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/.