ethnopoetics/james

2005-11-14T11:29:00.000-08:00

In this week's blog i am posting the transcription of an interview that i had with Los Angelos poet Wanda Coleman as a fulfillment of one of my experiment activities.

What do believe to be important about poetry readings/ the reading of your poetry?

I hate to say immediate gratification, but, and once a poet matures, um, it’s a nice substitute for the workshop, because the aud… your listeners will tell you how the work succeeds… where your work fails… if you really want to know… if your listening to them. Sometimes I don’t even realize that there may be something humorous in a poem that I’m reading. Until the audience tells me… cause I may not be looking at that and I have to back up and go back and reconsider the poem. Now that has its limit because I can’t read every poem in public.

Right

But to the extent that the I information I carry back might affect my work later on as I am writing down the road. Well I might say, “well people like this aspect of my personality” or “they prefer this aspect” why… what am I exuding… what am I giving off that causes this kind of response when maybe I might mean quite the opposite or I am not aware of the fact it’s there… so it furthers the process and it assists in the process of self discover in that sense if your open if the poet when they present when they become the performer as it were if they’re open to that cause not everyone is open to that it takes a certain mindset and experience and fearlessness cause that’s risky that’s the upside see the down side is when you start to cater to that is that and this is the danger for example in actors who write for themselves or this is the danger in slam poetry this is the danger in competitions where your competing on stage for a monetary prize or for an award or for some sort of status… is that you start to self script, you know, and you’re playing to when you read your playing to the audience you want your doing it for the applause…see then your losing your edge as a writer… and your losing your edge as an authentic voice… and that is real dangerous and it can happen almost with out you being aware of it… you have to be… you have to be very…I find myself having to be vigilant cause I do a lot of performance but I have devised techniques for myself… to prevent that from happening, one, I don’t memorize my work for that week, now last night anyone who went to the theater for the dance performance saw me in quotes “dance a poem”… and I memorized that poem and I had a heck of a time… it was a short little poem and I memorized it for the sake of the performance… but… I wonder if I was supposed to take my glasses off…I don’t even know if I did that… I did that whole thing with my glasses on… but anyway that’s neither here nor there… the point is that uh it took me.. I had such difficulty memorizing the poem because I had to get back… I had to go back to the energy that wrote the poem, I had to go backwards in time to feel “what was I saying in the poem” and remember the occasion of the poem to rewrite it in effect because for me each reading aloud is a revision, is a rewriting of the poem its never the same really but to memorize is… to memorize the work fixes it and it can become fixed in its rhythm and then that rhythm not only… that rhythm will impose itself elsewhere on other poems, maybe, maybe on work to come so that is why I stay away from the heavy rhythms, the heavy rhymes, and use them only to more or less flavor my work, does that answer your question ?

That does answer the… yeah… I think you answered some other questions… Is there something to be gained or your audience by hearing you read rather than reading your poems, having your audience read the poems to themselves… by hearing you is there something to be gained in the meaning of the poem?

It depends on the ears of the listeners. I get my strongest responses from actors, people that are in theater and musicians, musicians especially love what I do and interestingly enough, the deaf. I’ve had several people who have encountered my work on the page and they couldn’t, they said something else is going on and they suspected something else was going on under the text, another layer to the language and they were right and in terms of the oral presentation they wanted to come hear me even though they were deaf… now I’ve had people sign for me while I’m reading in some situations, but what they do is when they come and they quote “hear me”, they talk to me afterwards and then they tell me what it was in my language that attracted them or disturbed them or upset them enough to come and find me in person… now obviously I’ve I’ve had uh uh I’ve argued and I I I had and for me and writing there’s an ongoing argument with my ex mentor Clayton Eshleman about the page. And choosing between the page and the stage… so every poem is almost… gets some sort of spur from that from that argument… and I’ve decided that, yes, that I’m not going to be there forever, the poems, if I want the poems to surv, you know, out live me, which is the ideal, we presume immortality, but assume that its going to kick around a generation, my works still going to be valid in a generation after I, after my demise… then, its important to me to make the poems work on that written page because that is the only clue for a reader that’s the only clue they are going to have in terms of unlocking my rhythms… or unlocking my psyche or what I meant unlocking my meaning… so I have to do that work, I have to be really good at putting the elements there that I want… and keep my fingers crossed that once I’m no longer there, there will be someone, not only who could pick up the book, and read me accurately, but someone who can go to the podium and read me accurately… and present me accurately.
Now what they won’t get, because they can’t because that is as Bukowski … the energy level that I reach, those highs and lows, when I present are coming unchoreographed, unplanned… that’s improvisation, that’s the way I improvise, wherever I happen to be at the time becomes the poem, in effect, I’m writing a new poem before you as I present it…

I noticed you had very, strong presence, in the highs and the lows and the way your voice actually changes from when were talking here in are conversation and when you’re on stage, it’s a much a much different voice, are you aware of that presence.

Oh yeah, I’m talking out of my throat to you here on this tape… when I get in that poem, I’m pulling it up from my diaphragm… so I’m giving my voice a volume and I’m lowering, I’m taking it down a register, because, I hear my, the way I hear my voice, anyway, you’re not hearing it, I have this thing, I know that my voice sounds soft and fuzzy to others who hear me, I hate my recorded, I hate the way my voice sounds when it comes back to me in a recorded device… because I don’t hear that voice, I hear something else, so when I get in a poem I try to give my voice in action a presentation to others I try to imbue my voice with all the qualities of what I hear inside, internally, see, and internally I hear a sharp clear masterful enunciation, I hear a tenor as opposed to a soprano, you see, so… something happens when my voice comes out of the voice box and gets past my lips to other people… that the skin, the shape of my mouth, and whatever, or teeth, whatever all that construct does… but there is quality in my voice that says female, I used to have, sometimes I have fun with it… and play, and play with it, if you notice I’ll, I’ll play with my voice at the mic, I’ll make characters who will speak in a certain way… I’ll have characters, some characters are blacker than others, I have my little white lady, I used to do that, I have my telephone, my telephone voice where I’ll enunciate in a certain way… and I have my geechy voice, southern expression, and my husband he’ll, he’ll get tickled cause I will, I will talk, I will turn and talk on the telephone in one of these voices and then and talk to him in another, he points it out and he starts to laugh, you know, cause he’s, he’s caught me, and you know, (garbled) and I don’t even think about it… I just do it… but there was a time in my life where I thought about it, where I had, where I was forced by circumstance, because I was, for example, I was a receptionist.. one day I get a phone call, or I answer the phone and I start to take the persons uh, schedule for some equipment, and he says, “are you a negra? Are you a negra? You’re a nigger, only a nigger talks like that, blah, blah, blah” and starts to lay waste, and I was really shocked, so I just got off the phone… but after that.. I started thinking about what characteristics, what was it in my voice that would triggered that kind of response, that someone could believe that… you see… and then I started noticing how I speak to different, how we speak people and observing others how tone of voice, demeanor, pronunciation is altered depending on gender, and status and relationship that these things govern tonal quality, and I was so, and I’ve always been, I’ve I’ve ,that that I joined that with my interest in acoustics, you know, when you go into a room, that that comes out of theatre and how you project, at one point I was pretty good at ventriloquism, I studied how to project my voice, I mean I was the kind of kid, I could go in and silence a whole room of screaming kids in an auditorium, and make them shut up, and listen to the speaker, that used to be my forte in junior high school, I’d be in the back, I I I deliberately, strategically sit mid aisle in the back, one or two aisles against the wall, and then wait for the strategic moment and then interrupt and silence a whole room so that the person who was standing at the podium could speak, cause otherwise it was a waste of time, and my time especially, and I didn’t wanna have my time wasted, so I learned how to do that, I learned how to throw my voice so that my voice sounded like it was coming from a different direction, so I learned these techniques, performing, but I had voice, I had voice training and musically training as a, as a kid, you know going into puberty and then puberty and I started applying these things once I got into high school and going into speach and debate and rhetoric, and um, had lots of opportunities, to study others, their techniques what they use, and of course in the usual place where the average person experiences, ah, anything that approximates a statesmenly like behavior is in the pulpit when you go to church on Sunday mornings when you go with your family and your listening to the minister or the deacon or the guest pastor present and you are watching the choir director your listening to the choir so your listening to these types of theater ostensively…

And that has influenced the way that you present your own poetry?

Absolutely, absolutely. And so that coupled with the knowledge that there are cold rooms, warm rooms, hot rooms, that when a room is filled with people, sound is absorbed. Looking to see where, how high the ceiling is… um.. listening to the mic when it’s used by someone else to get, to gauge, to figure out what not to do at the mic, if “p’s are popping where to position your mouth so, I’m I’m weighing all these factors… they’re all a part of it and that that more or less overhears, now it sorta all automatic, I don’t don’t really have to focus on them consciously anymore, at this point at this stage at one point I did, now, what I am concerned about primarily is governing my own energy level, where I put what I have in reserve what I put into the work, what level of intimacy level do I want to create when I present the poem aloud, how will, how far do I want to take the audience into my work, do do if I’m unhappy at the moment do I want to make the audience unhappy with me, see, do I want to make them uncomfortable and squirm, and instead of, I have preference in terms of audience response, if I’m if I’m in a relatively indifferent mood or am feeling rather pleased with myself and the way things are going in the world, I might just let the audience off the hook and just let them, if there is any pleasure to be derived from my work, let them go head and derive that, whatever they feel that is and go on about my business, if I’m feeling particularly overcome, either, for some reason by the work itself, if the poem I plan to read all of sudden grabs me and takes me into it, and since most of my poems are not written out of sweetness and light, if one, if my work is dark, and if it grabs me, you know relative, that’s that’s relative, but, you know in the upper registers of darkness, certainly, I mean I don’t have the kinds of kinds of deep angst that some people have that come form abusive natures, of where they abused substances and stuff like that, that’s not me, but philosophically, I’m may be right there, and so if I’ll take, when I take an audience there they’ll know they’ve been whipped, I will let them know when I am feeling unkind, and I feel like I ain’t into uplift today. This is it, if you don’t like it, tough tittie, you know, so this is where I am and unfortunately its had things like, I had a black audience in Buffalo walk out… (laughing) .. cause they were there, they were, they came to hear Ms Mia Angelou, in quotes you know what I’m saying or Nicki Gionvoni they came there for the good ole uplift, see that’s not me, and anyone who, if they had educated themselves they would have saved themselves the trouble and they would have saved me the trouble, all they had to do is pick up one of my books and start flipping through it reading and they say, uh oh no no this is not appropriate I am not going to haul my kids to a poetry reading on Sunday morning… I may like wanda coleman, but not not not this morning, some other time… I don’t mind, saves us both the trouble… you know, I don’t like I don’t I’m not up to, when I present my poetry I’m not up to meeting anyone’s expectations, its up to the work on the page… whatever is in the work on the page, you know, that day , that instant,… that’s that’s that’s that’s the kind of performance I like when I go to be moved is not necessarily to have my to have my assumptions fail, that doesn’t, I don’t need that, my ego doesn’t work that way and I don’t offer that, so, if your coming today to hear the black militant radical, she may not be here she might be the mom of two kids whose having a hard time today, and, if you you know, and if you come to see the mom whose having a hard time cause she has two kids she might not be there… she might be the ambitions executive who wants to kill the white boy in front of her today so she can get his job, so you never know who she, who your going to meet… you see…when you meet wanda coleman and the poem

I think the last question I have and it’s a simple question, you’ve already told me the influence you’ve had by hearing people, I think you said in a kind uva church type setting, the preacher people like that, are there any poets or any performers or any body like that that’s influenced the way that you perform, that you could think of.

Living theater, beck and melena, julian beck and Judith melena in new york, the people in my dance anna halpa, antalynne artow… some of the people I’ve been able to catch on films, musicians, living, names would be meaning less……….. I mean Bukowski influence on me was really a matter of one…when I picked up the book, actually what drew me, there was something that drew me to Bukowski, there was something that drew me to black sparrow books and that was Barbara martin’s designs, of her book, the graphic… the way the books looked… were what attracted me to them because I already had this visual this graphic sense cause I have that background as a visual I have a visual arts background, so that my aesthetic my aesthetic values for book design are what drew me to black sparrow books, and there design, and the cover’s art is done by Barbara martin, or was, so her covers and once I was attracted to the books and when I started flipping through the cause I could not afford books at that time, I had just divorced my first husband, it was 1965… it was the winter of 1965, and I’m standing in one of the venders that we had frequented, that had changed hands, and I’m standing there thumbing through books, because I can’t…and Peter is saying, “Wanda, don’t break the spines, don’t break, cause I can’t sell them if you break the spines” so I had to be very careful when I read, you know, read whatever I was gonna read, so I’d stand up, stand in the aisles read, which I frequently did at bookstores if I wanted to get the literature, and you couldn’t find his books that the public libraries, of course, cause they were outside the mainstream, so, I started thumbing through a charles Bukowski book, and reading it, if this guy like this, if he publishes this man’s work maybe he’ll like mine, maybe he’ll publish mine, because what I saw was a corresponding point of view, here was someone how presented the world as it really was, and not as it’s romanticized to be, and I felt that anyone who could publish that kind of stuff, well that’s what I was, that was the approach, the point, my point of view was going to be similar in approach and I felt that this I where I should send my work, you see, and the coincidently I started to have actual people come into physical proximity with charles Bukowski, so I was able to, in communities where, we don’t have, LA is a huge city we don’t have a, it has no heart, a has no town square, there are no places where artists gather you can have this kind of rubbing up against each other, you know, this intellectual scenes evolve out of and become famous for we have no Bloomsbury, and its very hard, because the city is so huge and you have to travel by car, so its very hard to connect to people in ways, in those ways that are fruitful, but here I had found, so what other poets were there around, and I could get a chance to observe up close, coincidentally there was this charles Bukowski, my brother is living with his best friend, my brother’s going out and drinkin’ with Bukowski, and going out and in all these forages into these wild parties and in alleys and crap, and Peter is going out, Peter the guys who has the books he’s also, there all, there going out, I can’t go, you know, I’m not going out, usually I’m the only thing black and female at these poetry readings,.. and I’m going to these readings, why am I going there? Do I want to be like charles Bukowski, no I don’t want to be like charles Bukowski … but I want to see what the poet, what a poet’s life is like up close, and here’s an opportunity that presents itself… for me to learn, it’s a learning opportunity… and so that’s what so and in that way he influenced me, you see what I’m saying, but I always felt in terms of, I hate to think I’m a better writer than charles Bukowski, but I do think that, that’s the first time I’ve ever said it and you have it here on tape
(Laughing)
you can use it, please do, I think I can live up to my words… I think technically, because and why do I say that, I think there are a lot of writers as good or not or better, but I think Bukowski point of view is certainly more interesting than a lot of writers that are better writers than he is, so, there we are, technically he has no ears for music, and that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like music, you see, cause there’s a difference between getting music and lyricism into your work and language, and then liking Beethoven or Mozart or whoever you like whether it’s The Who or Cream or White Flag or Beck, you know, so…. (laughing)… it doesn’t, it doesn’t, but getting that lyricism getting lyricism and music in your work … Bukowski had pace… and what I call great pace, the text moved… the text really moved, and that’s useful, that’s like for me that’s a useful observation for when I’m teaching students, and I wanna cut some, maybe somebody’s top heavy out there, maybe somebody needs something to balance, to counter balance that, maybe they are a little too romantic in their posture, oh, let me show you, here let’s drag in some Charles Bukowski, and let’s cut this, so he becomes very useful in that way… you see… (laughing)… but people sort of misinterpreted that you know, I have to always, no I didn’t submit my manuscript to Charles Bukowski, no it wasn’t like that.

2005-11-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

Reading Davidson’s essay, I found it interesting how Blackburn’s poem had changed in various readings in which he voiced his poem. I would argue that these versions of the poem are little different from the ways in which the poems of oral cultures changed throughout time. Another example of a twentieth century poet who very often changed certain portions of her poem, or, and perhaps more importantly, the manner in which it was to be voiced is Wanda Coleman. About reading her poetry aloud and the importance of such an activity she stated in an interview, “once a poet matures, um, it’s a nice substitute for the workshop, because the aud… your listeners will tell you how the work succeeds… where your work fails… if you really want to know… if your listening to them. Sometimes I don’t even realize that there may be something humorous in a poem that I’m reading. Until the audience tells me… cause I may not be looking at that and I have to back up and go back and reconsider the poem. Now that has its limit because I can’t read every poem in public. But to the extent that the I information I carry back might affect my work later on as I am writing down the road. Well I might say, “well people like this aspect of my personality” or “they prefer this aspect” why… what am I exuding… what am I giving off that causes this kind of response when maybe I might mean quite the opposite or I am not aware of the fact it’s there… so it furthers the process and it assists in the process of self discover.” Thus, for some poets voicing the text allows them to expose their poetry to an audience and gauge where changes may need to occur within the poem. I believe that contemporary poetry is very similar to the poetry of oral traditions in its dynamic qualities. With every voicing of the poem, be it by that author or actor or anyone who desires to lend voice to the poet’s words, when ever someone voices the poem, it in some manner is different. Each version is just that, a version. The text is merely another version, but one that, in our culture and many other cultures, is given a predominant position as we all know. The poem, I believe, exist neither on the page nor in the sound, but in the moment.

2005-11-02T00:17:00.000-08:00

“I don’t get it”, a quote by one of my friend as he picked up Vicuna’s book and thumbed through the pages. Of course hand him, a undergraduate communication major, the book is much like handing me a book written in Somali. And yet without hearing her, I barely “got it”. I mean, I understood that there was to be more, more than text could absorb and regurgitate for a reader. What exist then, in that moment, in that version, is, I would argue, unable to be captured and placed in text and appreciated in such a manner. Listening to the pod cast, one enters a space where the text cannot take you, a place where the smudges of ink and their separation cannot reproduce what Vicuna has given in performance. I believe for poetry such as this, oral poetry, for which many versions exist, (and when I say this, I mean that each performance varies, even if minutely, regardless it has as many versions for as many times as it has been performed) it is the variations which exist and the implementation of sound in a society silenced by the hierarchical prejudice of textual over oral for which this sound hold precedence within performance. In Vicuna’s especially, I appreciate the reversal of this in that it is very difficult, if not impossible to “get it” by looking at the page alone. Therefore, Vicuna is forcing her audience to give power to the oral and accept the performance rather than allowing the textual facet to stand alone. I find this to be very important, not only for her poetry, but for all poetry.

What is more, it is my hope to perform an oral piece for class today which i have performed several times before, most recently in Windsor, Ontario where i was asked to give a poetry reading. This piece is one which i hope to remain never placed within the confines of text for reason's which i will explain in class. It is also my understanding that when we are to give a presentation in class it is not necessary to post, but i forgot to post last week, so i am over achieving this week.

2005-10-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

This versioning of the poem, by multiple performances and (at times) multiple performers, liberates the poem from the poet, allowing it to escape his authority and becomes a temporal, yet, reemerging in various spaces and mediums. In order to gain a greater insight into this idea, it would be beneficial to examine poetics in a form that places no emphasis on the poet, but greatly respects that performer and the performed poem. In oral cultures, the poem existed purely in the performance and was passed generation after generation to various storytellers who would add and remove various portions of each poem. The idea of a poem belonging to someone was as ridiculous as a person owning the sky and thus, as time passed the poem evolved. Even when written text did exist within cultures of our past, the idea of exact quotation was much different from ours. We, twenty-first century Americans place great care in not only directly quoting, but also note the source from which the quote was taken. Mayans, for example, played around much more with paraphrasing various portions of their text to the extent where they seemed to make it a point to do so. Dennis Tedlock states in his essay “Toward a Poetics of Polyphony and Translatability” that
When Mayan authors cite previous texts, and even when they cite earlier passages in the same text, they unfailingly construct paraphrases. Such is the case at the site of Palenque, in Chipas, where three eighth-century temples contain texts lapped from one temple to the next… In the overlapping episodes not a single sentence is repeated verbatim from one temple to another. (Bernstein 188)
The idea of the Mayan placing little emphasis on the exact copying of the texts is very telling of other aspects of their culture relating to the literature and the ideas within poetics of other cultures where such writing did not take place. Interestingly with the Mayan, in the above example is how fixing a poem or phrase into text fails to solidify, not only the meaning, but the manner in which it can be said. As Tedlock states in the opening of his essay
If a poem is supposed to consist of exactly the right words and no others, then there are multiple worlds in which poems are never quite finished, never quite closed. In some of these worlds poets use writing, but there is nothing about writing, in and of itself, that requires a text to be fixed for all times and places. Writing, like speaking, is a performance. (Bernstein 178)
By creating increased ambiguity in the textual facet, as the Mayan once did, further exemplifies the idea that just because a poem is placed upon a page does not mean that it cannot be a dynamic entity.
Perhaps one of the most striking phrases of Tedlock’s essay, especially in regards to the orality of poetic is found just after the what was quoted in the last paragraph “If poetics is supposed to belong to the interior of language, as opposed to the exterior realm of referentiality, then there are multiple worlds in which being a verbal artist means pursuing a dual career in poetics and semantics. This does not mean bringing words and their objects into ever closer alignment, but rather playing on the differences” (178). If we take this into consideration, then the voicing of a poem, as performed by either the poet or not, is a completely new poem. This ever renewing process is one that transcends the textual and brings to the poem, not extra meaning in conjunction with the textual, nor does it take precedence over the textual. I would contend that the textualized version of the poem, is in fact merely another version of the many which are performed. Though it resides in recording which is tangible for those desiring to reproduce the poem, it ultimately fails to reproduce the performance. As its own entity, it functions well for what it is, but in a textual world, it holds favor in a world prejudice against oral literature. Furthermore, with the technologies which have developed and surpassed the paper inscriptions for which much of history (at least that history which is respected by a textual society), ultimately resulting in better ways of preserving records, though their popularity has yet to surpass the written.
What poetry has achieved is a full circle within its existence and only now are we beginning to realize what a poem is. Rather than the textualized, stagnant versions which comprise much of our literature and theory, poetry now is, as it was and perhaps always has been, the conglomeration of the various versions which exist. This is a very large field to encompass and includes the textual version(s) which exist, and the performances by both the poet and others. This idea may seems quite problematic when one attempts to study the poem. How does one possibly study all the different versions? How does one know if they have studied everyone? Does anyone hold precedence over the others? All these questions seem quite difficult until we step away from on preconceived notions of what a poem is and how it is to be studied.
To answer the first question posed, it is obvious, to me at least, that no, it is utterly impossible to study every version of the poem ever recorded. The second question, I believe, is equally simple, the answer is that an individual will never be capable of studying ever version. The third question, however, does pose more of a problem than the rest and I will engage it shortly. It should be noted that the above questions were answered easily because we must let go the reins of poetry and understand the temporal essence in which the poem encompasses and the fact that the poem and the many versions which shall arise by those other than the poet will exist longer than any given life. The poem, unlike the reader or poet, is immortal and exists within a dynamic worlds from which the poem is not excluded. As the world changes, so will the poem and with it our understanding and the types of performances which may be created from it.
This concept is very much not one which may sit comfortably with many readers and critics alike, yet, if we look to the origins of poetics, this is the type of manner in which a poem was appreciated. Passed down for generations and changed in some manners to fit the teller, the poem held elements that the teller felt to be important and was manipulated. Our textual world as attempted to stamp a version of a poem into existence and proclaim it to be “the authoritative version” yet when combined with the various performance aspects and performances given by those other than the poet, we have had our minds clouded by the idea that a certain version holds precedence over another by the fact that it has been placed into a fixed textual entity. The poem exists beyond this textual facet, just as a photograph fails to capture the essence of a person, so does the textual version of the poem fail to correctly represent the poem as a whole.
We are left now with the final question posed earlier as to whether there are any versions which hold precedence over others and although we have established that the textual version of the poem does not hold precedence nor give a fair representation of the poem, I would still be willing to grant that certain versions of the poem hold priority over others. This may seem a backward step in the current propositions, yet these steps are necessary in order to forward our understanding of the poem. We must also clarify our purpose of examining the poem in order to understand how the various versions interplay with the hierarchy of versions. If our goal is personal enjoyment, then obviously the answer is relevant only to the audience member and how the best appreciate the poem and precedence is relevant to them for reasons of preference and as a result are relative. However, it would be my contention to remind the readers or listeners to keep their methods of appreciating the poem open to other versions as well as their preference so as to potentially gain a greater appreciation for the poem.

2005-10-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

I was very moved by the Silko text, to the point that I found the book hard to put down. I especially enjoyed “Yellow Woman” and how the story had a mystical portion that existed was not overbearing upon the story. The idea was straight forward, a woman wanting to leave this stranger behind, but followed him to his house, then to meet with a man to sell meet, yet she never knew his name and he claimed to be ka’tsina. It was very interesting how she clung to the stranger until he committed a crime, and only then, when he was more dangerous and problematic than alluring did she leave. I believe this is very much a comment on the way in which the Native American culture has evolved over time; for some, when the culture proves burdensome, they assimilate more into the mainstream culture, although part of the original may stay with them and become romanticized. This can also be witnessed in other aspects of American culture where people may have fully assimilated into mainstream culture, yet hold a romanticized type to their family or ethnic origins. This becomes complicated for Native Americans because their origins were on this very land, yet were persecuted and in some cases destroyed. In some respects, however, there is the idea of returning to reservations to reclaim one’s culture, yet, this culture, again, I would imagine, is still an amalgamate of Native cultural history and outside influence, not to mention the romanticized misrepresentations. I could feel the oral influence of the various pieces and was interested in the manner in which she would change from prose to verse to photographs throughout the book effortlessly. This is not something one normally finds, especially in a book which is not an anthology. I felt could be a reflection on how the orality may have a difficulty being placed into a textual space, and no matter how diverse the presentation of the text, it would still be incompletely representative to the oral aspect. This assumption relies, however, on Silko’s beliefs on orality and the textualization of oral stories and poems. It would be interesting to hear recordings

Perhaps the most striking facet of Silko’s prose and poetry, when read the text and trying to gain an appreciation for the orality of the culture and to read stories that have been passed down for countless generations are the references within the text that deal with modern aspects of cultures, such as automobiles and the drilling companies arriving to drill for oil. This is further exemplified by the photographs placed within the text which, not only show some of these things (modern, especially) spoken of, but, the idea of photography, itself, is something which one would not normally associate with oral culture (regardless of the fact that the entire object which we had access to was textual, which is outside the realm of oral).

2005-10-04T21:26:00.000-07:00

An idea has arisen, though I am not sure the result of the material read for this week, or influenced by those before, or perhaps even a combination. Regardless, when considering the fact that many times oral literature has not been recorder in the larger history, and what I mean is that much of oral literature existed long before archeologist stumbled in a hastily recorded excerpts on to paper or electronic recording devices, though these techniques have greatly improved. I am left to ponder, however, in regards to the dynamic quality that is existent within the oral form in that the story or poem is never really complete. The poem or story is added to or altered when told at a different time or by a different teller. Can it be therefore that this quality, of never really having a definitive end or final version, could it be that this quality of the literature is a portion which is destroyed by recording it, and if so, what effect would this have upon the oral literature? To record the poem and pin it down upon the page, as the article “The Orality of Literature” made mention of, could in fact be a great detriment to the art. We as a textual culture are so influenced by the tangible page, that we seem oriented into the fix of the words and literature to a textual recorded means to that in the future we could verify the material, something very unimportant to non textual cultures. another way of looking at this issue may be to reverse the situation and state that we should become an oral society instead of textual and therefore all historical documents should be memorized by laws should be enforced and the entire legal system become reliant on laws as they are remember rather than documented.

2005-09-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

I’m thinking about the translation of songs and poems as was discussed in the Castro article and am curious about how those who translate, such as Rothenberg, deal with the idea of changing the sounds within the text. It is stated how in some societies the sounds held a meaning, such as in the Navajo songs, and that in other societies the sounds held less meaning or are even referred to as “meaningless”, as in the Seneca example. I find this somewhat questionable in regards to the idea of the text as sacred. If these texts are considered sacred, then to delete a portion is to maim or destroy a significant portion of the song or poem. In doing so, are the translators bringing dishonor to the text or is it, as we have spoken of in class before, better to leave to sacred unknown to those outside of the culture. It seemed troublesome to change the sound that has no meaning and completely changing that sound in order to have the song or poem more aligned with the translator. What would be the repercussions if someone were to change the sounds of a Dadaist poem and in order that it is better assimilated into the project which they were working on? Such an act would be slanderous to the poem and poet. While the poet is long lost in these Native American traditions, the poem still exists and to change the sounds in such a manner seems a bit much. Granted that in oral traditions the poem is changed from teller to teller, a change of this magnitude seems excessive. This is not to say that do I by any means think that the poems should not be translated, but that, a portion of the sound, be it a refrain, a sample, or a larger portion of the original should remain within the sound of the translation.

2005-09-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

as i listened to anne waldman, it was easy to see the influence which maria sabina had upon her poem "fast speaking woman". i have heard "fast speaking woman" before, but understanding now where she gained her influence, it allowed for a greater insight and appreciation for the poem. i looked back upon sabina's chants again after listening to waldman because i read how sabina had influenced her sound. the chants held more value for me at that point because i could almost read them after hearing waldman and apply that aural quality to what i was reading. it made the text come alive, much more so than the first reading. It was interesting to see how waldman took portions of sabina’s chant and incorporated it into her poem. I felt that by her using sabina’s words and, for lack of a better term, style, that it was a manner in which she could demonstrate her appreciation to both sabina as a person, but to the culture from which she comes from as well.

Sabina’s past was very interesting and the insights that can be gained into her chants and the appreciation grows after hearing about the various beliefs which she holds, such as her father dying because he burned the corn in the sacred field. Her ability to heal and the stories which shared along with the healing i found to be extremely interesting.

2005-09-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

“I am not sure I can tell the truth... I can only tell what I know.” What a powerful statement especially when considering the movement of examining cultures from a perspective where upon the individual alien to the culture has complete authority to the realization that no one voice can claim to understand, much less provide an unbiased and non-subjective examination into a culture, this quote is one that speaks volumes. Furthermore and in conjunction with the fact that all beliefs associated with “truth” are just as construed as one individual or example being sufficient in the examination of a culture during a specific time. The volumes which were based and elaborated on the findings of Walker sounded to be of great interest. As I read this, Dr. Sherwood, I was again reminded of Galileo and Einstein and the correlation between subjectivity and reality as we have discussed previously. However, for everyone else, here is some of what I am referring to.

*To clarify ,in 1632, Galileo envisioned what would become the classical version of relativity. He envisioned himself to be standing on a dock watching a passing ship traveling at a constant rate. He imagined someone to be standing upon the top of the mast holding a rock. Another individual would be standing below and would witness the stone falling from the top of the mast to the deck. The question as to where the rock would fall came into play. Would the rock fall directly below the mast, as the crew member witnessed, or would it fall a small distance back, just as the person on shore would have witnessed the stone falling which would be consistent with the distance which the ship traveled as the rock fell? To those of us standing on the shore and on the dock, we would surmise that the rock would most likely land a small distance behind the mast especially when considering that we witnessed the rock fall at an angle. The sailor would not have witnessed the same angle, to those on the ship the rock fell straight down. So who is right? Well, we both are. The motion of the rock is relative to any, and all, who observe the phenomenon. Weinberg states of this that “when Einstein started to develop general relativity, he realized that one way of expressing his ideas about the symmetry that relates different frames of reference was to ascribe gravitation to the curvature of space-time” (154). Therefore, to bring us back to poetry, if the motion of the stone upon the ship is relative to the witness, then it is also true that to hear the poem from the poet is to gain semantic qualities of equal, but not identical qualities found in the silent reading of a poem by an individual. This textual aspect is the facet which has received most, if not all, of the written poetry produced, yet to merit only this facet of the art is to sever from it a dynamic which may hold as much, if not more semantic qualities than the silent text can provide. For just as the sailor on the vessel witnesses the stone falling in a different manner than the people on the shore, so is the semantic dynamic of poetry changed by witnessing the words given breath during a poetry reading. *

The reality that exists for an individual when listening or reading a poem is completely relative to that individual due to a great number of variables and experiences of that specific recipient. This same idea can be applied to the various individuals which comprise a specific role and place in time. Each individual within a respected community, much less culture, shares a finite number of common ideas with which their daily lives and routines are intermixed with. Shared ideas and similar beliefs may exist within each individual but within varying degrees culminating in compounded beliefs within each individual that ultimately result individualized perspectives and values. Though a certain percentage may all agree that a pleasant day is one that lacks rain, this concept is subjective or relative to the individual. Attempting to classify a group into a culture, especially when the judge is an outsider, is a distressing concept when considering the intricacies which permeate the culture and the inability to capture the essence of that grouping of people to the point that as I read over Clifford I began to feel that any attempt to provide a perspective on a culture is a fallacy in that no perspective can ever be without fault and any attempt of capture such an elusive concept is futile. Ultimately, if we are to attempt to capture the essence of a period and place, one might be wiser to attempt to capture the embodiment of an individual via a biography and label it as such. While this essentially fails to capture a culture, it would be closer to reality than claiming to understand a culture by superficially examining those inhabiting such culture. Conclusively, the idea of capturing every aspect of a culture is as easy as finding, defining, and proving a unified field theory.

2005-09-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

As I read Lincoln’s article, the problem of translation and the difficulties inherent within such practice came to light whereupon the “Song of the Owl Woman” was transcribed and translated. Within the translation, the word “rattle” is substituted with the word “rustle” even though “rattle” was the literal translation and holds connotations within the native text which allow the word and the poem deeper meaning. Such misrepresentations and losses permeate translations and it is a pity that such flaws exist, but more would be the loss if these texts failed to reach us in any form, flawed or not. It is tragic to watch as these languages and cultures become extinct taking with them riches that have gone unrecognized for so long. It was interesting to see that various writers of American literature who demonstrated interest in Native Americans throughout time. All except Snyder whose poetry has such a connection to the land that it inevitably ties into the beliefs of the Native Americans. Or was it the other way around? Regardless, the task of preserving such culture, especially the oral poetry is a difficult task to say the very least. In my attempts over the weekend to transcribe a recording of our own language, the task was extremely difficult and time consuming. Couple that with the ideas of capturing the pauses (with varying lengths), rise and fall of voice, emphasis and other variables that exist in speech make the undertaking substantially more difficult.

2005-08-31T18:02:00.000-07:00

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