Comparatively Speaking with Amanda

The role of performance and other issues

2005-11-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

First, although I do not have a working bibliography yet, I AM compiling one based on Dr. Sherwood's initial recommendations for my revised final paper idea. I'm also trying to find a relevant Native American speech recording that I don't have to pay for...the search continues.

Re: experiments I have left. I hope to share my hermit thrush project tonight, and beyond that, I still have a performance (hopefully a very short Sitting Bull speech) and the critical evaluation, which I will work on later.

On to tonight's readings...

Davidson's claim that "the role of performance is central to any consideration of contemporary poetry" seems to be completely correct. In fact, I'd go farther and say that the role of performance is important to the consideration of any text, even one performed before the advent of recording devices...like the Sitting Bull speeches I propose to re-format and evaluate for my final paper. Contemporary poets and performers have the benefit of access to many different types of recording devices to hold their words and thoughts in stasis for later reference or for scholars to investigate. But what about those oral performances from the past? How do we consider the role of performance when there is no master recording? And is this valuable? I do think it IS valuable, but how we consider/re-capture performance when trying to figure out the impact of verbal delivery on the audience is something I'll be exploring in my final project.

On a different note, Dell Hymes has an agreeable take on the purpose and necessity of performance: "Authentic or authoritative performance occurs only at a certain point or in a certain respect...Each of the cases raises questions as to the difference between knowing tradition and presenting it; between knowing what and knowing how; between knowledge...and motivation and identification." We've debated the validity of an "authentic" or "authoritative" performance and I think we've determined that there either is no such thing or that the authenticity relies on the original performer. However, I am intrigued by what Hymes does with his categories of ability - a performance as interpretable, reportable and repeatable. This got me thinking about my own project...at this point, I believe the Sitting Bull speeches are interpretable and reportable, but not repeatable...as I understand these terms. Perhaps further in-class discussion will clarify the meanings of these terms.

See everyone in class!

Creating by sound...and a refined paper proposal

2005-10-31T06:42:00.000-08:00

First, a few words on the readings this week. When Instan arrived in the mail weeks ago, I remember opening it and exclaiming, “What an amazing waste of paper!” But wanting to give this unusual work a chance, I sat down this weekend and read it, or viewed it, straight through. I found Cecilia Vicuña’s word art to be just that – art. The images are reminiscent of constellations. In this, Instan taps into those Native American roots – many tribes follow the stars (or traditionally did so) to determine which ceremonies to hold when and where, as well as determining other activities like planting and harvesting schedules. Her word art also reminded me of the prescribed patterns found in weaving, sand painting, and pottery. In this, I see her finding inspiration in Native traditions and can hear the flow of her voice and thoughts on the page. After reading, then listening to her performances – her performances reinforce the potency and power of words, the connection with time and space – “we create by sound.”

Likewise, in Middle Passages, Kamau Brathwaite works with and manipulates sound and words to create a jarring sensation with stops in the middle of lines…and yet many words that are cut in half connect across the stop. I’m not sure why he does this – perhaps to show the disconnection of people from each other and their environments – the broken-ness of humanity – a very modernist sensibility? Additionally, I found Brathwaite’s work to be disturbing, sad and highly descriptive, despite its disjointed form. The images put forth are startling and gives one a distinct impression – the leopard being captured and caged for life, the devastation brought upon Africa by European invasion, the violence and senseless destruction of Soweto after Mandela’s arrest. Although I could hear the staccato drumming effect of the voice, the long breathless passages filled with emotion, I also got a sense that this work was constructed and not as organic and effortless as Vicuña’s…even though both feature unusual forms and presentations of words. There is much more purposeful tension in Middle Passages.

A refining of my final paper proposal:

While the definition of modernism does fluctuate, depending on the era one is looking at, I would like to use the common points associated when defining literature or art as “modern.” To wit: when the average person labels a text, performance or visual image as “modern,” this usually means:

a. it reflects fragmentation and dissatisfaction, as a reaction to industrialization and mass production (and the hopelessness embodied therein)

b. it shows a sense of alienation from society, family and other traditional social structures

c. it represents an effort to replace or reject older, traditional ideas with abstraction and sometimes pure randomization – ie. randomly throwing paint down on a canvas and calling it “art”

This list could go on to include an emphasis on the individual rather than the community, simplification in things like art and architecture as a reaction against a complicated society and the idea that rationalization excludes rather than includes people and ideas. In my final paper, focusing on these three points listed above, I plan to critically analyze the efficacy of labeling Native American oratory and art as “modern” or modernist in this sense.

In some cases, I believe there will be conflict and the answer will not be black and white. However, in many instances, Native production and performance is created in opposition to these three points. Native Americans then and now believe in a higher power (Great Mystery/Kitche Manitou/Orenda, etc), which leads to a coexisting belief in the interdependence of all things (people, animals, spirits, trees, etc.). Therefore, “religion” and “life” are inseparable…and art to Native Americans has sacred meaning and is not just produced for art’s sake (sand painting, baskets, pottery, quillwork, weaving) or just for decoration or self-aggrandizement. In other words, my focus will be on the original, not the reproduction – I’m not so much interested in how Western verbal and visual artists choose to interpret and label the original in order to get inspiration…I’m interested in what the original Native American work has to say to us, we who put so much “faith” in the concept of “modernity.” Perhaps we have more to learn from the Native artistic world that has more to do with interconnection, community and respecting, not rejecting, tradition and the sacred. I will work on a bibliography this week and will post it for next week’s blog.

If time allows, I would love to share with the class this Wed. my new format representation of an ethnopoetic text – the technologically infused Iroquois story of the hermit thrush.

Presentation on 10/26

2005-10-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

I've decided to save the story for another week and will be sharing my "representation of an ethnopoetic text in a new format" with the class this week. It is a "modernized" version of the Iroquois Hermit Thrush story.

Tuesday, 10/25 Edit:

Building an argument against the label “modern” for Native American oral tradition

This project I am presenting this week has really got me thinking about what I would like to do as a final project. It seems to me that Native American oral tradition has only been labeled as “modern” because of its continuous, non-ending structure. However, I think, at this point, that this label is incorrect and misleading.

First of all, Native American oral tradition is steeped in and rooted in tradition, while the generally accepted definition of “modern” (I believe) is anti-traditional. Secondly, just because the path, the ritual, the story is a continuing, never-ending path does not mean Native American stories have no beginning, middle and end. Some even feature quite linear structures within the overall circular philosophical nature of the Native world. This also speaks to fragmentation. Modernism points to fragmentation as proof that something is modern, but Native American oral tradition is not fragmented. It may seem to be (in a LINEAR sense), but it is not, when considered in the circular sense.

Therefore, I’d like to attempt a paper that proves that Native American oral tradition is anti-modern…or pre-modern. And I have no idea if I can prove this, but I’d like to try. I am willing to entertain advice and ideas – especially on how I might successfully include a multi-media aspect, such as the experiments we’ve been doing. I find these experiments to be very helpful and enlightening and think they are also useful as concrete examples of conceptual discussions.

One more 10/25 Edit, 11:29 p.m.:

I just looked at the other blogs and in light of the fact that so many people intend to present tomorrow night, I will offer to wait until next week to do mine.

The Storyteller's Voice

2005-10-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Once again, we delve into a definition of poetry, with Dennis Tedlock in favor of labeling everything from speeches, conversation, and storytelling as poetry in order to classify and categorize Native American oratory and make it accessible and study-able for scholars. Part of me asks if we are doing a disservice to Native oratory when we lump it all together like this; but another part of me appreciates Tedlock’s argument:

“Poetry, in the sense I understand the word here, is not the silent lyrics to imaginary songs: it is just people talking, making speeches and telling stories. That is what the word meant in Chaucer’s time, before Wordsworth confused it with verse, and that is what it may come to mean again” (Finding the Center Preface xi).

This made me chuckle, but with some sadness. Because that IS how we define poetry in the Western world – as verse. If it is not verse, it is prose. But what about all the wonderful Native stories, myths, legends, songs, rituals, etc.? They fit in neither category, so what are we to do with them, as they are certainly worthy of attention? Tedlock may well have the definitive argument for this, especially when he emphasizes the voice.

In his Preface to Finding the Center, Tedlock encourages us to use our own voices when studying Native American text transcriptions – “read it aloud” (xxi). Indeed, this is a practice I got into a long time ago while I was a freelance journalist. Reading a story out loud reveals mistakes that the eye misses. The ear is an amazing editing tool. I find myself doing this with my academic writing as well. Unfortunately, because I did try my voice and read the translated Zuni stories out loud, following Tedlock’s “Guide to Reading Aloud,” I felt the result was forced and unnatural. This is probably not the intention of someone who carefully transcribes pauses, softness/loudness, long vowels or consonants and fluctuating intonations.

To Tedlock’s credit, the simple and sensible system he devised is easy to use and in many places DOES make sense. But in some sections, I found myself wanting to perform the text with a different intonation or emphasis based on how the story moved me or what I felt was important. Therefore, the power of one’s own voice is as important to a re-performance of a text as is the actual literal transcription of the original storyteller’s pauses, shouts, whispers, etc. Furthermore, a transcriber only captures one individual’s version…other storytellers in the same tribe may tell the story in completely different ways. Until now, I don’t think I really appreciated the influential power of each individual storyteller’s creative contribution to any one story. Now, thanks to Tedlock’s system and my own reading aloud, I have a greater understanding of that role.

To this end, I’d like to let you know that I am planning to tell a story to the class as my performance experiment on Oct. 26. And I am also working on a “representation of an ethnopoetic text in a new format” to be shared with the class in November…but THAT is a surprise.

Presentation hiatus

2005-10-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

Because I presented last week and did not realize that I could have skipped the blog, I am doing so this week. Although I am enjoying Storyteller and the Rothenberg readings, I have run out of time to produce a quality blog. My apologies. I will return next week with much analysis and in-depth examinations.

The circular nature of oral poetry/performance

2005-10-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Going through this week’s readings, and going back to Symposium of the Whole and the pieces by Lame Deer and Paula Gunn Allen in particular, I am beginning to recognize the circular/cyclical nature of oral poetry and performance. Lame Deer talks about a boiling pot and the difference between what we Anglo-Americans see and what he sees. Lame Deer sees the cycle of life in the pot…he LIVES the symbolism…this is his reality. His striking statement about differing perceptions of symbolism also accentuate (to me) the differences between the Native American view of the world as cyclical and connected and the non-Native view of the world as linear and disconnected.

Lame Deer says, “What to you seems commonplace to us appears wondrous through symbolism. This is funny, because we don’t even have a word for symbolism, yet we are all wrapped up in it. You have the word, but that is all” (Symposium 172). I understand, and yet I don’t understand what he is saying. This is a difficult concept to wrap one’s mind around when living in a linear world.

Albert Lord actually refers to the non-linear nature of oral poetry in his introduction to The Singer of Tales. Oral poetry cannot be fixed in a linear sense. “The singer of tales is at once the tradition and an individual creator,” Lord writes, essentially admitting that tradition and individual creation are one and the same, occurring simultaneously, one feeding off of and informing the other in perpetuity. Another distinction he makes is that, “With oral poetry we are dealing with a particular and distinctive process in which oral learning, oral composition, and oral transmission almost merge; they seem to be different facets of the same process” (Lord 5). Once again, the idea that these individual actions are continually occurring and happening all at once is much more circular, and therefore “Native,” than linear, or “non-Native.”

In Chapter Six, Lord brings this point to a tragic conclusion that is, sadly, inevitable. “Once the oral technique is lost, it is never regained” (The Singer 129). This seems unreasonable, but when one thinks about the very different natures of oral performance, which is circular in nature, and writing, which is linear in nature, this does make sense. Writing tends to categorize and classify anything that was originally oral, thus reducing the original sphere to a neat line of bullet points that is more acceptable and accessible to a Western audience. Hmmm.

I was also drawn to the arrogant assumptions that Lord draws our attention to: “We assume without thinking that written style is always superior to oral style” (Singer 134). This is no surprise to me because of persisting attitudes toward oral cultures as somehow less developed and sophisticated than our own. This presents a problem when studying oral poetry and performance.

Not only are Euro-Americans inured to a linear sense of time related to EVERY aspect of life, including literature, we also tend to see oral poetry as “literature,” an unfair and false label, according to Walter Ong. “Literature” implies “written” and oral performance is never “written” in full, even after the fact. His statement about the permanency and primacy of orality resonates with truth. “Writing can never dispense with orality…Oral expression can exist and mostly has existed without any writing at all, writing never without orality” (Orality & Literacy 8). So oral cultures are actually more complex and advanced…and thus, so are their oral performances and creations, while writing is the gifted, but inferior and reliant step-child of the oral mother.

Even in this, I sense the cyclical nature of the Native perspective – orality leads to writing which leads back to orality and so on and so on.

Furthermore, according to Gunn Allen, Native Americans see “space as essentially circular or spherical in nature, while [the West] views space (and thus all relationships within that space) as laddered. The circular concept requires that all ‘points’ which make up the sphere of being be significant in their identity and function, while the linear model assumes that some ‘points’ are more significant than others” (Symposium 176). This idea plays right into our previous class discussion of the importance and meaning of vocables. To a Hopi who is performing a kiva ritual, the vocables all have meaning and significance…to the Western ear listening to that ritual (if that was even permitted, which it’s not), the vocables might be considered irrelevant and confusing – the Western listener may focus on the words only, instead of taking in the performance as a whole – a whole with equally significant parts.

Recognizing the circular and cyclical in oral poetry and performance is a difficult task for someone not raised in that mind set. I include myself in this. The linear and the circular are completely different. This may explain the hesitancy on the part of non-Native professors to include Native texts into, say, an American Lit survey class. Perhaps Native oral performance, as written in a static, linear form, is just too hard to explain without getting into the circular nature of the belief system that produced that work.

(Aside: I will bring a speech transcription to class on Wed. Oct. 5.)

The complexity of the "primitive"

2005-09-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Primitive doesn’t necessarily mean simple. This is a concept that appeals to me. Jerome Rothenberg’s admonition that we must “avoid clichés about the poetics/ethnopoetics of technologically simpler cultures” and his “emphasis on the complexity of tribal/oral language and (ritual) art” is the starting point for this week’s entry (Technicians xxii).

By digging deeper into a culture, into a ceremony’s function, into a myth’s teaching purpose, one may learn more about the layers of meaning behind the words, the non-verbal cues and the music. This, of course, is the ideal situation and most of us will not have the luxury of this level of exploration. Furthermore, this whole equation is complicated by the fact that most Westerners do not consider language to have the immediacy considered inherent by native cultures. And yet, there are “advanced” societies that DO understand this immediacy and power of language – the Hebrews only call the name of God once a year because to speak God’s name is to call Him into the present. Compare this to the Ojibwa, who only speak Mishebeshu's name in the winter because He is trapped beneath the ice – to speak His name while the water flows would be to call Him into their midst.

This brings me to Rothenberg’s observation that “until our poetry becomes an integral part of the socio-spiritual fabric of our community, it will only pale as a unifying cultural force when compared to the work of the most primitive tribal shaman” (Castro 122). In our society, poets are not classed with holy men as advisors on presidential staffs, for instance. Maria Sabina was asked to be a councilman’s advisor, but we call her a “poet.” Is this a compliment? To people who study and appreciate literature and the arts, definitely yes. But what about the rest of Western society? What does the title “poet” mean to everyone else? In my experience, people usually think that refers to a creative unemployed dreamer.

Moving on.

Without the luxury of digging deeper into a particular culture, can we still get something out of a translation of a work from that culture? Yes. But what we get from reading

For we are the stars. For we sing.

For we sing with our light.

For we are birds made of fire.

For we spread our wings over the sky.

Our light is a voice.

… (Technicians 45)

will be a shadowy second cousin infused with non-Native meaning and purpose. When I read this Passamaquoddy Indian “poem” as an unadorned, non-contextualized written piece, I get a particular feeling from it that likely has nothing to do with its original purpose or intent. Rather, I bring my own feelings and background to this piece…thus making it a part of me and my history. On the one hand, this is terrible because it completely discounts the culture from whence the “poem” came…but on the other hand, the very essence of oral culture is change and flexibility. Some parts remain consistent while other parts shift, adjust and change as the story is handed down from teller to teller and as society itself changes. Therefore, even though I may never know where this “poem” came from, why it exists or who wrote (told) it, I can still feel something meaningful. And this IS true to the spirit of oral tradition.

I’d like to end today’s exploration with a question that continues to haunt me…and perhaps the only way I’ll get an answer is to conduct actual field research and in-person interviews with hundreds of Native Americans…

The quote: Rothenberg “was the first poet to draw directly on specific Native American performance and ritual practices as models for a new type of American poem” (Castro 124-25).

The question: How do Native Americans feel about this type of well-intentioned appropriation? (I wonder, too, how many of them are aware that this is going on.)

I try to think about questions like this in reverse – How would Christians feel about tribal shamans riffing on the Bible – extracting key phrases and building on that for a ceremony, or using the structure of the Psalms as a model for a new type of performance? Maria Sabina does something like this in her Veladas, incorporating her belief in the “saint children” with her Catholicism. How do Christians feel about this – and how many even know this was done?

The problem with this type of use of another culture’s sacred works is the lack of knowledge about the complexity of meaning in the works’ original form. Even if the poet or shaman knows…the audience likely will not. Also, there seems to be a lack of opinion and discourse between the two groups in question. There are no parameters for “fair use” except for the boundaries established by poets and scholars like Rothenberg.

When I figure out the answer, I’ll let you know.

Repetition resonates

2005-09-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

María Sabina was an amazing woman of faith. Her chants are outwardly focused and infused with purpose – to heal. After reading Selections, I got the feeling of repetitive, rhythmical words to draw attention to the person to be healed and to the “little children.” Her frequent mentions of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, God the Father, Mother Conception and other saints, as well as her referral to the Apostle woman and “saint woman,” all resonate with sacred intention. Clearly, these Chants retained holy references and spiritual purpose.

Additionally, in her life story, Sabina says something very powerful about Language: “Wisdom is Language. Language is in the Book” (Selections 22). The power of Language, even for a non-reading person, is life, a connection directly to God and the spirit world. Language is not something to be tossed around lightly…it is to be taken seriously because of the potential effect it can have. On page 25, Sabina further clarifies the meaning and purpose of Language: “I cure with Language, the Language of the saint children.” Thus, the “mushrooms give [María] the power of universal contemplation” (29). That’s deep. That’s powerful. She considers herself an interpreter of God’s Language. And it is no wonder that the free spirits of 1960s American culture sought out such a woman (in addition to the rumored psychedelic effect of the mushrooms).

After reading Sabina’s words, I listened to her chant on Ubuweb. The pace of her words, the interaction with Garcia, her humor, her steadfast commitment, her spiritual oneness with God and the earth all come through in her performance. I also got a sense of melancholy and her voice at times is very soothing. I came away from the listening session with amazement and respect for anyone who can chant and sing this way for an entire night!

Conversely, Anne Waldman’s poem, “Fast Speaking Woman,” is amusing and insightful…but seems focused on the self…on Waldman herself. Her poem does not seem to be outwardly focused and spiritually-advised like Sabina’s chants. This was the most striking difference to me. While both works have value, Sabina’s chants and songs have an entirely different purpose and meaning than Waldman’s. Which selection is more accessible (and acceptable) to a Western audience? Probably Waldman’s because of the varied repetition (as opposed to direct repetition in Sabina’s) – such as the word “woman” appearing in almost every line of Waldman’s piece while the adjective or description constantly changes and evolves.

Also, Waldman’s self-focused piece is highly relatable for modern women in particular. Certain phrases pop out and the reader’s reaction is, “yeah, me too!” Phrases like “I’m the gadget woman,” “I’m the bruised woman,” “I’m the callous woman.” Waldman’s piece also draws attention to differences within the self – the constant contradiction within us all – we can be “dissonant” one moment and “dainty” the next, thus drawing our attention towards our own changeable natures. As I finished “Fast Speaking Woman,” I was struck by the universality of womanhood Waldman seems to argue for with her words. Thus, her poem is self-focused, but also inclusive of all women – an interesting accomplishment.

If both María Sabina’s chants and Anne Waldman’s poem have value, it seems their value is not equal to the same audience. A scholarly audience like our class would be able to understand and enjoy both – on the pieces’ own terms. But the general reading or listening American public likely wouldn’t understand or want to understand Sabina’s work…and may never know Waldman’s work is a reflected improvisation on Sabina’s oral technique. Is this fair? Do we have a responsibility not only to the canon and ourselves, but to the wider reading audience to insist they at least TRY to appreciate a woman like Sabina? Or is that asking too much and forcing the issue on an unwilling public?

Are Wise Ones like Sabina destined to live only in the realm of their own cultures and in darkened corners of the academy while the Waldmans of the world receive public acclaim and popular following?

"The vital heart of the poem"

2005-09-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

“Interdisciplinarity consists in creating a new object that belongs to no one.”

This Roland Barthes epigraph in James Clifford’s Introduction: Partial Truths seems a good place to begin this week’s blog.

This idea that a new object belonging to no one can be created by applying several different approaches to an original subject intrigues me and appalls me. The idea that an Anglo-American can (almost randomly) select a key word or singular image from a Native American song, story or ritual and create something new, that now belongs to no one person, time or place is both wonderful and damning. Wonderful in that a new poem with a new flare and rhythm now exists and damning in that the original context and sacred meaning are utterly lost and ignored.

Several issues struck me in this week’s readings. In the Feb. 1917 Poetry, Alice Corbin Henderson writes, “The Indian song often means more than it says; it is content to give the image and not to talk about it.” This is presented as the rationale for selecting “the Indian key-note…often not more than a phrase, a single image” from which to build a new poem, disconnected from the original. I believe this writer is missing a vital point – that the explanation for that image often comes through the visual and aural.

Furthermore, Henderson laments that “very little consideration has been given to Indian poetry as poetry.” I would ask, by whom? Do the Native Americans singing these songs and enacting these stories consider their oral works to be “poetry?” If not, then why should we? Is that the only way we can get anything out of it? By putting all of the oral message mediums into one generalized category that is easier for Anglos to understand? Is this simplification purely for scholarly organization? And if so, perhaps we should be asking why such simplification is necessary?

The visual and aural are two missing pieces of the “aboriginal poetry” puzzle. Anglo-Americans consider “Indian poetry” as something to be easily decoded, thus reducing the hypnotic, mystifying result of the original. With two primary meaning-generators missing, how then can any poet provide anything close to an accurate representation of the original? Does it even matter that the new invention has nothing to do with the original – is that the intent? To separate it entirely from its roots and create something that “belongs to no one”? Romanticizing or over-simplifying Native oratory – how are either of these any better than blatantly demonizing Native Americans? All three approaches do damage and are inauthentic.

Just as a vague photo (like that described at the beginning of Clifford’s intro) leaves much to the imagination, poetic interpretations of Native American songs and ceremonies likewise leave much guesswork. But who does it hurt if we interpret the photo wrong? Conversely, Native American tribes, already under perpetual fire from an insistent dominant culture, can be hurt a great deal when their sacred chants, songs and rituals are reduced to simplistic, poetic “interpretations.” We learn nothing of the original meaning, context, purpose or power; instead, we are given a “key-note” designated as important or merely interesting by the poet.

The result may be beautiful, but at what cost? Readers are robbed of the potential reality and deeper meaning that likely exists in the original and are given instead a pale refraction through the lens of a poet looking to “mine” the “stores of treasure” otherwise known as “aboriginal life and song.”

This seems awfully familiar. Wasn’t the American government doing the same thing with Native land and sacred objects?

And in both situations the tribal members are an after-thought.

This is why I was heartened to look through Densmore’s Chippewa Music – at least she tried to set the stage by describing the purpose of the song, the setting, the people and their actions and the reasons for those actions. Granted, her scant English translations leave much to be desired, but she does attempt to provide the bigger picture infused with context.

In the March 1917 issue of Poetry, Harriet Monroe states in an editorial, “Take away the tom-tom from primitive poetry, take away even the repetition of the phrase, and you still have the vital heart of the poem – the emotional image.” Monroe’s good intentions aside and with all due respect, I disagree for the reasons stated above. Without context it may be impossible to gain access to the “vital heart” of the Native oral performance as represented flatly on the page.

These and other issues will be raised in my talking points for Wednesday’s class.

A Question of Perspective

2005-09-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

After listening to the developing questions and discussions of our first class, and completing the readings and re-listening to some of the songs and chants, I am pleasantly surprised to discover that this class will provide a necessary extension to my own path of learning about Native American oral tradition. My summer reading included many Native memoirs as well as “The Native American Oral Tradition; Voices of the Spirit and Soul” by Lois J. Einhorn. The lessons I learned from Einhorn’s extensive research coincide nicely with the anticipated discoveries in ENGL 766: Surveying Other Wor(l)ds.

I was particularly struck by Brian Swann’s attention to the importance of language and words in Native culture. Euro-Americans also place importance on language, but in a completely different way. Swann writes, “When a language dies, its universe—a unique way of understanding, interpreting, and inventing the world—dies with it.” This is terribly sad, and hard to comprehend from my Euro-American perspective. But I’ve read this elsewhere, thus confirming its sincerity. Einhorn calls on Simon Ortiz, a contemporary Acoma Pueblo poet (among others) to dissect and understand the fundamental significance of words and language to Native people: “Ortiz explains… ‘Our language is the way we create the world…Man exists because of language, consciousness comes about through language, or the world comes about through language. Life – language. Language is life, then.’”

This is a fascinating concept, confirmed by a Native poet and reflected on by a Euro-American writer. If we, as Euro-Americans, don’t think of language in the same way, on the same elevated level, how can we possibly understand and correctly interpret Native words and garner anything meaningful from them?

On the negative side, sections of Michael Castro’s preface struck me as exceedingly unrealistic, naïve and hypocritical. To wit, on page 18 he writes of his generation’s identification with the political and cultural plight of Native peoples, “We sensed that each of us was, in more subtle ways, a victim of the same oppressive consciousness.” I was offended by this on behalf of Native people. How arrogant to class oneself with a people who have less and have suffered more than almost any other group on this continent?! My gut reaction when I read that passage was of disgust and incredulity that a scholar would take such a stance – a scholar who likely grew up in a middle to upper-class neighborhood with all the benefits and luxuries of that existence. Not to mention that if Castro is a white man, most of his troubles are imagined, not real. So to see “poetry as a form of resistance” is disingenuous for someone who has no idea what real suffering over the long term is.

It’s one thing to sympathize – quite another to consider oneself a “victim” of the “same oppressive consciousness” suffered for a century by Native tribes. As a white, Euro-American I can try to understand and sympathize but I cannot cross the line into sameness because I am not Native and cannot know those experiences, words and rituals from the inside. It bothers me that some white writers seem to consider their perspectives as insider perspectives. I find it difficult to understand the meaning and power behind Native oral pieces after they have been translated into English and placed in black and white because the translation itself is filtered through a privileged white lens (even if that privileged white person doesn’t acknowledge that lens). Therefore, I am grateful that we will be listening to the original oral forms to better value what we are reading.

This being said, I believe much can be learned by studying as many authentic translations as possible (what is authentic?), while acknowledging that much of the story’s or song’s power has been diminished by the very act of translation and white interpretation. Kenneth Lincoln’s foreword directly addresses this problem with his brief examination of the Papago “Song of Owl Woman.” He asks, “What is the difference between ‘rustling’ and ‘rattling’ darkness? Which would Owl Woman choose...Which audience must a translation satisfy?” These are questions worth examining as we consider language and words as alive, rather than inanimate.

I will end this overlong blog (my apologies for the length) with Einhorn’s words, “Speakers bring new words to life and new life to words,” something that is missing from the equation when we read a translated interpretation of oral creative work.

What is ethnopoetics?

2005-09-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

Good question.

More to come on this later.