, those particular poems, you know, it’s, it’s just completely abstract, right? Unless you had—and then you have to have translation, and then you have to explain it, right? And you have to, like, do all these things. But with our Diné students, you don’t have to do that. You know, they know their relationship to that word, right? They know those words, right, whether it’s tó or názbąs. And these are single words that carry so much knowledge, right? And it’s just like a single word, right? It makes me think of Luci Tapahonso. So I’ll use this as an example. Luci Tapahonso, who’s a Diné poet, storyteller, writer. She wrote this book called Sáanii Dahataal/The Women Are Singing, right? The Women are Singing. There’s one particular paragraph that’s interesting to me, because she starts to talk about, in English, you can have a single word. We also have single words in our language, but they’re phrasal, you know, when they’re translated. So there’s the word “computer” in English, you know, it’s a noun, an inanimate object, right? But in our language, it’s different, right? Well, there’s a word for computer in our language, which is “béésh nitsikeesí,” right? Which translates very loosely to “the metal is thinking,” right? “The metal that is thinking” or “the metal is thinking.” In English, it’s this inanimate object. And then suddenly, in our language, it becomes this animate being, right. Verbs are part of our, our vocabulary in terms of our language as Diné people, as Diné. It’s very important, verbs. And so, Sherwin understood that too, right, by repeating tó, right, down the page, the page becomes the verb itself, tó being the sound.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Esther Belin: You also have a poem, “water,” a one-word poem, that we were lucky to feature in the June issue of Poetry magazine. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about it. I think, you know, when I look at it, it could be an example of code-mixing. I mean, I don’t even know if that’s correct. Like, what were some of the thoughts behind creating that poem?

Orlando White: Yeah. It’s both visual in terms of, as a, you know, being a one-word poem, but it’s also sound. So, I basically was, you know, thinking about Sherwin’s poem in particular. So I use the word tó, right, which is spelled, I mean, unfortunately, you know, Diné culture, we don’t have a syllabery. So our alphabet is based off of the Roman text, except that we have a lot of diacritical marks. One of the things I like to do is I like to go to a dictionary, the English dictionary, right? I guess they call it the IPA, right? It’s the International … International Phonetic Alphabet. I think that’s what IPA stands for. So they have that in the dictionary, right? They’ll have the meaning of the word but then they’ll also have the breakdown of the word. So that’s where, if you look at my one-word poem, which is just titled, “water,” how I read it in public is, I read it, wa- t - er. So basically, I have the word water split into three sections. So I have “wa,” but I have two dots above the “a,” which is a diacritical mark. So, basically the two dots above the “a” create a short vowel sound. And then you have the Diné word for water, which is “tó,” and then you have “er.” But in “er,” you have the upside down “e,” which is a schwa. So this is all linguistics here. So, wä tó ər. So it’s interesting to have a Diné word for “water,” right. And, you know, I mean, it just fits perfectly. And I guess you could say it’s also, you know, I mentioned earlier about adapting in terms of the culture, being Diné, especially a modern, being part of a modern day culture, this idea of how we adapt to things in such a way that it’s beautiful, really.

Esther Belin: I know, you mentioned Diné intelligence and that, like, for me fits exactly that, because it embraces that linguistics point of view and how our language is studied. And that orthography that we, in a way, are still sort of racially oppressed by, right, those letters, because we’re using them, trying to express our thought, and, you know, I, I see the poem is alive and a little rebellious, in that it’s like, you know, trying to embrace all of these elements about who we are as a people, and the beauty of our language with that sound. And so, I mean, it’s one of my favorite poems, and that’s why I was kind of thinking it was the code-mixing piece. But I mean, it’s so much more than that. I think it’s like a really good example of what you talked about earlier, that Diné poetics and the brilliance of our intelligence to kind of say, you know, we know what we’re doing with our language, and we’re trying to, you know, establish our presence within writing, within poetry. So I’m really hoping people understand what—will really understand the complexity of that small poem on the page that has such a large presence.

Orlando White: Yeah. You know, I mean, for me, the word “water” is not interesting, as a word, in English. I mean, even the word “water” in English itself, sonically, is not that interesting. When I was thinking about it, you know, I was also thinking about, well, at least from, from the perspective, from a Diné perspective, as a poetry writer, how can I bring sound to it? So at first, I didn’t have the diaeresis, the two dots above the “a,” and the “e” wasn’t upside down. So when I had first did earlier drafts, it was just the word “water,” but in the middle of water, I just added the word tó. And it didn’t look interesting visually on the page. So, you know, that’s when I went to the English dictionary and looked at what the word looks like phonetically, I guess. So. And then when you, I think, when you look at words like that, I mean, it’s interesting. I think language itself starts to become visually more interesting. Because I think when it comes to English, we’re so desensitized by it. It’s in our lives every single day. It’s just not interesting anymore. So what would happen, you know, if I, if I were to sort of mix it, right, give the word, the English word for “water” itself, something a little bit more interesting in terms of sound.

(READS POEM)

wä tó ər

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Esther Belin: I think you use a lot of the white space as movement, maybe. I also see there’s formal couplets, fractured stances, but that open field of the page, that white space, when I look at it, there’s a lot of emotion there. I’m just curious how you build, or your process for building poems with that white space as part of the poem.

Orlando White: I think that the white space of the page for me has always been a big part of my process. I think of, one of the texts in my undergraduate years at the Institute of American Indian Arts was this manifesto called “Projective Verse” by Charles Olson. And I always come back to that. But before that, and this was like maybe, I want to say, maybe in the 1940s 1950s, around that same time the Beat generation came out. So the Black Mountain poets, right, in particular, their manifesto was “Projective Verse” by Charles Olson. And he says a lot of really wonderful things in there. So one of them, for example, is, he says that, that when it comes to poetry, the origin of the line, because poetry is made up of lines, not sentences, but lines, right? So he says that the origin of the line in poetry is breath. So that organic approach, whereas before, the academic poets, right, they said that the origin of line is meter, the Black Mountain poets, Charles Olson, in his manifesto, right, sort of proposed that kind of idea, which influenced me a lot, because it also reminded me of, you know, our language as well, that our language is really about, also how we use breath, pauses, silence. I think of like a caesura, which is basically a pause between language. So within that pause, right, in between words, and sounds of words, there’s breath. So for me, that breath is silence. So, I mean, you’ve heard me read many times, Esther, where, you know, a lot of the times when I give my live readings, right, I use a lot of pauses. When it comes to the page itself, I try to respect that. I remember Arthur Sze, who is a Chinese American poet, who was also my former teacher, my former professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts when I was there, and also Esther, was your, was your teacher as well—

Esther Belin: Yep.

Orlando White: And I remember one of the first workshops my first semester, one of the things he wrote on the board is, he wrote the word “caesura.” And I was just like, “Wow, that’s such a beautiful sounding word. What does it mean?” And then he’s like, “It’s a pause between language.” And I just remember, it just blew my mind. I was like, what does that mean? A pause between language. To me, that’s breath. So whenever I read poems, even other people’s poems that have, you know, like, radical line breaks, and then there’s a lot of space in between, I take that, for me, as a reader, I take that moment. Because I remember Arthur Sze telling me when I was an undergraduate, “Respect the caesura,” you know?

Esther Belin: (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Orlando White: And that’s always stayed with me. So in my readings, in my live readings, you know, I do have some counting behind it, depending on the distance between one line and the next line on the page. Sometimes I’ll have large spaces. And you know, of course, the audience, sometimes the audience, they get irritated by it.

Esther Belin: (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Orlando White: But silence, I think, is a really important part of my process. I like the idea of spareness as well, the idea that it’s not how much you put into it, but how much you leave out, right. And that, you know, like, thinking about that and also coming back to Diné aesthetics or poetics, for me, is, I also grew up with weavers. My mom was a weaver. My family, I come from a family of weavers who weave Diné rugs. There’s this interesting thing about Diné rugs. They have this thing called the spirit line. In our language, I think it would be referred to as ch'į́įdii, right, which is “the exit way.” So whenever you look at a Navajo rug, right, at Diné rugs, especially older ones, you’ll notice, usually maybe in the upper right hand corner of the Diné rug, you’ll see a line. There so symmetrical, they look—they’re really beautiful to look at. But the ch'į́įdii, the line, right, which is the spirit line or the exit way, I sort of interpreted as the exit way, which to me is, is an aesthetic that is a big part of Diné imagination and Diné art. And so what that that exit way means is, that the artist has a relationship with this rug, that the energy of the rug weaver goes into the rug, and through the exit way, right, through that spirit line, the energy of their art sort of exits out and continues and keeps going, right. And how it, when it exits, that energy translates to the viewer. So, Charles Olson said that in “Projective Verse.” He said that the energy of the poet transfers to the page, and that same energy from the page transfers to the listener or to the reader.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Orlando White: You know, wä tó ər, it sounds disjunctive and very abstract. But then abstraction is also a really big part of Diné poetics, I think. When I teach my poetry classes here, one of the things I would show my students is a video of Jackson Pollock doing his action painting on top of a plate of glass. And then there’s someone underneath filming it, right? So, his work has been sort of termed abstract art or abstract expressionism. It’s interesting, whenever I show that video to my students, my students, they know, they know what he’s doing. They know his process. Why? Because there’s also that connection to the Diné sand painting. Because what Jackson Pollock does is, he dips his brush into paint, right? The paintbrush actually never touches the canvas, right? So he puts—he lays the canvas on the ground, right, and he just lets the paint drip from the paintbrush, right? That process is also the same process, right? In terms of Diné sand painting. Very similar to Tibetan sand painting, right. And to me, I mean, it’s a ceremonial practice. But, you know, I think it’s also an artistic practice. His paintbrush obviously is, like, the pen, and the paint that drips is the ink, and the canvas on the ground is the page. But then what’s interesting is that the paintbrush never actually touches the canvas. He just trusts the material. He trusts the paint. And for me, I think the same way. I think in Diné poetics, I think that’s a big part of it. As Diné writers, we trust the materials. And the material is language, right? The English language is one of them. It’s that paint that is dripping onto the canvas.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Esther Belin: Orlando White is the author of LETTERRS, out from Nightboat Books, and Bone Light, out from Red Hen Press. You can read two visual poems by White in the June 2022 issue of Poetry, and print and online. If you’re not yet a subscriber of Poetry Magazine, there’s a special rate for podcast listeners. For a limited time, you can get a full year of the magazine for $20. That’s 11 book-length issues for just $20. Visit poetry magazine.org/podcastoffer to subscribe. That’s poetry magazine.org/podcastoffer. This show is produced by Rachel James. The music in this episode came from Resavoir, Alabaster DePlume, John McCowen, Rob Mazurek, and Irreversible Entanglements. Okay, that’s it. Until next time, be well, stay safe, and thanks for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)