A Radiant Curve: Poems and Stories

Luci Tapahonso. A Radiant Curve: Poems and Stories. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008. 128 pp. Paper, $17.95.

In her sixth collection of poems and stories, 2006 Native Writers Circle Lifetime Achievement Award winner Luci Tapahonso creates a unique compilation filled with intimate family recollections that have given shape to her life and writing. Within A Radiant Curve Tapahonso presents a series of stories and poems that affirm the enduring relevance of Dine oral traditions and the importance of storytelling as integral components to family memory and continuance.

Tapahonso begins her stories with a dedication to her youngest grandchildren. She shares with them the origin story of the Dine people: "The first Holy Ones talked and sang as always / . . . They sang us into life" (lines 1, 6). The poet presents her memories - "long time ago stories," as she calls them - as explanations of the Dine way of life to her grandchildren. As a Salt Clan grandmother, part of her duty is sharing the traditions and stories of her people with the young ones, and the poet sets up the proper way to begin to do this in her first poem, "The Warp Is Even: Taut Vertical Loops." Weaving, an integral act in tribal continuance and the preservation of memory, helps Tapahonso to begin the old stories anew. She weaves for her grandchildren, carefully making taut vertical loops as she remembers her own mother, who once wove for her. In recalling these experiences, Tapahonso ensures that both her mother's and the poet's own memories are solidified in the creative process. Of equal significance, Tapahonso's weaving echoes the relationship between her people and the earth, setting their stories down with the new story of those for whom she weaves. Singing...