Jay's Ethnopoetics

Re-visiting Technicians of the Sacred

2005-11-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

The first time I read "Technicians" I referred frequently to the commentary in the back, as I felt that I had to treat the text as a scholarly text. This time around I felt no need to refer to the commentary as I was far more interested in how the individual pieces were being presented on the page. For example the drum poems on pages 159 and 387. I felt that both were presented in a way that promoted them being read out loud. As I felt the need to sound out the "MF M M-F." I did not feel the need to read aloud any piece from "Technicians" the first time I read through it. However, this time around I felt the need to read everything out loud. The only thing that I retained from my first reading was my attempt to find connections amongst the various sections of the book. I wonder how different the text would read if the sections were eliminated and all the pieces were completely intermixed. I enjoyed, again, the variety of kinds of pieces that range from the "Peacemaking Event" on page 126 to the "Praises of Ogun" on page 161.

Experiment 3: Muddy Water's Country Blues No.1 in a new format

2005-11-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

I worked with Alan Lomax's transciption of Muddy's Country Blues No.1. Lomax's transcription is as follows:

Was gettin late over in the evenin, child,
I feel like blowin my horn (making love).
I woke up this mornin,
Find my my little baby gone.

Late on in the evenin, man, man,
I feel like blowin my horn.
Well, I woke up this mornin, baby,
Find my baby gone.

Well, now, some folks say
The old worried blues ain’t bad.
That’s the miserablist feeling,
Child, I most ever had.
Some folks tells me
That the worried blues ain’t bad.
Well, that;s the miserabliest feeling, honey now,
Ooooh, girl, I most ever had.

Well, brooks running into the ocean,
The ocean, the ocean running into the sea,
If I don’t find my baby,
Somebody going, gon bury me.
Brooks run into the ocean, child,
Ocean run into the sea,
Well, if I don’t find my baby, now,
Oh well, girl, you gon to have to bury me.

Yes, minutes seem like hours
And hours seem like days,
Seem like my baby
Will stop her low-down ways.
Minutes seem like hours, child,
And hours seem like days,
yes, seem like my woman, now,
Oh well, girl, she might stop her low-down ways.

Well, I’m leaving this morning
If I have to ride the blinds
I feel mistreated, girl,
You know now, I don’t mind dying.
Leaving this morniiin (he yodels a little here),
If I have to, now, ride the blinds.
Yes, I have been mistreated now, babe,
And I don’t mind dyin.

My re-formatted transcription is going to have be sent to you (Dr. Sherwood) as an attachment via email as Blogger is reducing my transcription to plain text.

Why Dell Hymes bothers me.

2005-11-08T22:41:00.000-08:00

I have some problems with the Hymes article. My first problem is he sees the Wishram tradition in completely literate terms. He goes so far as to set up a chart on page 107 that illustrates to the reader the structure of the Coyote stories. He uses words like: Exposition, Complication, Climax, and Denoument. All of this would be perfectly acceptable to me if he was talking about a novel, but since he is talking about an oral tradition, I think his terms and understanding of the oral tradition that he is examining is irrelevant. I think that by reading the Wishram tradition with his literate terms reduces them to nothing more but interesting stories, regardless of all of the context that Hymes provides. I realize that this was written almost 30 years ago but I would have preferred Hymes pull a Rothenberg and just provide us with the oral stories and put the contextual notes and commentary at the end or in footnotes. At least if he would have done this the reader would have had the opportunity to think of the stories in a less rigid way.

My second problem with the Hymes article is that when he says things like the following: "The fact that the language of telling is not the language of the tradition, but of interpretation, is in itself a major reason for not considering the performance as an authentic performance of a myth" (129). When he says things like this it leads me to believe that he thinks there is such a thing as an authentic performace floating out in the beyond somewhere. This bothers me because later he will say: "Clearly the narratives were not necessarily memorizied and recited from memory, but rather, as with Yugoslav epics, the performer worked with a knowledge of the structure of the whole and of approriate incident and style" (131). So, then he acknowledges that these stories are always in a kinetic state and yet there is supposed to be an authentic performance. Even, if I am reading too much into what he means when he says "an authentic performance" as I recognize that he might just be referring to "an authentic performance" as a performance of the story in the language of the culture but even if a story is performed in its "original" language it is still going to vary from another account in the "orginial" language.

Experiments and final project

2005-11-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

I believe you asked us last week to post what experiments we have left to do and what our final projects are. I have two experiments left to complete my new transcription of Muddy Waters song "Country Blues No.1" and I need to write a criticism of a published Ethnopoetic text.

My final paper is still what I talked to you about before. I am going to look at Son House's "Walking Blues," Robert Johnson's version of "Walking Blues," and then Muddy Water's revisioning of "Walking Blues" into "Country Blues No. 1." I will provide the Son House transcription that I have already posted as a blog, the Muddy Water's transcription that I am working on and a Robert Johnson transcription. I will then provide a 10 or so page commentary on the songs focusing on how can they all three be singing the same song but with different words? What does that say about language? I plan to include some of the Maria Sabina texts that we read, maybe some of Heideggar's thoughts on language, a brief discussion of African-American toasts, Ong's "Orality and Literacy," Fiumara's "The Other Side of Language," and finally Alan Lomax's "The Land Where the Blues Began."

Instan and Middle Passages

2005-11-01T15:53:00.000-08:00

I found Vicuna's "Instan" to be very compelling because I think it is one of the few texts that we have read this semester that actually works better in a written form. I say this because when one looks at the drawings one is sent into a world that contains poetry but also something beyond anything that lyrical writing can ever provide. Well I was reading "Instan" I found myself trying very hard to just follow the lines on the page. Sometimes I knew what the words were sometimes I did not. I fought the urge to just examine the letters on the pages and then just write the words at the bottom of the page to make it easier for myself. But as I briefly reflected on that idea, I thought that sort of thing is probably something that Vicuna is trying to avoid. So, I did not write the words at the bottom of the pages but instead forced myself to try and just follow the lines on the page.

When I got to the part of the book where she just has the poem minus the drawings, I couldn't help but think that there was something missing in reading her poem in a more traditional manner. As I was reading the bare poem, it made me realize all over again how interesting the poem was when it was broken up into drawings.

As I was first reading Brathwaite's "Middle Passages" I still had "Instan" on the brain and I thought for the first several pages that "Middle Passages" was not all that experimental. But then as I read more and more, I realized that he was doing some things very quietly. One of the things I noticed is that text moves from right to center to left. Sometimes a line starts on the right side of the page, other times in the center, and yet others on the left. I thought that this was intriguing because it really is a challange, much like what I found in "Instan," asking: what is printed poetry supposed to look like? Of course "Middle Passages" also contains moments when there is a significant change in font but I find myself thinking more about how the poems move within the text.

SON HOUSE "Walking Blues" transcription

2005-10-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah, Yeah
Lord God have mercy
It's nice to have you guys
Walking with me
I really, really proud

I got up this morning
feelin round for my
Shoe
Yeah
For I got the
Walking Blue
I say
I got up this morning
I feelin round for my
Shoe
I say
Lord
I got dem, got dem walking blues
mmmmmmmm
The Blues aint nothing but a
Low down
Shake dat gin
If you never had them
I hope you never will
LORD
The Blues
The low down
Shake that gin
Well now if you aint had dem
BOY
I hope you never will
mmmmmmmm
Friend you keep walking
Drop me a line
Yeaaa
If I don't go crazy
I won't lose my mind
mmmmmmmm
Yea
When you get word
[(someone else) when you get word]
I said
Sit down and drop me a line
mmmmmm
If I don't go crazy
Honey
I'm sure to lose my mind
mmmmmmm, Yea
I aint tryin
To get doggone
I have blues
If you dont want me
Then what the world do I want
Want with you?
OOOOOOOO
You had it coming
And your doggone eyes they blue
An I say now
If you don't want me babe
What the world I want with you?
mmmmmmmm
Don't a man feel bad
When da Good Lord's sun goes down
He aint have nobody to throw his arms around
Jailerman he's bad
I say when da Good Lord's sun go down
I say he don't have a soul
Not to throw his arms around
mmmmmmmm
Lookee here baby
What's ya want me to do?
[(someone else) Yeaa, Yeaa]
I've down all I could just ta get a long with you
Lookee here honey
What do you want,
Want me to do?
[(someone else) One more time with it House]
I say
I've done all I could
Honey
Just to get a long with you
You know I love my baby
Like a cow love to chew a cud
I'm layin round here though
I ain't doing no good
OOOOOOOOO
I love you honey
Like a cow love to chew a cud
OOOOOOO
I layin around here baby
But I
I sure aint doin no good
You know, you make minutes seem like hours
Hours seem like days
[(someone else) Yeaa, Yeaaaaaaaa!]
Seem like my baby's lovin
Low down ways
OOOOOOO, minutes [crowd noise] seem like [crowd noise] hours
Hours seem like days
[(someone else) Cracker's going wild over there]
Yeaaa, Lord
Seem like my baby won't stop her low down ways
mmmmmmmmm
I'm going to the gypsy now
To have my fortune told
I believe somebody is stealing my jellyroll
OOOOO
I am going to the gypsy
I believe, I have my fortune told
I say
I believe, somebody is trying to steal my jellyroll
mmmmmmmm
I got up this morning
[(someone else) Yeaaaaaaaa]
Feelin sick an bad
[(House talking to someone) Come on up here]
Thinking about the good times
That I one time had
I got through this morning
[(someone else) I ain't goin up there]
I was feelin so sick an bad
You know I was thinking about the good times
That I, I one time had
Yeaap
[(someone else) House what, what is that? Little back hook?]
[(House responds) Yeaaap]
Alright gentlemen
Let me hear ya
Lord
Yeaaa
Yeaaaaa
Sun is going down behind that
Old western hill
Yeaa
Yeaaaaa
OOOOOOOOO
Whoooooo
Behind that old western
Hill
And now I would be walking
Lord
Down against thy word and will
You know, I'm gonin away
I'm gonna steal a little more time
I ain't comin back, hear?
Till you change your mind
OOOOOOO Lord
OOOOO Lord, pray
I believe
I still loves ya
I say
I aint coming back now, hear?
Until you change your mind
mmmmmmmmm
Yea

What can be seen when we read?

2005-10-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

Lame Deer says in "The Meaning of Everyday Objects" "What do you see here, my friend? Just an ordinary old cooking pot, black with soot and full of dents.... It doesn't seem to have a message, that old pot, and I guess you don't give it much thought.... I think about ordinary, common things like this pot.... We Indians live in a world of symbols and images, where the spiritual and the commonplace are one. To you symbols are just words, spoken or written in a book. To us they are part of nature, part of ourselves..." (Symposium of the Whole p. 171-2). I think the above is what Tedlock is trying to get across to his readers. He is trying to get us to see past the words on paper. I found this week's readings to be interesting because with the Tedlock essays, we were provided with many of his issues and concerns about presenting "Other" worlds in a written format. The essays seemed to suggest that Tedlock is trying to present these "Other" cultures in a way that allows for the reader to think of them as complicated works that deserve in-depth critical investigation. I saw this particularly in the "Toward a Poetics of Polyphony and Translatability" essay, where Tedlock is attempting to drive home the idea that Mayan poetry is in some ways far more complex than Western poetry. The reason for this being that the Mayan poets never believed that anything could be truly represented by one word, and Western thought is built on the idea that everything can be clearly and accurately categorized. Thus from a certain point of view, Western poetics is a poetics of limitation and Mayan poetics is a poetics of creative expansion. I also liked Tedlock's attempt to encourage reading out loud Zuni poetry by providing a reading guide to reading outloud. For I have to say that if I was not provided with a guide I would not have attempted to read outloud the Coyote and Junco story. I would have read it and annotated it but would not have spoken it. I am going to be using the Tedlock guide for reading out loud for my blues project when I provide a new transcription of Alan Lomax's transcription of Muddy Water's Country Blues no.1.

Silko Blog

2005-10-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

I know that there is alot of Rothenberg material that I could talk about for this week, but I feel compelled to focus on the Storyteller story in Silko's text and a brief moment in the story about Silko's grandmother. In the Storyteller story (pp. 17-32), Silko provides the reader with the character of a young woman who lives with her grandmother and an old man that lays in bed and tells a story. It is his story that interests me so much. As he tells the story over a long period of time and by doing this the story seems to be a part of his everyday life and the lives of those around him. On page 22, the narrator says that he describes the bear muscle by muscle and later on page 26, the old man describes "each crystal of ice and the slightly different sounds they made under each paw: first the left then the right paw, then the hind feet." I find these moments intriguing because it seems that the events in the story need to be told in complete detail, everything is essential. And I wonder if that is a reflection of the Yupik worldview, where everything is so important that even the minute details must be told in order for the story to be complete? The latter moment mentioned above is when the narrator says that the old man had been telling the story for many months by this point. The narrator says even later of the old man and his story, "The giant bear was creeping across the new snow on its belly, close enough now that the man could hear the rasp of its breathing. On and on in a soft singing voice, the old man caressed the story, repeating the words again and again like gentle strokes" (27). I find the phrase "the old man caressed the story" to be interesting because this story of his has been carefully woven and comes from the man's very being. The story seems to be almost like a child of the old man, at least that is what I take from the phrase mentioned above. The image of the man caressing his story with "gentle strokes" invokes an image of caring deeply for something, of nuturing something. This is a story told through an extended period of time but the telling to someone doesn't seem as important as the actual act of speaking it. Speaking seems to be of the upmost importance to the old man, his story must be told even if he only has the young woman to tell it to because it is not a story for her to be entertained by but an extension of the old man's being that can only be revealed though his speaking of it. And when the bear finally finds the hunter, the old man can die as he has nothing left to say. (I have also thought of the possibility that the bear could represent Death and the hunter could represent the old man and that might be why he takes so long to tell the story because he does not wish to rush his own death.) This also connects to the story about the narrator's grandmother that follows. The grandmother used to tell her grandchildren stories but when she is sent to live in Albuquerque, she has no one to tell the stories to and dies because she could not last long "without someone to talk to" (35). What I find so interesting in everything that I have brought up is that there is a direct connection between speaking and living. This connection is even further shown in the Storyteller story, when the old man's story comes to life with the young woman being chased by the white storeowner across the ice. (29-30) Except in this version of the story the bear (the white storeowner) dies and the hunter (the young woman) lives. Or maybe the ending isn't so different after all, as the woman is wearing wolverine fur with the hood covered in frost (28)? I found the Storyteller story so interesting because it made me think about western storytelling, whatever the form may be, as I do not think that there is continual attention given to every possible detail in many western stories, for our story traditions do not always consider every detail to be essential.

2005-10-04T18:41:00.000-07:00

Discussing the problem of thinking about oral traditions as oral literature Ong says, "Writing makes 'words' appear similar to things because we think of words as the visible marks signaling words to decoders: we can see and touch such inscribed 'words' in texts and books. Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit... [the use of the preposterous term oral literature] reveals our inability to represent to our own minds a heritage of verbally organized materials except as some variant of writing, even when they have nothing to do with writing at all" (11). So according to Ong the problem for a literate culture in attempting to understand an oral culture is the problem of gettting around the idea of a "text." Literate cultures are greatly dependent on written texts in order to create and support their thoughts concerning anything that they encounter in life. Ong continues to say of the problem of thinking about oral traditions as texts, "But in fact, when literates today use the term 'text' to refer to oral performance, they are thinking of it by ananlogy with writing. In the literate's vocabulary, the 'text' of a narrative by a person form a primary oral culture represents a back-formation: [such as coming to an idea of what a horse is by thinking of it as a wheeless car]" (13). This is a problem because of course an oral tradition is not based on any form of a text(s) but rather on a use of formulas that allow oral practitioners to retain their complex thoughts or stories. (34-5).
While reading Ong's text, I could not help but think about our class discussions about the role of anthologies in Ethnopoetics. I seem to be caught in the same trap that I continually find myself trapped in week after week: yes, taking portions of oral traditions and turning them into a book, tends to take alot of the orality out of them but at the same time it would seem to be such a gross error to not take oral traditions into account. And I don't think that Ong is advocating that there should not be any anthologies of oral traditions, instead I feel he would urge us to never stop thinking critically about how we are engaging with oral traditions in a written form. It is this idea that I liked most about Ong's book, as it has reminded me to continue to not only read selections from "Symposium of the Whole" and "Technicians of the Sacred" but to be critical about how I read them. To always be aware that I am textualizing oral traditions when I encounter them. I think that is one of the keys of Ong's book, to create an awareness of of our own textuality and maybe in being aware of that fact, one can experience something different the next time one is encountering an oral tradition.

Rothenberg's "Technicians of the Sacred"

2005-09-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

In general I like Rothenberg's "Technicians of the Sacred" because it attempts to bring as much as it possibly can to the Ethnopoetics's table. I found his arrangement of materials to be interesting. For example that he includes a piece on Egyptian Gods followed several pages later by a Chinese piece, which is then followed by a Hebrew piece. I liked how the first five parts were a mix of various cultures under a single theme. However, I don't understand why he didnt continue to do this throughout the rest of the book. Especially, since he says of his reasons for arranging the rest of the book geographically was, "simply that it provides an alternate way of bringing the materials together" (xxxi). The reason that I like the first five parts is that they clearly illustrated to me that one can make various connections between the many cultures represented in this book, such as the need to want to create some sort of explanation for how and why things exist and what connection do human beings have to their environment.

The only problem that I had with Rothenberg's text is that he decided to place the commentaries about the individual pieces at the end of the book and not with the individual pieces themselves. As I felt that made it too easy to ignore the contextual issues surrounding the individual pieces. As Jed Rasula points out in his essay on Rotherberg's text, "the Commentaries clarify and amplify the poeisis underlying the aesthetic, but since they are seperated by hundreds of pages from the poems, a special effort has to be made to approach them in context" (137). However, in saying this I am grateful that he decided to include commetaries at all because it would have been very easy to just publish these pieces as a collection of poetry without any sort of contextual background. In having the Commentaries section Rotherberg puts together a body of work that exists somewhere in between Cronyn's "American Indian Poetry" and Densmore's "Chippewa Music," and in my opinion that makes this a very interesting and important text.

Maria Sabina blog

2005-09-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

In her oral autobiography, Maria Sabina says, "my only force is my Language." She says earlier, "I cure with Language, the Language of the saint children" (25). Her ability to tap into the language of the "little things" is what she believed gave her the power to heal people with the spoken word. Early in the autobiography she tells a story about how she became empowered with Language when she ate some of the "little things" and found herself at the Principal Ones's table and on that table was a Book. She says, "The Book was before me, I could see it but not touch it. I tried to caress it but my hands didn't touch anything. I limited myself to contemplating it and, at that moment, I began to speak. Then I realized that I was reading the Sacred Book of Language. My Book. The Book of the Principal Ones." (22). It is then a book that she does not read but a book that speaks to and through her. Her ability to heal does not come from her use of the knowledge given to her by the Principal Ones but through her willingness to let the "saint children" speak through her. This interests me immensely because Sabina is saying that she does not create her healing chants but that she is a vessel in which those chants can come into being. The significance of this being a language that can only be spoken is further shown when Sabina says, "I learned the wisdom of the Book. Afterward, in my later visions, the Book no longer appeared because I already had its contents in my memory" (22). The language that she now possesses can only be memorized because to write it down would be to strip it of its power. I understand this language as a "pure" language, a language that resists being written and read. It is a resistant language because to write it down and to read it is to confine it.

Sabina gives further power to her Language when she says that it is the Language of God (25). This combining of Christian mythology with a shamanistic ritual surprised me and when reading her chants I found it interesting that there is a continual reference to Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene and various saints. As Sabina says, "I ask [favors] from God the Christ, from Saint Peter, from Magdalene and Guadalupe" (28). As I expected that the healing rituals would have been rooted in a pre-Christian religion. Further evidence of just how grounded the healing rituals are in the Christian religion is when Sabina says, "The mushrooms have power because they are the flesh of God. And those that believe are healed. Those that do not believe are not healed" (28). Thus, the Language that is employed in the healing rituals is powerful because it is considered to be "holy."

Week 3 Blog

2005-09-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

In the first chapter of Michael Castro's "Interpretating the Indian," he says of the difference between the Indian performer and the Western poet, "An Indian singer or chanter does not merely seek to entertain or to please; he wants to effect change in himself, in nature, or in his fellow human beings. The word is understood and used as an instrument of power" (12). The purpose of Indian song then is to allow the performer or performers to connect themselves to their communities and the land that they live on. As Castro will later say "Indian poetry seeks to be effective, not merely affective" (24). The inherent differences between Western poetry and Indian song is further shown when Castro says, "Unlike much of English verse, traditional Indian poetry is rarely tragic or sad. Instead, as Barnes observed, it is characterized by affirmation." This idea continues to be expanded when Castro quotes Paula Gunn Allen saying, "The tribes do not celebrate an individual's ability to feel emotion, for it is assumed that all people are able to do so, making expression of this basic ability arrogant, presumptuous, and gratuitous... The tribes seek through song, ceremony, legend, sacred stories (myths), and tales to embody, articulate, and share reality... to verablize the sense of the majesty and reverent mystery of all things, and to actualize, in language, those truths of being and experience that give to humanity its greatest significance and dignity (34). One way that Indian song connects to the community and the land is through the use of "magical symbols," which are such things as lightning, snakes, and the coyote. Castro says of this, "Such magical symbols are everywhere in Indian life because all things are seen as intelligent and related, and as physically and spiritually alive." As Lame Deer (John Fire) says, "We see in the world around us many symbols which teach us the meaning of life... We Indians live in a world where the spiritual and the commonplace are one" (36).

I bring all this up because for me it pointed out some interesting differences between what is considered poetical by Western standards and what would be considered poetical in an oral tradition. As it seems to me that Castro (I also see this occuring in Cronyn's "American Indian Poetry" for example the use of "magical symbols" in such songs as "Early Moon" and "The Girl Deserted by Her Jealous Companions," with the lyric "My love is swift as the deer, he would speed through the forest to find me.") is saying the goal of Indian song is to create a sense of oneness with the world in which the singer or dancer finds himself. This means that the Indian performer has to always take part in his community. He cannot do as a typical western poet and just find an inspiring place to sit down and begin writing. The oral perfomer has to participate in the life of his tribe in order to create his art. The Western poet can still write what would be considered "good" poetry, even if he completely removes himself from everyday life. Thus the Indian performer not only performs his art for his audience but creates his art from actively living amongst that audience. The Western poet can chose to only write of himself and his thoughts. Maybe one way of saying all this is to say that the oral performer strives for attachment and the Western poet can chose the degree of his attachment, if he choses any at all?

Week 2 Blog

2005-09-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

Brian Swann states, "When a language dies, its universe–a unique way of understanding, interpreting, and inventing the world –dies with it" (xx). He later says of the problem of collecting oral texts, "Wasn’t this collecting just another form of Western ‘possessive individualism’? Wasn’t it just self-enrichment in the name of ‘knowledge’ and ‘science’?" (xxix). I think these two quotes show a tension that exists in studying oral traditions, which, possibly, can be expressed in the following question: how can one allow for oral traditions to retain their uniqueness and introduce those traditions into the general public discourse? As this week’s readings have made me want to be very careful in how I examine the texts in this course because I do not want to interrogate the texts with my Western reason and thereby reduce them to my preconceived ideas, but instead I want to be able to experience the texts. This week’s readings have made me want to not only examine the texts for this course in order to create some sort of understanding concerning them but also to keep in mind how I go about creating that understanding. Perhaps, in being attentive to how I create an understanding of these texts, I will be able to see how I am limiting them? If I can see how I am limiting them, maybe I will be able to further enrich my experiences with the texts in this course?

Do You Want SYMPOSIUM OF THE WHOLE?

2005-08-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

If you do go to amazon.com and they have a number of used copies available some for as low as $.50, thats right 50 cents plus shipping. Thought some might want to know.

The Trial

2005-08-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

Was a novel written by Franz Kafka.