Week - 1

1. A brief look at the course "theme"

2. Discussion of three Versions of Ethnopoetics: (Sherwood,  Tedlock.pdf,  Rothenberg.pdf)

3. An aural tour as prelude to further thinking: What is Ethnopoetics? Where does it intersect with and diverge from "traditional" literary study? What particular foci are entailed in the "poetic"?  How do we negotiate the different senses of "ethno" as people and Others? What kinds of responsibility do we assume in trans-acting, in crossing cultures, texts? How in particular do different conditions of orality/literacy come into play in the composition, transmission, or reception of poems? How does the Spair/Whorf hypothesis effect what we imagine is possible when we read poems across cultures and languages? From words into worlds? What are our preconceptions about oral and non-western literatures?

4. Syllabus review.

5. Blogging in the lab.

For Next Week:  If we don't have time during class, please review How to Blog, and post an entry before next class. See Calendar for readings.

 

 

Week - 2

Quick Links to Electronic Materials

Swan, Brian -Introduction, Coming to Light

Castro -Preface-Interpreting the Indian

Lincoln, Kenneth -Foreword, American Indian Poetry

 

Also browse the Ethnopoetics materials at the ubu site: http://www.ubu.com/ethno/ (some audio is currently offline)

 

Advance Thoughts

 Some of the questions we glanced at last week will reemerge this week, especially:


 . . .  How do we negotiate the different senses of "ethno" as people and Others? What kinds of responsibility do we assume in trans-acting, in crossing cultures, texts? How in particular do different conditions of orality/literacy come into play in the composition, transmission, or reception of poems? How does the Spair/Whorf hypothesis effect what we imagine is possible when we read poems across cultures and languages? . . . .What are our preconceptions about oral and non-western literatures?

 

Feel free to draw upon any of the three introductory articles on Ethnopoetics  ( Tedlock- Ethnopoetics, Rothenberg-Ethnopoetics, Sherwood - Ethnopoetics  Web) in your blogs or to introduce issues from them into week 2 discussion!  You can also think about any of the audio "clips" we audited last class as well.

 

Week - 3

Quick Links to Electronic Materials:

 

Class Meeting:

Opening Questions --

  1. How do politics and ideology (images of "the Indian") shape the collection and presentation of traditional oral literature (cf Said)?

  2.  How does "modernism" as a literary project use the "primitive?" 

  3. Do perceptions of an "organic" art, whose rhythm is pre-philosophical, fatally compromise or enable translation and emulation?

  4. Can one recuperate the proposition that Native American poetry is "a missing aspect of the American Self" (Castro 11)?

  5. Does a sympathetic "holistic awareness" well suit the translator?

  6. Does the Romantic attitude towards poetry (mystical product of inspired genius) aid or complicate the translation of Native American poetry?

  7. What should the aim of a cross-cultural translation be? How would we define its success? How are the presentations of Densmore and Cronyn more or less adequate?

  8. What does it mean to anthologize "occasional" songs, or to transcribe only the language from a performative (efficacious, and integrated with audience) event? Does the sacred become aesthetic? Should they be re-performed?

  9. In practical terms, how might a good translator deal with repetition or audience response?  

  10. How do we respond to "out-group" poets who emulate or produce inspired "versions," and are the issues comparable for imitations of Sappho?

 

Week - 4

Anne Waldman [Waldman-FastSpeakingWoman.pdf]

Maria Sabina, Selections

Optional: Waldman and Rothenberg performing Maria Sabina in the audio zone;   the Ubu.com Rothenberg Exhibit, which has Sabina audio back online; and Naropa files at archive.org, which has a full talk/reading of Waldman together with Allan Ginsberg.

  1. Reflect on the status of Sabina -- in terms of self-definition, reception, the presentation in our book. What are the relevant issues of presentation, audience, context, and form? How are they dealt with?

  2. What are the issues involved in transmission across and between cultures? Do creative and scholarly works raise comparable issues?

  3. What are the "poetic" features of the work, how do we respond to them? And what are the implications of framing it as an aesthetic text?  

  4. What correspondence is there between the experience of hearing her performance and Rothenberg's or Waldman's adaptation?  Sabina at UBU |  Midnight Velada - Maria Sabina, perf. by Jerome Rothenberg? | Fast Speaking Woman - Anne Waldman

     

~  ~  ~

Note on Transcription

 

Week - 5

Consider Ethnopoetics as a discipline involved in cultural brokering - or a fundamentally cross-cultural symposium based in the conviction that "poetry, like language, existed everywhere: as powerful, even complex ... not as a luxury but a true necessity..." (TOS xvii)

  1. In comparision with early 20th-century projects, what kinds of translation, transcription, and presentational decisions are reflected in an anthology like Technicians of the Sacred ? What are the implications of the textual practices (including selection, arrangement, and commentaries)?

  2. What are the implicit/explicit understandings of: aesthetic form; cultural depth; social function; and the sacred?

  3. What observations can you make about Ethnopoetics as an emerging "discourse" (a way of talking and thinking about poetry) from Symposium of the Whole. 

  4. What work or what kinds of intervention is imagined for these two projects (with respect to the canon, academic discourse, literary community, community of poets?

  5. Given the reimagination of poetry,  culture and the primitive--in what sense does Ethnopoetics remain bound to or transcend its historical moment (ca. 1968.

Week - 6

This week we have the opportunity to focus on theoretical and methodological scholarship on orality and oral traditional poetry.  The four assigned scholars are engaged in a common conversation, with many shared terms, though some differences of emphases (and retrospective or prospective orientations) are evident. As broad context, consider how study/ scholarship/ academia turned a largely  "deaf ear" to orality up into the 20th century. While "voice" was taken as a powerful metaphor, literacy took on an almost transcendent value and a text-based paradigm has generally dominated Western literature and, in particular, our thinking about literature. Thus, for all its limitations, Lord's work leads to a decisive shift in thinking about authorship and origins of literary works, and by extention a shifted appreciation for the possiblity of the oral. Ong largely extends this, particularly in his recognition of broadly oral ways of knowing.  Tedlock has a more specific engagement with the intersection of voice and text. While Foley opens up the conversation toward the complex kinds of oral practices, with a particular interest in hybrid qualities and the rich intersections between different forms of language use.

  1. How are formulae crucial to a reconception of the practices of oral epic poetry? What is at stake in inferring the illiteracy of Homer?

  2. What changes are entailed in the shifting from orality to literacy for Ong? Are they losses or gains? To the extent that the journey is irreversible, what influence ought Ong to exert on our engagement as literates with oral poetry?

  3. How do Tedlock's specific practices reflect the influences of Ong and Lord? What is the significance of proposing to create a visible record of "audible sentences," and "audible measure"? What is the implication of producing a performable score and can doing so achieve an oral "fusion of centers" 11?

  4. How does the pluralistic or more capacious definition of the oral by Foley alter the conversation? What would an oralist think of his inclusion of "written oral poetry" as a sub-type, or his transcription of a published poem?

Lord, Albert- From The Singer of Tales

OngWalter-OralityIntro.pdf and OralityC3.pdf,
Foley-HowToReadAnOralPoem-3rd Word and 4thWord-Performance.pdf

Tedlock, Dennis - From Spoken Word-.pdf

Optional: also see Tedlock Page at EPC; Foley's Oral Tradition Website and Blog

 

Week -7

Rothenberg and Silko can both be considered contemporary practioners of Ethnopoetics, both as poets (or creative writers, rather than scholars per se). We'll compare Silko's drawing upon her own cultural heritage with Rothenberg's more "studied" or at least acquired relationship to the materials.  What do you make of the more liberal presentations, versions, and free translations presented by these non-scholars. A case can be made for the loss and gain entailed.  I encourage you also to visit the sound area, where you will find Rothenberg performing some of this work; this should also allow us to reflect some of the tensions or distances between the oral and the written.

  1. How does Silko deal with the transposition of oral performance to page? Are you aware of translation and adaptation? What parts of "Storyteller" do you take to be traditional, what contemporary?

  2. How do the two respond to the fashionable "den[ial of] the possibility of crossing the boundaries that separate races  & cultures"?  In what ways do their engagements with tradition risk charges of imperialism or domination? In what sense can their work  be seen as acts of submission: "allow[ing oneself] to be directed by the other [so that] a common way emerge[s]"?

  3. How do the two resolve the tension between emphases on the poetic practices of particular, local peoples and times and the vision of transcultural wholeness?

  4. If Ethnopoetics and performance implicate audiences, do their texts exemplify this by inviting readers' participation in ongoing meaning-making?

  5. How do you respond to contemporary (and sometimes anachronistic) elements in the texts of the two?

 

Silko - StoryTeller

Rothenberg, Jerome. Poems from A SenecaJournal

Rothenberg-TotalTransRESCAN.pdf

Rothenberg-Preface-ShakingthePump.pdf
Rothenberg-ShakingTheP-(SenecaTranslations).pdf
Rothenberg - Tenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell (Technicians pp. 224-225)

 

Week -8

Tuning: This week we'll think more closely about "Close Listening" as a practice. Tedlock will lead us to delve more deeply into the theory and application with respect to transcription, translation, and the visual representation of oral texts.

  1. What are the benefits of being able to look at an oral performance represented on the page? Consider the uses and consequences for insider and outsider audiences, for poets and for scholars.
  2. What are the specific aims of "Total Transcription" -- the gains, trade-offs, and execution?
  3. What does micro-attention to performances teach us about orality, performance or ethnopoetics in general? (Distinguish here from what such study might tell us about a specific cultural genre such as the Igbo Praise Poem.)
  4. In terms of teaching or research,  does immersion in Ethnopoetics lead us to revise accepted ideas about poetry or literature? Does it have implications for the way we might teach Yeats?

Tedlock-BecauseHeMadeMarks-.pdf
Tedlock-from-FindingTheCenter (transcription).pdf
TedlockSherwood-PeopleEitherGoClick (interview transcription).pdf
Tedlock-TowardsAPoeticsofPolyphony (essay).pdf
YoungMJane-EthnopoeticRetranslation (essay).pdf

Week -9

Performance and Audience:  Readings this week will allow us to move from transcription (as attention to the aural elements of the poem) to the broader context of performance.  We'll engage with frameworks developed with reference to theatrical and ritual happenings, where the total "event" is the subject.

  1. What are the relations between models of "tradition" and performance-oriented models that emphasize emergence?

  2. How does the shift from the page (for scholars) and the script (for performers) to event effect our experience? What implications does it have from comprehension and analysis?

  3. How does performativity challenge us to rethink the notions upon which textual scholarship is practiced?

  4. How would you evaluate the success of Evers' and Molina's effort to respect the total dimensions of performance?

  5. What kinds of teaching practices might these essays invite (were we to revisit some prior poets)? 

Bauman-VerbalArtAsPerformance.pdf
ShechnerRichard-PerformanceTheory.pdf
Sherwood - Elaborative Versionings: Oral/Aural Poetics in Baraka,  Brathwaite, and Vicuña  HTML Version
Evers and Molina, Yaqui Deer Songs (pp. 73-125) Part1.pdf and Part2.pdf

Kelly suggests the following Native American Links.   Send your suggestions by email.Majid has found a very useful link to Yaqui Deer Songs

Week - 10

This week we'll be turning back to practitioners, though I hope we can carry with us both our thinking on transcription/listening and the broadened approaches implied by last week's exploration of the total performance context (with the issues of space, audience, and framing).

 

Both Vicuña and Brathwaite are literate, living poets who share in common knowledge of particular oral traditions AND an aesthetic determination to make a poetry reflective of their whole interests (conversant with the ancient and the contemporary), and to write, publish, and perform it.

As I've worked with Vicuña in my scholarship, I'll direct you to the website for some additional material: see AudibleWord.Org for links to two audio files of relevance to this week's class: 1) Performance 10 March 1994 Buffalo, NY 15:59 (mp3) and 2) Podcast 1.0 - Cecilia Vicuña 13:23.  The second of these is an audio podcast I recently produced as an experiment in pedagogical outreach; I'll be interested in your comments.

 

You can also hear Brathwaite giving an interview and reading aloud on the PennSound/XCP web page

Week - 11

SPECIAL EVENT - A Virtual Guest Lecture

Rosa Alcalá

Translator of Cecilia Vicuna &

Editor of the forthcoming Spit Temple.

 

This week we turn back to scholarly practices: in terms of theory and practice. Hymes and Davidson outline approaches for doing reconstructive analysis, with dramatically different emphases. Consider the implications of their methodologies. The second pair of readings are partial reprints of key journals from the heyday of Ethnopoetics. We can read them with the advantage of distance, and may want to critically reflect on some claims; at the same time, we should think about what kinds of contemporary extensions they imply (i.e. if they were doing that then, I should....)

Let's see if we can't shape our conversation this week toward some of the implications for and direct application to our own scholarly writing.