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.