Reflection 2

Ethnopoetics seems an essential manifestation of the postmodernism that is so prevalent in literature today. Whereas poetic movements before about fifty years ago were fundamentally concerned with advancing a specific ideology, representing a specific culture, or reacting to older ideologies, ethnopoetics is a purposely "decentered poetics" (Dennis Tedlock). Alcheringa acknowledges its provisional nature ("a ground for experiments in the translation of tribal/oral poetry") a means rather than an end. But most importantly it, in a subtle way, works to dissolve the notions of time and place that inform literature. That is, it seeks to incorporate and be informed by diverse and distant cultures (both temporally and spacially). While it doesn't deny the influence that a person's culture may have on his own work and interpretations of foreign work, it also acknowledges the fact that culture is becoming less and less cohesive. IE, due to advancements in communication and the stock of general knowledge, our "culture" is as much a collaging of elements from other times and places as anything. Likewise, ethnopoetics is a collaging of fragments of cultural information from diverse cultures as well as the work of translators from many different backgrounds ("poets with an interest in anthropology and linguistics and ... anthropologists and linguists with an interest in poetry" as Dennis Tedlock puts it, as well as poets from many different disciplines).

"...it has become fashionable today to deny the possibility of crossing the boundaries that separate people of different races & cultures... Yet the idea of translation has always been that such a boundary is not only possible but desirable. By its very nature, translation asserts or at least implies a concept of psychic & biological unity... Each poem, being made present & translated, flies in the face of divisive ideology."

- Jerome Rothenberg

Rothenberg recognizes a specific awkwardness in ethnopoetics. In a postcolonial world it seems that there is only a fine line between learning from other cultures and exploiting them, finding beauty in these cultures and voyeuristically deconstructing them as primitive and weird, and bringing their work to a wider audience and distorting it with our western perspectives. Ethnopoetics acknowledges the value of exploring primitive cultures that may be closer to nature and untainted by our modern society ("to master the archaic & the primitive as models of basic nature-related cultures...") but doesn't make any assumptions that would alienate these cultures or preemptively mark them off from our own.

"The earth... is 57 million square miles, 3.7 billion human beings, evolved over the last 4 million years; plus, 2 million species of insects, 1 million species of plants, 20 thousand species of sh, and 8,700 species of birds; constructed out of 97 naturally occurring surface elements with the power of the annual solar income of the sun. That is a lot of diversity."

-Gary Snyder

And as much as ethnopoetics is a product of our modern society it is also a reaction to it. It is an effort to preserve the immense diversity of cultures that is being destroyed in the very postmodern collaging of cultures that we are experiencing. Gary Snyder warns of the potential for a worldwide "monoculture." And the last, and seemingly most important, of Alcheringa's goals as written in its statement of intentions is "to combat cultural genocide in all its manifestations."

It seems to me that there are several perspectives on what the role of ethnopoetics is exactly. Gary Snyder's may be more radical - a primitivist effort to directly combat the encroachment of modern culture. While Dennis Tedlock's is, by comparison, humble and conciliatory - just an effort to expand the scope of modern poetry. One can clearly observe that ethnopoetics remains as a vague idea open for individidual interpretation than a concentrated group effort.

And as I mentioned in my first post, there is clearly an immense diversity in the form of ethnopoetic writing. All ethnopoetic poets share the desire to explore the immense diversity of cultures and to bring the ideas of these cultures to a modern audience. Most desire to convey the meaning of the original works as faithfully as possible. But the most faithful mode of translation is up for debate. Poems may be translated into standard, grammatically typical English or concrete poetry filled with untranslatable sounds. Just as the best way to convey meaning is a matter constantly being debated in poetry, the best way to translate a poem is a matter constantly being debated in ethnopoetics.

Sources:

Rothenberg, Jerome. Shaking the Poem: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas. New York: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.

"Selections from Alcheringa." Duration Press. 2009. 14 May 2009 http://www.durationpress.com/archives/ethnopoetics/alcheringa/alcheringa.pdf.

Snyder, Gary. "The Politics of Ethnopoetics." Ubu Web. 2009. 1 June 2009 http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/snyder_politics.pdf.

Tedlock, Dennis. "Ethnopoetics." Ubu Web. 2009. 1 June 2009 http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/tedlock_ethno.html.

Poem to be Recited Every 8 Years While Eating Unleavened Tamales

It can be difficult to understand many of these poems without background. They rely on complex allusions that are completely alien to most western readers. Furthermore, many of them purposely use ambiguity to create a mystical, ineffable kind of mood. I tried to research a few of the allusions in this poem. I noticed that Tlaçolteotl, the god of vice and purification, was oddly juxtaposed with images of Quetzalcoatl, Piltzintecutli, and Xochiquetzal, gods of fertility and knowledge, and Xolotl, god of lightning and death. These associations, coupled with the poem's deliberate ambiguity and minimalistic descriptions, assert the overwhelming power of romantic love.

Part 1 of this poem immediately makes it evident that this poem is a sort of chronicle of the unfolding of the speaker's understanding: "the flower / my heart / it opened." The speaker seems to suggest some kind of sexual encounter as the catalyst in creating this understanding. His heart is opened at midnight by Tlaçolteotl, "our mother / goddess desire." The speaker suggests that he has gained understanding by opening himself to "desire." Another thing that is immediately apparent about this section is its strange line breaks. They immediately visually seperate it from the other parts of the poem. I have come up with a couple possible reasons for this: 1. this typography echoes the "opening" of the speaker's heart, 2. it emphasizes the importance of the different manifestations of Tlaçolteotl.

Part 2 begins to describe the unfolding of the speaker's understanding. The repetition of the phrase "in the" emphasizes the multiple instances of birth that are occurring in this setting. Furthermore, humans, nature ("jewel-fish"), and gods ("maize god") are juxtaposed and united in these instances of birth/reproduction.

Part 3 is immediately striking in its brevity, typography, and nature as a short sentence fragment. It is hard to say but my best guess is that it functions to describe the kind of paradise/plenty that exists after the birth introduced in the previous parts.

Part 4 again brings the gods down to earth. But this time literally: "down here on earth / you rise in the marketplace and say / I am lord Quetzalcoatl." The connection between heaven and earth is especially explicit as the part progresses: "hear the word of our lord / in the quechol-bird's word." Quechol-birds literally reflect the gods but these lines also develop the connection further through the repetition of the "rd" sound. This consonance strengthens the connection between gods and nature and also perhaps echoes the songs of the quechol-birds (a connection between man and nature?). However there is an abrupt transition in the last stanza. It is the first instance of death being mentioned in the poem. This makes it apparent that the birth in this poem is also a rebirth. It also explains that this birth is a means of moving on and cultivating hope. Even if this hope is only meager: "your brother whom we mourn / will never be killed again."

At this point the mood of the poem suddenly became very melancholy for me. The world moves on so the best we can do is accept the finality of the past and enjoy the brief period of rebirth that we have and the (momentary) end of suffering.

Xolotl stands menacing over part 5 of the poem. This marks a transition to part 6 in which Piltzintecutli, a fertility god, is "lain down." Or at least, the speaker asks us to look to see if he is lain down. This distinction conveys a sense of anxiety. The repetition of the word dark highlights this anxiety and emphasizes the disollution that occurs after the plenty described earlier.

Part 7, too, is difficult. I wonder about the significance of this merchant. It could be that the merchant comes to exploit the peoples' desires. This is hardly suggested by the context in that he is selling luxury items: "turquoise spikes for your ears / and turquoise bands for your arms." But according to Wikipedia Xochiquetzal is "By connotation, ... also representative of human desire, pleasure, and excess." This is contrasted with the seeming connection between desire and prosperity earlier. Furthermore, the speaker says, "I fear the maize god is still on his way)" which is contrasted with the connotation of prosperity connected with the "maize god's" birth. The entire part functions to show the other side of desire. It's capacity to cause decadence and destruction.

Parts 8 and 9 are distinctive and mark a break from the pattern of the unfolding of a description of rebirth. I think part 9 especially brings the entire fanciful scene back into the dream-state from which it started ("at midnight / that lordly hour"). All the images of gods and states of rebirth and death seem merely to be unfoldings of the wandering mind of some dreaming person. I notice a particular contrast between the rhythms of part 8 and 9. Part 8 is anapestic and repetitive suggesting the steady dreamlike state it describes. Part 9 suggests through its line breaks and indentation hard pauses in the middle of phrases like "here / the woman." Furthermore, the brevity of the lines itself also gives the whole part an arresting rhythm. The rhythm of part 8 suggests that the realizations of the poem are fanciful and undermine their gravity. The rhythm of part 9 reasserts the significance of these realizations. The whole 9th part centers the poem in the relationship of a man and a woman. And these contrasts seem to highlight the importance of romantic relationships: their omnipotent capacity for creation and destruction.

Poems I've Read

(These are really just a few)

15 Flower World Variations - Translated by Jerome Rothenberg and Carleton Wilder

The Annunciation - By Marpa translated by Jerome Rothenberg via J. Bascot

A Shaman Climbs up the Sky - Translated by Jerome Rothenberg via Roger Caillois and Jean-Clarence Lambert

The Killer - Translated by Jerome Rothenberg via Claire Goll and James Mooney

A Poem for the Small Face - By Isaac Luria translated by Jerome Rothenberg

A Poem for the Shekinah on the Feast of the Sabbath - By Isaac Luria translated by Jerome Rothenberg

Praises of the Bantu Kings - Translated by Jerome Rothenberg via Jacques Chileya Chiwale

Ayahuasca Sound-Poem - Translated by Jerome Rothenberg via Kenneth Kensinger

Notes on a Visit to Le Tuc D'Audoubert - By Clayton Eshleman

Shamanistic Songs - By Roman Estrada translated by Henry Munn via Alvaro Estrada

Tons of stuff from Jerome Rothenberg's book Shaking the Pumpkin

Reflection 1

I have been interested in ethnopoetics for a while. It's hard to say what exactly spurred this interest but I think it has something to do with my natural desire to discover cultures other than my own. It's natural. We get bored consuming only the products of our own society and naturally look elsewhere. But in the modern world it seems that most industrial societies are beginning to tend towards the homogeneous. To find something really different we may need to look to other distant cultures. Jerome Rothenberg defines a certain Whitmanesque appeal of ethnopoetics - that is, the desire to "[bring] together... the individual voice with the sense of a total and suppressed humanity."

Being such a wide and diverse category of poetry, it is hard to find elements that characterize the entire scope of ethnopoetic works. One thing that is immediately apparent in many of these translations is their song-like qualities. Many poems utilize repetition. This may be in the form of a refrain - a sentence or phrase that is repeated at regular intervals throughout the poem. Other times sentence structure is paralleled as reflected in this section from a Cherokee poem on ubu.com:

"listen I'll grind your saliva into the earth
listen I'll cover your bones with black flint
listen " " " " " " feathers
listen " " " " " " rocks"

These song-like qualities are not surprising when one considers that many of these poems may have actually been songs at one point. Many poems also feature mythological or magical themes. For example, "Praises of the Bantu Kings" and "A Shaman Climbs Up the Sky" both deal with shamanistic journeys into "lands of the dead."

But as I explore these poems further I also notice distinct "avant-garde" elements. It is clear that the poets who have translated these pieces are being deliberately experimental. They stretch the limits of the elements of typical poetry. In particular, many poems take liberties with the typography of the pieces they are translating. Take this poem from Alcheringa, for example:

Ayahuasca Sound-Poem
(Cashinahua—Eastern Peru)

‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.
‘e ‘e. ‘e. ‘e ‘e. ‘e.

Many of these poems seem to verge on concrete poetry. Of course, many examples are not this extreme but it is clear that these poets are exploring ways of communicating meaning outside of the typical conventions of earlier poetry. They may see the conventions of modern poetry as inadequate for conveying their meaning completely. These poems try to capture more than just the words they are translating to convey the essence of what is actually being said.

Another unusual element of ethnopoetics is minimalism. This cannot be said of all ethnopoetic pieces, but many get by on hardly any explanation/exposition whatsoever. Take this poem by Jerome Rothenberg and Richard Johnny John from Jerome Rothenberg's book Shaking the Pumpkin for instance:

A Song of my Song, In Three Parts

It's off in the distance.

*

It came into the room.

*

It's here in the circle.

This sort of minimalist style gives the individual words and phrases immense power. It forces you to look for meaning in the most basic kinds of phrases. Often these phrases are even mundane. By foregrounding them the poems challenge you to create meaning from ideas that we would often dismiss. The above poem is a pretty extreme example, but minimalism is heavily present in a lot of ethnopoetic poems. I think I can find two kinds of minimalism in these poems: the first, as evidenced above, is more postmodern and involves presenting more abstract ideas; the second is more widely prevalent and traditional, it involves simply presenting plots with little explanation. Many poems contain what appear to be simple narrative plots with meaning purposely obscured. Again, these poems challenge the reader to find meaning in the ordinary, uneventful, mundane, what have you. In this way many poems tend towards realism and instill the idea of meaning in real daily life.

It is really hard to talk about things that characterize ethnopoetics as a whole because it is more of an idea than a centered movement. Because Jerome Rothenberg is so ubiquitous in ethnopoetics I worry that I am describing characteristics of his poetry rather than ethnopoetics in general. By comparison, some early proto-ethnopoetic poems by people like Tristan Tzara seem relatively conventional. Sure, they are still radical for their time, but they don't usually include a lot of the post-modern elements that are prevalent in more recent ethnopoetics. But anyway, some basic traits - repetition, minimalism, ambiguity, mysticism - characterize most ethnopoetic poems regardless of whether they were published 100 years ago or today.

Sources:

Rothenberg, Jerome. Shaking the Poem: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas. New York: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.

"Selections from Alcheringa." Duration Press. 2009. 14 May 2009. http://www.durationpress.com/archives/ethnopoetics/alcheringa/alcheringa.pdf.

"Ubu Web Ethno Poetics." Ubu Web. 2009. 14 May 2009. http://www.ubu.com/ethno/.