LATE EXTRA -- Jacket number 6 --
after unavoidable delay,
Shamoon Zamir's detailed and absorbing 5,500-word review of Nathanial Tarn's
SCANDALS IN THE HOUSE OF BIRDS : Shamans and Priests on Lake Atitlán
has arrived at Jacket # 6 --
"Tarn . . . is unique within ethnopoetics and equally within the longer
history of the dialogue between American poets and anthropology that
stretches from Pound and Eliot, through to the likes of Olson, Duncan,
Rukeyser, Snyder, Dorn and Jay Wright: he is the only one to have produced
substantial and accomplished bodies of work as a poet and as an
anthropologist and the only one to have written at length on the
interactions of literature and anthropology. . .
. . . Narrated through multiple narratives and many voices, the book
deals with a religious conflict between indigenous religion and
Christianity. The theft of masks covering Maximón, a Mayan wooden statue
venerated since pre-Columbian times, and the later return of one of the
masks over twenty years later, is the core around which are spun accounts
of Mayan mythology, ritual practices, religious festivals, individual life
histories, local social conflicts and the horrors of Guatemala's national
politics. "
Shamoon Zamir is a Reader in American Literature at King's College London
and co-editor of Talus Editions, a poetry small press. His previous
publications include DARK VOICES: W.E.B. DU BOIS AND AMERICAN THOUGHT
(Chicago University Press, 1995).
The review is illustrated with six color photographs from the early
1970s taken by Nathanial Tarn.
Check out Shamoon Zamir's review at this Internet address:
http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket06/zamir-rev-tarn.html
from
John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia
tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569
Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/welcome.html
Homepage: five megabytes of glittering literature, free, at
http://www.alm.aust.com/~tranterj/index.html
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