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Bone Light
Orlando White explores language from a Diné (Navajo) perspective. One idea that interests him, inspires him to think and write, is the idea of the English language as a forgotten language.
Imagine if we as a people, all people in the United States, are speaking an Indigenous language rather than English; that the English language exists merely as a language of the colonial past. White explores and experiments with this particular colonizing language, because that language remains a kind of cultural/intellectual/social threat to Indigenous thought, as English was imposed to dehumanize Indigenous peoples from their culture, language, and consciousness.
White's Diné perspective poetically reveals audience notion of linguistic dehumanization within the Bone Light volume. Non-Natives, throughout American history, have documented the Indigenous Americas using the dominant written word of English. Thus, as an artist, White writes what he writes to document as well, but also to create something a bit more beautiful (intriguing) than harmful (erasing). White is not attempting critique of the English language; he is working with it to gain a better understanding of viewpoints, veritably creating a relationship by way of exploring language.
Imagine if we as a people, all people in the United States, are speaking an Indigenous language rather than English; that the English language exists merely as a language of the colonial past. White explores and experiments with this particular colonizing language, because that language remains a kind of cultural/intellectual/social threat to Indigenous thought, as English was imposed to dehumanize Indigenous peoples from their culture, language, and consciousness.
White's Diné perspective poetically reveals audience notion of linguistic dehumanization within the Bone Light volume. Non-Natives, throughout American history, have documented the Indigenous Americas using the dominant written word of English. Thus, as an artist, White writes what he writes to document as well, but also to create something a bit more beautiful (intriguing) than harmful (erasing). White is not attempting critique of the English language; he is working with it to gain a better understanding of viewpoints, veritably creating a relationship by way of exploring language.
- GenresPoetryNative American
64 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2009
1 person is currently reading
136 people want to read
About the author
Orlando White
6 books15 followersOrlando White is originally from Tólikan, Arizona. He is Diné (Navajo) of the Naaneesht’ézhi Tábaahí (Zuni Water’s Edge Clan) and born for the Naakai Diné’e (Mexican Clan).
He holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University. His poems have appeared in Bombay Gin, In Posse Review, Oregon Literary Review, Ploughshares, They Are Flying Planes, 26 Magazine, and elsewhere.
He has taught and been a visiting writer at Brown University, Colgate University, and Naropa University’s summer writing program. Currently he is teaching poetry and composition at The Art Center Design College and the Institute of American Indian Arts. He now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bone Light is his first book.
He holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University. His poems have appeared in Bombay Gin, In Posse Review, Oregon Literary Review, Ploughshares, They Are Flying Planes, 26 Magazine, and elsewhere.
He has taught and been a visiting writer at Brown University, Colgate University, and Naropa University’s summer writing program. Currently he is teaching poetry and composition at The Art Center Design College and the Institute of American Indian Arts. He now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bone Light is his first book.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 8, 2017
A slim volume of very distinctive poetry. White experiments with, breaks, and remakes language, at times reducing it to its most absurdly granular parts (such as honing in upon the dot above a lowercase i and writing about it at length) while at other times enlarging it (by projecting meaning and stories into the interactions between punctuation marks, or within the blank space that remains on the page).
The poems, for me, crept along the ledge between that which is haunted and that which is hollow. I still can't decide which adjective best serves the work. These are very sparse poems, crafted with a few central motifs and only bare words besides. Interesting, and maybe a little bit esoteric. Would recommend for the intriguing language play, but probably not for casual pleasure reading.
The poems, for me, crept along the ledge between that which is haunted and that which is hollow. I still can't decide which adjective best serves the work. These are very sparse poems, crafted with a few central motifs and only bare words besides. Interesting, and maybe a little bit esoteric. Would recommend for the intriguing language play, but probably not for casual pleasure reading.
July 14, 2009
In Bone Light, Orlando White’s debut volume, he explores the English language from a Diné (Navajo) perspective. He invites us to imagine that we, as a people--all people in this imaginary country called the United States--are speaking an Indigenous language and that the English language exists merely as a remnant of the colonial past.
Despite its tenuous existence in this re-imagined present, English remains a danger to Indigenous thought, as it threatens to impose an alien worldview through its vocabulary and syntactical maneuvers. Historically, English was used by non-Natives to document Indigenous cultures; against this historical backdrop, White also writes to document, but he works to create something more beautiful than harmful. He does not attempt a critique of the English language; he works with it and against it to gain a better understanding of its peculiarities and limits, creating a relationship through these sometimes humorous, sometimes irreverent acts of exploration.
Throughout Bone Light, Orlando White approaches the English language as if he has just encountered it, as if it were a mysterious set of symbols. Focusing on the particles of the language—the punctuation marks, the letters, the spaces between words—he turns them a while in his hand like strange inexplicable artifacts from a lost world, then sets to work, refashioning them into something he can use.
Despite its tenuous existence in this re-imagined present, English remains a danger to Indigenous thought, as it threatens to impose an alien worldview through its vocabulary and syntactical maneuvers. Historically, English was used by non-Natives to document Indigenous cultures; against this historical backdrop, White also writes to document, but he works to create something more beautiful than harmful. He does not attempt a critique of the English language; he works with it and against it to gain a better understanding of its peculiarities and limits, creating a relationship through these sometimes humorous, sometimes irreverent acts of exploration.
Throughout Bone Light, Orlando White approaches the English language as if he has just encountered it, as if it were a mysterious set of symbols. Focusing on the particles of the language—the punctuation marks, the letters, the spaces between words—he turns them a while in his hand like strange inexplicable artifacts from a lost world, then sets to work, refashioning them into something he can use.
February 17, 2009
The other day I read a couple poems from this collection, and they've been in my head since. Today I sat down and read them all. Poured their letters into me, first thinking, slow, be slower, and then, I am not done with this. Orlando White exposes the bones of letters, the skeleton of the sentence, without losing the sense of language. Also, he reveals how, in writing a book, one becomes the book. But there is clearly a person here, nudging from the margins. He handles his letters, ours, with care, and now that we have seen the "bone under the skin of a letter," heard the "sound of space between letters," realized that "silence in a moment is imagination," we can perhaps see the letters take shape and move on the page.
June 9, 2025
Amazing collection. I feel like my work has a home here. A delicate balance between the horror/uncanny and poetics/art of language. The perspective is incredible, especially the way White looks at individual letters. Totally out of the box—a burning of the box, actually. Read it!!
February 11, 2017
Unlike any other book of poetry I've read. I read the first half of the book, let it sit a day and realized I needed to go back to the start and read again. On the second pass, I felt more attuned to what White's doing, but I'm still not sure that, on the deepest levels, I get it.
Bone Light connects with a couple of the vectors that are most likely to speak with me: zen-style poetry focusing on silence, emptiness; and Native American poetry that views the world from a radically different angle. White taps into both of those currents, but he does so from an angle that also connects with a mode of highly self-conscious post-modernist poetry that I typically resist. That mode focuses on the artifice of poetry, in this case the slippages involving the tension between speeech, though, writing, and, crucially for White, the physicality of ink on page. Often, that kind of thing feels precious and academic to me. Bone Light doesn't. At the same time, I had, even on second read, a difficult time tuning in on the specifics of White's image world. He clearly feels the presence of the skeleton, the skull, inside the letters on page, particulary (and again I'm pretty sure I don't quite get it) the "i" and the "j" which he returns to again and again and which are inscribed in the frontispiece.
Usually when I comment on books of poetry, I provide a list of the poems that you can dip into. Here, I'm not sure that's meainginful. Either you read the book whole or you don't read it at all. But I will offer a brief quote:
...Because underneath sound
there is thought. Language, a complete structure
within the white coffin of paper. If you shake it
and listen, it will move, rattle like bones on the page.
Something in that speaks to, more accurately from, White's Dine (Navajo) upbringing. There are brief clues as to the way his aesthetic grows out of experiences in a family where he didn't quite fit, but nothing even close to autobiographical.
I thought a lot about Deep Waters, Cherokee scholar Chris Teuton's book on Native literature--the tension between oral, written and graphic--as I read.
No conclusion, just process.
Bone Light connects with a couple of the vectors that are most likely to speak with me: zen-style poetry focusing on silence, emptiness; and Native American poetry that views the world from a radically different angle. White taps into both of those currents, but he does so from an angle that also connects with a mode of highly self-conscious post-modernist poetry that I typically resist. That mode focuses on the artifice of poetry, in this case the slippages involving the tension between speeech, though, writing, and, crucially for White, the physicality of ink on page. Often, that kind of thing feels precious and academic to me. Bone Light doesn't. At the same time, I had, even on second read, a difficult time tuning in on the specifics of White's image world. He clearly feels the presence of the skeleton, the skull, inside the letters on page, particulary (and again I'm pretty sure I don't quite get it) the "i" and the "j" which he returns to again and again and which are inscribed in the frontispiece.
Usually when I comment on books of poetry, I provide a list of the poems that you can dip into. Here, I'm not sure that's meainginful. Either you read the book whole or you don't read it at all. But I will offer a brief quote:
...Because underneath sound
there is thought. Language, a complete structure
within the white coffin of paper. If you shake it
and listen, it will move, rattle like bones on the page.
Something in that speaks to, more accurately from, White's Dine (Navajo) upbringing. There are brief clues as to the way his aesthetic grows out of experiences in a family where he didn't quite fit, but nothing even close to autobiographical.
I thought a lot about Deep Waters, Cherokee scholar Chris Teuton's book on Native literature--the tension between oral, written and graphic--as I read.
No conclusion, just process.
March 26, 2016
I picked this up at Dine College Tsaile campus where the author teaches and read it immediately in the back seat of a dusty Honda as we traveled across the Navajo Nation. But this isn't the kind of book that encourages the reader to look out and see the world in the new way. White's collection pulls you into a very peculiar place defined by the limitations of the page. This is language that calls attention to the book's fundamental components of white paper and black ink and then dismantles it. The page is a pool of bleach, letters are skeletons, end stops skulls. It's a singular vision, at times eerie and cold, and the poems relentlessly cohere around these images and themes. I can't say I've read a book that never let me forget I was reading a machine, a construct of glue and ink, the fibers of the paper a nest for the strange shapes that letters make.
From the poem "Bone Light":
Open the book
of a mouth.
Read one page.
Pull on
its black
and remove
each period
with a fingernail.
From the poem "Bone Light":
Open the book
of a mouth.
Read one page.
Pull on
its black
and remove
each period
with a fingernail.
September 3, 2016
Brilliant poems by the Diné (Navajo) poet Orlando white, in which the alphabet and letters of English become skeletal items used to tell metaphorical truths about language and imperialism. I have never read a book quite like this one. White's poetry is wholly inventive and unique.
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August 30, 2015Themes: printed letters as bones, paper as skin, the letter o and number 0. This book was difficult for me, because of the way my mind works.
August 19, 2022
This anthology forces you to think about many things that speak directly to some innate humanness that is rarely engaged in modern life. It compels you to contemplate both language and our anatomy, all wrapped up in a stream of consciousness. I read this years ago and I still think of it all the time.
February 7, 2017
I had to read this for a class on Experimental Literature. Most of the time I was confused throughout; my notes say WTF half the time, haha. But I did find it interesting the idea of letters coming alive - living, breathing, speaking, and having feelings on the page.
"The word tries to breathe inside..."
"white coffin of paper"
"shivers when the page is turned." - p.22
There seem to be themes, of number zero, and bleach. The paper is skin, and the letters are bones. There seems to be much depth here, but I'm a bit puzzled.
"The word tries to breathe inside..."
"white coffin of paper"
"shivers when the page is turned." - p.22
There seem to be themes, of number zero, and bleach. The paper is skin, and the letters are bones. There seems to be much depth here, but I'm a bit puzzled.
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October 4, 2013811.6 W5869b 2009
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews