Word-Made World

Poetry. Winner of the Washington Prize. Chee Brossy's second collection continues his exploration of the everyday, the sacred, and the way our humanity and language itself bring those two realms into continual dialogue. In Word-Made World, the poems leap from the page in narrative fire that exposes the evils of American history while cherishing the uniting forces of nature, ancestry, and community.

Brian Turner writes: "What a book of love and praise this is! Chee Brossy's latest, Word-Made World, offers poems that 'sing with the sweat of our bodies, our labored breath.' This book sings for the beautiful in struggle, even as '[i]ndifference is the driving force, / the framework of all life.' It is a kind of guidebook drafted from humility and wisdom, with poems that clearly see 'evolution and the Holy Beings, / the sobering depths, festering wounds of history, / and the joy in applying the enemy's language.' In a world of terabytes and AI and information overload, Brossy's work remains steady and unhurried, a meditation in verse that implores us 'to rise, scrape your crusted eyes, / gather fuel, make a fire.'"

Jennifer Elise Foerster adds: "These poems exude a deep respect for language, land, and cultural belonging, illuminating our ephemeral word-made worlds. Brossy writes with piercing lyricism through the consequences of our disconnection from earth and from each other. Reading these poems, I am reminded and returned to how beautiful, how powerful, this earth is, this earth that still remembers us, and how important it is that we respond, in relationship, with reverence."