Rain Scald

Her keen ear for language makes the poems sing, occasionally in formal verse or even rhyme. These poems demand multiple readings.--15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry

Rain Scald is an invitation to witness the familiar and unfamiliar terrain of what is sacred of life and death. . . . It is a collection that the reader will read more than once, each time diving farther into the gorge, each time standing in the rain a bit longer.--Concho River Review

Rain Scald is an invitation to witness the familiar and unfamiliar terrain of what is sacred of life and death. . . . It is a collection that the reader will read more than once, each time diving farther into the gorge, each time standing in the rain a bit longer.--Concho River Review

Her work is perhaps more profoundly grounded in Western landscapes, histories, and traditions than any other work you might pick up, whether Native or non-Native.--Writing Westward Podcast

The silence surrounding trauma lies at the heart of Rain Scald, the shattering first collection by poet Tacey M. Atsitty.--Broadsided Press

Surprising inventions of syntax and subjectivity serve a poetics at once visionary and imbued with the grit of existence. Tempered by hardship, seasoned with experience, this brilliant book witnesses a world Atsitty knows intimately and, in doing so, offers courageous testimony to suffering and spiritual resilience. I can think of no poet writing today whose work is more gorgeous or moving, no one who brings more heart or brains to the page.--Alice Fulton, author of Barely Composed: Poems

'How long had my hands / been scalded in dishwater, grabbing for knives or forks,' writes Tacey Atsitty in this marvelous debut collection. Steeped in Navajo culture, Tacey Atsitty writes a poetry where rain, expected to be nourishing, is also a torrent, burning with sensation. Her poetry, formally resourceful and resonant, suffuses elegy with insight and prayer.--Arthur Sze, author of Compass Rose

Narrative, lyric, and deeply human, Tacey's poems open to a world of folk and spirit where so few of us have ever dwelled. Her songs waste no words. Her stories are the stuff of hallowed ground. It is with a wonder of word and image that she shows us the strength and beauty of the Diyin Diné'é way.--Jim Barnes, author of The American Book of the Dead: Poems