For a serious consideration of ethnopoetics see Jed Rasula's _The American
Poetry Wax Museum_, perhaps the finest critical history of post-WWII
American poetry.
Kent
>You may not know the context of "Shaking the Pumpkin" as well as you think.
>I have my own doubts about ethnopoetics as a practice, but its
>practitioners were hardly innocent hippies. Dennis Tedlock was and is a
>major figure in the anthropology of the Americas, and Jerry Rothenberg
>lived on or near the Seneca reservation in western New York for several
>years--his wife the anthropologist Diane Rothenberg wrote her dissertation
>about the relations between the Senecas and the Quakers in the period of
>the formation of the Longhouse Religion. Among their intimates were Victor
>Turner and Nathaniel Tarn. The serious, and very well-informed, intent was
>to bring into modernist poetry and performance the productions of
>non-literate societies. That they enjoyed what they did in no way
>invalidates either theit goals or their efforts.
>
>In terms of the denotations of the words, it would be hard to miss
>locutions as simple as the words to the "Horse Songs," which are Jerry's. I
>can't give examples--as usual with books I've consulted recently my copy of
>"Shaking the Pumpkin" has wandered off on its own.
>
>As long as we're talking about context, the context of publication of
>"Shaking the Pumpkin" and "Technicians of the Sacred," without which I
>doubt the former will make much sense to you, was several hundreds of years
>of 'normalization' of the cultural products of American Indians--so
>Hiawatha is presented as a European-model epic. Rothenberg and company were
>attempting to break that pattern by finding ways to present the material as
>its producers did.
>
>Maybe when you next remember laughing out loud you'll remember how callow
>your derision was.
>
>At 08:24 PM 12/6/2000 EST, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> >Mark Weiss wrote:
> >
> ><I've been at powwows and seen them performed, and I've also heard
>recordings. As to the words themselves, in either language these are chants
> >with precious few words repeated several times. Given my reservations I
>meant to say that the word meaniongs are exact and the chanting almost
> >identical. How one would bring them over complete with context is a
>poser,
>and I suspect impossible.>
> >
> >Yes, I've seen and heard similar things, and still have doubts even about
>that "exactness." I don't know how one can easily draw a distinction here
>between "exact meaning" and social context. Strange that I should say this
>instead of you, since you seem to be more of a social constructionist than
>I.
> >
> >I may be wrong to blame the translations I vaguely recall on Rothenberg,
>however. I know only that they were in his anthology "Shaking the Pumpkin,"
>but they may not have been his. I remember laughing out loud at some of the
>pieces, because they seemed so obviously a product of a mentality prevalent
>then, which bothered itself precious little about cultural context, but saw
>all these rituals as just so many ways of "turning on."
> >
> >
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