Sherwin Bitsui writes at the nexus of Native American mythology and a sharp contemporary aesthetic all his own. In Dissolve, he blurs urban and rural, past and present, in a collection of fiercely vivid and painterly poems. Drawing upon Navajo myths, traditions, and language, Bitsui leads us on a treacherous, otherworldly passage through the American Southwest. The land of the reservation is saturated in steel and oil, obscured by fog, haze, and dust, and possessed by the ghosts of ancient ground. It is also warped by the forces of environmental devastation and a long inheritance of human violence. Fluidly shape-shifting and colored in language that functions like a moving camera, Dissolve is record that man has to live with his impact on the world, but also has to document it. The eye of the artist, witnessing the material of a disastrous past, must decide what to do with it: "I chew its answers/until I taste cracks/in the chrome/outline of a sky." Sherwin Bitsui proves himself to be one of contemporary poetry's most haunting, raw, and uncompromising voices.