[This is a continuing series of posts that reflect on Nathaniel Mackey's Songs of the Andoumboulou, a series of poems that Mackey has been working on through four books. His latest book with Andoumboulou poems in them, Splay Anthem, won the National Book Award. I take into consideration his allusions, Mackey's prose, interviews with him, and critical discussions of his work. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. To access all of the posts, click on "Nathaniel Mackey" in the list to the right.]
[I am currently discussing Mackey's book Whatsaid Serif. If for some reason you cannot buy it (and I sincerely hope you do), many of the poems can be found here. Also, Mackey reads 10 of the poems with musical accompaniment on an album entitled Strick.]
Nathaniel Mackey, within his larger poetic series, Song of the Andoumboulou, entitles a sub-series of poems "Strick." They are Song of the Andoumboulou 16-25.
“Strick” is a word for various types of fibers that can be woven into rope, clothing, ship’s sails, any number of things.
Why might Mackey have given this series of poems, appearing within a larger series, this name?
Mackey himself uses the word “weaving” to describe his poetry. He does this in relation to what is referred to as the "creaking of the loom" in Dogon culture, which is a metaphor for language, cross-culturality, and anti-foundationism more generally. The creaking of the loom is "the noise upon which the word is based, the discrepant foundation of all coherence and articulation, of the purchase upon the world fabrication affords. Discrepant engagement, rather than suppressing or seeking to silence that noise, acknowledges it. In its anti-foundational acknowledgment of founding noise, discrepant engagement sings "bass," voicing reminders of the axiomatic exclusions upon which positings of identity and meaning depend" (Discrepant Engagement 19).
Fibers are first raw, and single. Then they are woven through creaking of the loom. At the other end the fibers are again loose.
The act of reading poems in “Strick” is the weaving and woven fibers: on either side of the loom the fibers are singular and merely bundled.
This raises an immediate question: if the “Song of the Andoumboulou” poems before the “Strick” poems are like a bunch of fibers, how could they be poems, which, according to the metaphor, are woven?
Weaving involves creaking: imagine how a wind finds its way through the fibers in a woven sweater. Poems breathe. In addition, woven fibers break down, so that as we move on in reading, the former poems can give way and be reformed both in our memories and in the unfolding of the poems' concerns and obsessions.
“Song of the Andoumboulou” is both a poem of a lifetime, and forever breaking down and beginning anew.
This is borne out in the form. While the parts of all poems are dependent and independent of each other, Mackey makes more use of this interconnection, this weaving, this pourousness.
The “Strick” poems as a whole are both dependent on and independent of the other poems in "Song of the Andoumboulou." The individual poems in “Strick” are both dependent on and independent of the other poems. The sections of the poems, separated by dots and horizontal lines, are both dependent and independent of each other. The stanzas are both independent from and dependent on each other: and so are the very lines of the poem.
See this Mackey poem: Andoumboulou 21. This is a part of “Strick."
Notice this stanza break btween "outside..." and "It was a train." In these ways it is a standard break: 1) it skips a line; 2) there is a change in focus, from the scenery to the setting on a train.
In these ways it is not a typical stanza break. 1) The word "outside," followed by an ellipse, is a wisp of a line — indented, one word, the ellipse signaling us to slow down or that something is missing. The first stanza closes quietly with it.
2) The second stanza retains this wispiness by being in the passive tense, but it is also more of a specific statement of fact rather than impressions. The indentation further breaks it from the short line above.
Mackey's stanzas often draw to a close in this way. In addition, even inside his stanzas, as you can see in this poem, he will place single words toward the right margin, creating quasi-stanzas.
This is the essential point: even in most avant-garde poems, the edges and distinctions between formal elements are quite distinct. A series of poems is a series of poems. Think of Oppen's Discrete Series. A stanza is a block of lines. A line break is where the poet absolutely chooses to break the line: there is no such thing as a partially broken line.
Mackey breaks this rigidity down. Sup-series can be in poetic series. Poems coming right after one another can sometimes be quite distinct, and sometimes seem like a continuation.
Sections of the poem are divided by dots or horizontal lines. Stanzas, as we have seen, may or may not be located where he places a single word way on the right margin. Even the lines do not always have a clear beginning and end. How are we to read the indentations?
The result is that Mackey increases the number of formal techniques he can use, and he frequently uses them to smooth out the surface of the poem. It is as if he is playing with a 12-string rather than a 6-string.
The poems seem to glide into and out of jarring, creaking, cultural and semantic areas.
As we undulate down the lines and stanzas of Mackey's poems, the line and stanza breaks are both there and not there. Does the fifth line of Anoumboulou 21 end with or "eternity" or "minha"? The opportunities for subtlety, nuance, and stress increase tremendously with his use of these softening techniques.
This is Bedouin poetics.
I am “allowed” to use this term because Mackey himself brings it up when he names one of his books School of Udhru.
Undulating movement into and out of forms, into new forms, only to have them dissolve. Unwoven strands on either end of the creaking loom, woven strands tight together, but not fused, later, after use, to be unwoven.
_________________________________________________________________________________
The next step is to follow some of these strands through Strick poems so that we can get a better feel for how they work out in particular. Initially, I will see if using a concordance will help me to read across the poems rather than down them, as I have been doing.
Showing posts with label Songs of the Andoumboulou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Songs of the Andoumboulou. Show all posts
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
On Song of the Andoumboulou:17 (Whatsaid Serif)
Allusions and quotations
#17 begins with a Laccariere quote from The Gnostics — "to remove the very categories of I, He, and to become We, such must be the meaning of the so-called 'mysteries of the Simonioans'."
The Gnostics is a fascinating, poetic look at Gnosis from what was known in the early 70's. It is well-worth reading.
"Simonians" — Followers of the Gnostic Magus Simon. The Gnostics believe that the God of Genesis was a cruel demon who created this world, with all its suffering. The good God is somewhere, almost inaccessible to human beings, outside this world. All humans contain a divine spark which connects them to this God. Our material bodies weigh down this spark.
Ogotemmeli, the primary informant for Marcel Griaule about the Dogon, also mentions God's "primordial blunder." (Naylor's essay helped me to see this conjuntion, which I had missed earlier.)
Underneath the title of the poem in italics is the phrase "rim of the well." This comes from a Lorca discussion on duende, see here. In it, Lorca distinguishes duende from the angel and the muse. The angel and the muse are both outside and command; duende is in the blood and is the vitality and force that distinguishes great art from technically proficient art. I wonder about the extent to which it can be compared to the African-American and American, more generally, notion of 'soul'.
chthonic - Greek for the interior of the earth; also for cults of the earth that participated in ritual sacrifice for their gods —ex., Persephone.
lapis-light — intense blue color, based on lapis lazuli rocks
kola — tree native to West Africa with edible nuts.
Ogun — god of iron in voodoun of West Africa and the Carribean
[I am currently discussing Mackey's book Whatsaid Serif. If for some reason you cannot buy it, many of the poems can be found here.]
The poem begins with a past tense verb that has no subject. "Thought they were done." The first stanza also contains a "we," "he," and "she," all three of which have no noun referents. This ties in with the quotation from Lacarriere. Also, Mackey plays with tense: she remembers that she saw a he, who was hit by a "he." Is it the same he, or different ones? More importantly, does it matter? Naylor suggests that this moment where he and she transpose themselves is ecstatic. And he his correct. I would just add that Mackey is describing ecstasy, not, to a degree, enacting it.
This creaking of the pronouns causes us to focus not on the nouns, which only have shifting placeholders, but the active verbs: "Swirl," "spoke," "whir," "saw," "remembers," "brought up," "came to," "saw" all appear in the first stanza. Is Mackey creating a stanza where human individuation becomes as unimportant as single seeds when myriad ones are being blown off a tree? The action of the whole is what attracts our attention, not differentiation at the level of particle.
This is true except for one image at the end of the stanza. A 'he' is hit with a rock on on the side of the head. This sort of pain must cause differentiation. What I see this stanza doing is moving through an emphasis on action to the point where differentiation is caused by an act, but the specifics of who is differentiated are not given.
Finally, the form of this stanza must be taken into account. This poem uses a form very similar to Song #50. As always, the left margin is jagged, with no lines close to each other starting at the same place. Notice how in the first stanza several words are on a line by themselves appear toward the right margin. A stanza break occurs after "end we'd eventually see." The first stanza of Song # 17 contains three words isolated on lines and placed toward the write margin. They are "he," "who," and "late." Perhaps significantly, all three words point towards the displacements in this stanza — both the prounial and tense ("late").
To me, each of these words pulls me up toward a provisional ending. They feel like pregnant pauses. Yet the pregnant pauses occur when empty placeholders are used: pronouns with no noun referents.
The form also contributes to the energy of the stanza by the dancing lines themselves, skipping down the page, usually economical and often nongrammatical — jazz music that is steady usually has little appeal. These stanza dance and sway, in this case performing the slippage, what Mackey might be calling the creaking, of the language.
Am I saying that Mackey's form enables him to enact the creaking he describes as the mobile foundation of language?
Mackey I still think is a reflective poet, but he manages to reflect by burrowing into cracks and fissures opened by the creaking of language, not, as is traditionally the case, standing entirely outside the subject matter and making pronouncements in meter.
This is a a lot for one post, and, accept for the allusions and quotations section which took into account the whole poem, I only discussed the first stanza, 13 lines. This discussion will probably serve as a kind of basis for a quicker examination of the rest of this five page poem.
#17 begins with a Laccariere quote from The Gnostics — "to remove the very categories of I, He, and to become We, such must be the meaning of the so-called 'mysteries of the Simonioans'."
The Gnostics is a fascinating, poetic look at Gnosis from what was known in the early 70's. It is well-worth reading.
"Simonians" — Followers of the Gnostic Magus Simon. The Gnostics believe that the God of Genesis was a cruel demon who created this world, with all its suffering. The good God is somewhere, almost inaccessible to human beings, outside this world. All humans contain a divine spark which connects them to this God. Our material bodies weigh down this spark.
Ogotemmeli, the primary informant for Marcel Griaule about the Dogon, also mentions God's "primordial blunder." (Naylor's essay helped me to see this conjuntion, which I had missed earlier.)
Underneath the title of the poem in italics is the phrase "rim of the well." This comes from a Lorca discussion on duende, see here. In it, Lorca distinguishes duende from the angel and the muse. The angel and the muse are both outside and command; duende is in the blood and is the vitality and force that distinguishes great art from technically proficient art. I wonder about the extent to which it can be compared to the African-American and American, more generally, notion of 'soul'.
chthonic - Greek for the interior of the earth; also for cults of the earth that participated in ritual sacrifice for their gods —ex., Persephone.
lapis-light — intense blue color, based on lapis lazuli rocks
kola — tree native to West Africa with edible nuts.
Ogun — god of iron in voodoun of West Africa and the Carribean
[I am currently discussing Mackey's book Whatsaid Serif. If for some reason you cannot buy it, many of the poems can be found here.]
The poem begins with a past tense verb that has no subject. "Thought they were done." The first stanza also contains a "we," "he," and "she," all three of which have no noun referents. This ties in with the quotation from Lacarriere. Also, Mackey plays with tense: she remembers that she saw a he, who was hit by a "he." Is it the same he, or different ones? More importantly, does it matter? Naylor suggests that this moment where he and she transpose themselves is ecstatic. And he his correct. I would just add that Mackey is describing ecstasy, not, to a degree, enacting it.
This creaking of the pronouns causes us to focus not on the nouns, which only have shifting placeholders, but the active verbs: "Swirl," "spoke," "whir," "saw," "remembers," "brought up," "came to," "saw" all appear in the first stanza. Is Mackey creating a stanza where human individuation becomes as unimportant as single seeds when myriad ones are being blown off a tree? The action of the whole is what attracts our attention, not differentiation at the level of particle.
This is true except for one image at the end of the stanza. A 'he' is hit with a rock on on the side of the head. This sort of pain must cause differentiation. What I see this stanza doing is moving through an emphasis on action to the point where differentiation is caused by an act, but the specifics of who is differentiated are not given.
Finally, the form of this stanza must be taken into account. This poem uses a form very similar to Song #50. As always, the left margin is jagged, with no lines close to each other starting at the same place. Notice how in the first stanza several words are on a line by themselves appear toward the right margin. A stanza break occurs after "end we'd eventually see." The first stanza of Song # 17 contains three words isolated on lines and placed toward the write margin. They are "he," "who," and "late." Perhaps significantly, all three words point towards the displacements in this stanza — both the prounial and tense ("late").
To me, each of these words pulls me up toward a provisional ending. They feel like pregnant pauses. Yet the pregnant pauses occur when empty placeholders are used: pronouns with no noun referents.
The form also contributes to the energy of the stanza by the dancing lines themselves, skipping down the page, usually economical and often nongrammatical — jazz music that is steady usually has little appeal. These stanza dance and sway, in this case performing the slippage, what Mackey might be calling the creaking, of the language.
Am I saying that Mackey's form enables him to enact the creaking he describes as the mobile foundation of language?
Mackey I still think is a reflective poet, but he manages to reflect by burrowing into cracks and fissures opened by the creaking of language, not, as is traditionally the case, standing entirely outside the subject matter and making pronouncements in meter.
This is a a lot for one post, and, accept for the allusions and quotations section which took into account the whole poem, I only discussed the first stanza, 13 lines. This discussion will probably serve as a kind of basis for a quicker examination of the rest of this five page poem.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Nathaniel Mackey Concordance
I don't claim to be a true textual scholar, but as I read further into Songs of the Andoumboulou, it has become obvious that I need to develop at least a private concordance of sorts. Then it occurred to me that I should share it. So, here it is! If any of you know of any other concordance, please let me know. I only list important words that I notice are used at least a few times. (Verbs are listed separately, after the initial group of nouns, adjectives, and so on. I list active verbs used in independent and dependent clauses, and I do not list gerunds. Mackey does use gerunds a fair amount.)
In the course of creating this concordance, I have noticed some fascinating use of similes. See these pages: EW 36, 37, 38, SU 3
Eroding Witness= EW
School of Udhra = SU
angel — EW 52, 53 SU 3, 4
ass/ buttocks — EW 37, 41, 46
ascend / assent — EW 33, 44, 46
bed — EW 38, 45, 52,, SU 4
blood — EW 35, 43, 44, 49, 52,
book — SU 4
book — SU 4
buttocks / ass — EW 33, 37, 41, 46
cloth — SU 4
cloth — SU 4
cloud — EW 45, 53
crawl — EW 49
crawl — EW 49
dance — EW 37, 52, SU 3, 4
dead — EW 33, 34, 35, 44, 49
Dogon — EW 31
dream — EW 39, 50,
dust — EW 42, 47, 49, 50, SU 4,
ear — EW 41, 48
entrance — EW 51, 53,
eye — SU 3
feet — SU 3
eye — SU 3
feet — SU 3
finger — EW 36, 37, 38,
float — EW 54
flood — EW 53, 54, SU 3
god — EW 41, 54
hands — EW 35, 36, 37, 45, 48, SU 3
head — EW 34, 35, 51, SU 3
hear — EW 52,
image — EW 49, 51,
immersed — SU 4
inside ("inmost") — EW 34, 39, 43, 45, 46, 49
immersed — SU 4
inside ("inmost") — EW 34, 39, 43, 45, 46, 49
kiss — EW 37, 40, 43
labor — EW 44
labor — EW 44
light — EW 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 51, 53
linger — EW 49
linger — EW 49
loss — EW 44, 50, 52,
meat — EW 35, 41
memory (remember, etc.) — 36, 49, 51, 53
milk — EW 41, 53
moored — SU 4
moored — SU 4
mouth — EW 33, 37, 40
name — EW 33, 49,
ocean / sea — EW 34, 37, 46
outdistance — EW 49
outdistance — EW 49
possess — EW 52, 53,
potter-god —EW 51, 52
relinquish — EW 49
relinquish — EW 49
repeat — EW 41, 51
rib — EW 54,
root — EW 52, 53, SU 4
ruin — , SU 4
ruin — , SU 4
sea / ocean — EW 34, 37, 46
sleep — SU 3
sleep — SU 3
song / sing — EW 31, 33, 35, 39, 40, 48, 49, 53, 54
sound — EW 35, 39,
stones / rocks — EW 43, 45 SU 1, 3
sun — EW 39, 45, 48, 50, 52, 51, 53, 54, SU 4
thigh —37, 41, 48, 53
thirst — EW 34, 42
throat — EW 33, 34, 49, 53
thumb — 37, 41, 47, 48
tide — EW 38, 51
touch — EW 49
voice — EW35, 48,
water — EW 35, 52, 53, 54
wave — EW 34, 38,
wet / moist (adj.) — EW 36, 38, 40, 52, 53, 54
white — EW 36, 41
wind (blow) — EW31, 37, 41, 42,, SU 4
word — EW33, 34, 39, 52
_________________________________________
absorb — EW 45
accuse — EW 54
appear / reappear EW 35
applaud — EW 54
ask — EW 44, 50
arrive — EW 41, 42
avert — EW 53
beg — EW 50
begin — EW 45
bend /unbend — EW 54
bewail — EW 44
beware — EW 44
bide — EW 43
bite — EW 44
blunt — SU 3
born EW 34
break — EW 51
breathe — EW 45
bring EW 34
brood — EW 51
brush — EW 45
catch — EW 52
call — EW 54
carry / miscarry — EW 54
cave — EW 37
coil / uncoil — EW 50
collapse — SU 4
come — EW 48
conceal — EW 39
conceive / misconceive — EW 54
continue — EW 54
crash — EW 51
cross EW 36
cut — EW 46
dance — see above
delivered — EW 39
deny — EW 46
die — EW 41
dip — EW 41
dissolve — EW 38
double — EW 50
drinks EW 35
eat — EW 45, SU 4
eke — EW 52
echo — EW 53
embrace — EW 39
emerge — EW 45
empty EW 35
endanger — EW 44
explain EW 34
extend — EW 50
fade— EW 38
fall — EW 45
find EW 36
gather — EW 47
get — EW 37, 54
give — EW 54
goes EW 36
grasp — EW 38
grin — EW 37
hang — SU 3
haunt EW 35
hear — EW 40, 52
help — EW 41
imbibe — EW 47
infect — EW 41
intend — EW 54
keep — EW 40, SU 4
kick — EW 52
know — EW 49, 51
labor
lick — EW 52
bide — EW 44
leave — EW 39
lit — EW 46
mark — EW 41
mat EW 36
melt — EW 45
move — EW 40, 44
nod EW 36
oils — SU 3
part — EW 45
persist EW 36
pick — EW 54
pierce — EW 53
play EW 35
preach — EW 52
prolong EW 36
pull— EW 38, 51
quote — EW 54
regret EW 36
rehearse EW 36
remain EW 36
renew — EW 53
resurrect — EW 53
rear — EW 51
rise — EW 45
root — EW 52
rout — EW 45
rub — EW 53
says (see also "speak" and "tell") — EW 33, 34, 39, 41, 42, 44, SU 3
see — EW 48
scrubEW 36
see — EW 54
seem — EW 48, 50
shape — EW 51
show — EW 48
sing - see above
sit— EW 49, 51, 54
sought — EW 48
speak — EW 39, 48, 50
sprout — EW 50
stalk — SU 3
sticks EW 33
stroke — EW 53
struggles — EW 50
strum — EW 47
surround EW 36
swirl — EW 53
take— EW 38, 44, 54, SU 3
talk — EW 39
teach EW 34
tell EW 35, 37
test — EW 37
thread — EW 53
throw — EW 37
thrust — SU 3
toll — EW 46
touch — EW 40
turn EW 34, 37, 54
vomit — EW 47
walk — EW 45
want EW 35, 37, 50, 51
warn EW 34, 44
waste EW 35
waver — EW 48
wept — EW 46
wet— EW 38, 52
whip — EW 52
whisper — EW 41, SU 3
work— EW 38, 40
accuse — EW 54
appear / reappear EW 35
applaud — EW 54
ask — EW 44, 50
arrive — EW 41, 42
avert — EW 53
beg — EW 50
begin — EW 45
bend /unbend — EW 54
bewail — EW 44
beware — EW 44
bide — EW 43
bite — EW 44
blunt — SU 3
born EW 34
break — EW 51
breathe — EW 45
bring EW 34
brood — EW 51
brush — EW 45
catch — EW 52
call — EW 54
carry / miscarry — EW 54
cave — EW 37
coil / uncoil — EW 50
collapse — SU 4
come — EW 48
conceal — EW 39
conceive / misconceive — EW 54
continue — EW 54
crash — EW 51
cross EW 36
cut — EW 46
dance — see above
delivered — EW 39
deny — EW 46
die — EW 41
dip — EW 41
dissolve — EW 38
double — EW 50
drinks EW 35
eat — EW 45, SU 4
eke — EW 52
echo — EW 53
embrace — EW 39
emerge — EW 45
empty EW 35
endanger — EW 44
explain EW 34
extend — EW 50
fade— EW 38
fall — EW 45
find EW 36
gather — EW 47
get — EW 37, 54
give — EW 54
goes EW 36
grasp — EW 38
grin — EW 37
hang — SU 3
haunt EW 35
hear — EW 40, 52
help — EW 41
imbibe — EW 47
infect — EW 41
intend — EW 54
keep — EW 40, SU 4
kick — EW 52
know — EW 49, 51
labor
lick — EW 52
bide — EW 44
leave — EW 39
lit — EW 46
mark — EW 41
mat EW 36
melt — EW 45
move — EW 40, 44
nod EW 36
oils — SU 3
part — EW 45
persist EW 36
pick — EW 54
pierce — EW 53
play EW 35
preach — EW 52
prolong EW 36
pull— EW 38, 51
quote — EW 54
regret EW 36
rehearse EW 36
remain EW 36
renew — EW 53
resurrect — EW 53
rear — EW 51
rise — EW 45
root — EW 52
rout — EW 45
rub — EW 53
says (see also "speak" and "tell") — EW 33, 34, 39, 41, 42, 44, SU 3
see — EW 48
scrubEW 36
see — EW 54
seem — EW 48, 50
shape — EW 51
show — EW 48
sing - see above
sit— EW 49, 51, 54
sought — EW 48
speak — EW 39, 48, 50
sprout — EW 50
stalk — SU 3
sticks EW 33
stroke — EW 53
struggles — EW 50
strum — EW 47
surround EW 36
swirl — EW 53
take— EW 38, 44, 54, SU 3
talk — EW 39
teach EW 34
tell EW 35, 37
test — EW 37
thread — EW 53
throw — EW 37
thrust — SU 3
toll — EW 46
touch — EW 40
turn EW 34, 37, 54
vomit — EW 47
walk — EW 45
want EW 35, 37, 50, 51
warn EW 34, 44
waste EW 35
waver — EW 48
wept — EW 46
wet— EW 38, 52
whip — EW 52
whisper — EW 41, SU 3
work— EW 38, 40
Monday, March 16, 2009
Nathaniel Mackey Allusions
Since I proposed to try to track down Mackey's allusions with the internet, I'll share what I find. I will go poem by poem. If anyone can help me with anything, I will be thankful. This post will be updated every time I come upon some more information.
Before the entire series, Mackey quotes from François di Dio's liner notes to the album Les Dogon. The best I can do for information on him is the wikipedia article, which is in French. "The Song of the Andoumboulou," which inspired the poems, is on the album and can be heard at PennSound about 3/4's of the way down the page.
For more on the Dogon see photos, social life, art.
Song #1: Before the first poem, which is published in Eroding Witness (EW), there is a quotation from a discussion between Marcel Griaule, a French anthropologist, and Ogotemmeli, a Dogon elder. This comes from a book by Griaule entitled Conversations with Ogotemmeli.
In the stanzas following "Then in the eighth book" Mackey explores the myth of the Nommos, who, according to the Dogon creation myth as it comes through Griaule, arrived from outer space, created a watery home for themselves, and were repulsively ugly, fish-like creatures. The link I give you is not the best, but I could find no better one. Conversations... and The Pale Fox are the books that Mackey used for this informaton.
Click HERE for a translation of a paper by Griaule and his research partner Dieterlen.
There is a controversy about the precision of the Dogon astronomical knowledge, and about the verity of Griaule's ethnographies. The most thorough going discussion of the the skeptical viewpoint on the net is by Robert T. Carroll. Walter van Beek is an anthropologist who is also skeptical of Griaule's work. It turns out that he based almost of his information on the words of a single informer. (It is important to note that, in spite of this controversy, Griaule was considered an excellent anthropologist during his life.) I must also say that I find the arguments of the skeptics quite convincing, and this is bound to affect the reception of Mackey's poetry. However, I have yet to encounter in Mackey's writing any mention of the more spectacular claims made by Dogon 'romanticists' such as Robert Temple's in his book The Sirius Mystery.
For a discussion of the impact of this controversy on Mackey's verse, see the note at the end of this post.
Song #2:
I will wait on this. I have some books coming from the library.
Song #3:
Serqet — Egyptian goddess of serpents; wife of Ra, the sun god
Nommo: This is the best place I could find on the net. Once again, Mackey seems to have used the books Conversations with Ogotommeli and The Pale Fox.
Song #4:
"The dead are dying of thirst."
Song #5:
gassire's lute — West African folk tale. For what seems to be Marcus Garvey's translation, go HERE.
Manzanita
Erzulie
Black reconstruction
Song #7
Ntsikana's Bell — Traditional song recorded by South African jazz pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim. Ntsikana was the first African from near the area now called Nigeria to accept Christianity. In spite of being illiterate, he wrote hymns that have survived. This song is one of them. It was the way Ntsikana called his people to worship.
Epigrams before "Song of the Andoumboulou 8-15"
(A number of these poems can be found on the net HERE)
Yeban
Andoumboulou
Ogo
twins
Visita, Interiora ... This says that if you visit the interior of the earth you may find the hidden stone. The notion of rocks and stones repeats throughout "Songs of the Andoumboulou."
Song#8
Erzulie — See above
Crosscut saw — blues image for sexual intercourse.
Song #9
dervish
Osiris — Prehistoric ruler of Egypt. Brought civilization. Murdered in coup and body thrown in Nile. Thoth and Seth magically located body, tore it into 14 pieces, buried it around Egypt. Osiris' wife, Isis, gathered the pieces and resurrected the king long enough to get impregnated by him. Child became King Horus. (I don't know what the "ropewalk" is.) Osiris is associated with the bounty of the earth.
Legba — in Voodoun, one of his avatars is Attibon Legba who is an old man who walks with a twisted cane, smokes a pipe, wears a straw hat, and carries a macoutte (straw sack). He is the the first to be saluted at ceremonies, and is the god of the crossroads.
Thoth
caiman - type of crocodile found in south and central America.
Song #10
Nothing
Song #11
School of udhra
asafetidam — spice used to improve singer's voices
Song #12
Namoratunga
Osanyin
Camwood paste — placed on women's stomachs to help them conceive
Eshu — Trickster god, has to do with opportunity, in both negative and positive ways
Egungun — Yoruba deity, thouth of as collective spirit of ancestors
King Sunny Ade
Song #13
Alhaji Ibrahim Abdulai — Drummer from the Dagbon region of northern Ghana.
Fon
Legba
Song#14
Uninhabited angel
Song #15
Amentet
Peregrine
Note: Does the controversy over Griaule's anthropological methods in any way compromise Mackey's poetics?
The short answer is "no." Why is this? Mackey's project seems, in part, to be concerned with cross-cultural exploration and the complexities created by it. Mackey also discusses, in his critical and theoretical writings (see Discrepant Engagement) the 'creakiness' of language. By this he means, or I think he means, that language can never seize upon any entity or meaning in its fullness. In a letter to "Angel of Dust" that is part of the "Songs of the Andoumboulou" series and appears in EW, Mackey writes "You can't continue to want the whole bleeding, flooding fact of it intact without a cut somewhere" (54). That necessary "cut" may be similar to what Mackey means by "creakiness."
In another letter, that appears earlier in the series, Mackey writes, "You really do seem to believe in, to hold out for some first or final gist underlying it all, but my preoccupation with origins and ends is exactly that: a pre- (equally post-, I suppose) occupation" (50). By breaking "pre-" and "post-" from "occupation" Mackey emphasizes the lack of a desire for full presence in his work. There is no way to take it all in.
Therefore, cultures rub and penetrate and creak and chip away at each other. Knowledge is hard-won and sporadic.
With Griaule, for Mackey's purposes it does not matter if he was correct from an anthropological point of view. What matters was that he was sincere. I am using this word to mean that he tried his best to understand people very different from the way he is. If he failed, and Mackey made use of his failure, so long as it was a sincere failure, one that stemmed from the urge to communicate as freely as possible through the inevitable creaks of cultural and linguistic contact, Mackey's poetics should not suffer.
The sort of difficulties Griaule encountered are just what Mackey is exploring in his poetry.
Caveat: Not only Mackey, but all poets run a risk when using science, either natural or social, as the basis for part of their poetry. Science moves not by proving anything correct, but by proving something incorrect and developing a new explanation for the phenomena under consideration. This means that scientific developments may compromise a poetics by forcing readers to go back and consider now out of date social and natural science in order to understand the poems fully.
This is where the problem lies with Mackey's use of Griaule. It is not at all an epistemological issue or a poetics issue, but a practical one. I am having a hard time digging up translations of Griaule's books from libraries. While his status as an important figure in French anthropology is, for the time, secure, I am not sure how long this will last. A biography was just published on him, but that is no guarantee of long-term recognition.
Before the entire series, Mackey quotes from François di Dio's liner notes to the album Les Dogon. The best I can do for information on him is the wikipedia article, which is in French. "The Song of the Andoumboulou," which inspired the poems, is on the album and can be heard at PennSound about 3/4's of the way down the page.
For more on the Dogon see photos, social life, art.
Song #1: Before the first poem, which is published in Eroding Witness (EW), there is a quotation from a discussion between Marcel Griaule, a French anthropologist, and Ogotemmeli, a Dogon elder. This comes from a book by Griaule entitled Conversations with Ogotemmeli.
In the stanzas following "Then in the eighth book" Mackey explores the myth of the Nommos, who, according to the Dogon creation myth as it comes through Griaule, arrived from outer space, created a watery home for themselves, and were repulsively ugly, fish-like creatures. The link I give you is not the best, but I could find no better one. Conversations... and The Pale Fox are the books that Mackey used for this informaton.
Click HERE for a translation of a paper by Griaule and his research partner Dieterlen.
There is a controversy about the precision of the Dogon astronomical knowledge, and about the verity of Griaule's ethnographies. The most thorough going discussion of the the skeptical viewpoint on the net is by Robert T. Carroll. Walter van Beek is an anthropologist who is also skeptical of Griaule's work. It turns out that he based almost of his information on the words of a single informer. (It is important to note that, in spite of this controversy, Griaule was considered an excellent anthropologist during his life.) I must also say that I find the arguments of the skeptics quite convincing, and this is bound to affect the reception of Mackey's poetry. However, I have yet to encounter in Mackey's writing any mention of the more spectacular claims made by Dogon 'romanticists' such as Robert Temple's in his book The Sirius Mystery.
For a discussion of the impact of this controversy on Mackey's verse, see the note at the end of this post.
Song #2:
I will wait on this. I have some books coming from the library.
Song #3:
Serqet — Egyptian goddess of serpents; wife of Ra, the sun god
Nommo: This is the best place I could find on the net. Once again, Mackey seems to have used the books Conversations with Ogotommeli and The Pale Fox.
Song #4:
"The dead are dying of thirst."
Song #5:
gassire's lute — West African folk tale. For what seems to be Marcus Garvey's translation, go HERE.
Manzanita
Erzulie
Black reconstruction
Song #7
Ntsikana's Bell — Traditional song recorded by South African jazz pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim. Ntsikana was the first African from near the area now called Nigeria to accept Christianity. In spite of being illiterate, he wrote hymns that have survived. This song is one of them. It was the way Ntsikana called his people to worship.
Epigrams before "Song of the Andoumboulou 8-15"
(A number of these poems can be found on the net HERE)
Yeban
Andoumboulou
Ogo
twins
Visita, Interiora ... This says that if you visit the interior of the earth you may find the hidden stone. The notion of rocks and stones repeats throughout "Songs of the Andoumboulou."
Song#8
Erzulie — See above
Crosscut saw — blues image for sexual intercourse.
Song #9
dervish
Osiris — Prehistoric ruler of Egypt. Brought civilization. Murdered in coup and body thrown in Nile. Thoth and Seth magically located body, tore it into 14 pieces, buried it around Egypt. Osiris' wife, Isis, gathered the pieces and resurrected the king long enough to get impregnated by him. Child became King Horus. (I don't know what the "ropewalk" is.) Osiris is associated with the bounty of the earth.
Legba — in Voodoun, one of his avatars is Attibon Legba who is an old man who walks with a twisted cane, smokes a pipe, wears a straw hat, and carries a macoutte (straw sack). He is the the first to be saluted at ceremonies, and is the god of the crossroads.
Thoth
caiman - type of crocodile found in south and central America.
Song #10
Nothing
Song #11
School of udhra
asafetidam — spice used to improve singer's voices
Song #12
Namoratunga
Osanyin
Camwood paste — placed on women's stomachs to help them conceive
Eshu — Trickster god, has to do with opportunity, in both negative and positive ways
Egungun — Yoruba deity, thouth of as collective spirit of ancestors
King Sunny Ade
Song #13
Alhaji Ibrahim Abdulai — Drummer from the Dagbon region of northern Ghana.
Fon
Legba
Song#14
Uninhabited angel
Song #15
Amentet
Peregrine
________________________________________________
Note: Does the controversy over Griaule's anthropological methods in any way compromise Mackey's poetics?
The short answer is "no." Why is this? Mackey's project seems, in part, to be concerned with cross-cultural exploration and the complexities created by it. Mackey also discusses, in his critical and theoretical writings (see Discrepant Engagement) the 'creakiness' of language. By this he means, or I think he means, that language can never seize upon any entity or meaning in its fullness. In a letter to "Angel of Dust" that is part of the "Songs of the Andoumboulou" series and appears in EW, Mackey writes "You can't continue to want the whole bleeding, flooding fact of it intact without a cut somewhere" (54). That necessary "cut" may be similar to what Mackey means by "creakiness."
In another letter, that appears earlier in the series, Mackey writes, "You really do seem to believe in, to hold out for some first or final gist underlying it all, but my preoccupation with origins and ends is exactly that: a pre- (equally post-, I suppose) occupation" (50). By breaking "pre-" and "post-" from "occupation" Mackey emphasizes the lack of a desire for full presence in his work. There is no way to take it all in.
Therefore, cultures rub and penetrate and creak and chip away at each other. Knowledge is hard-won and sporadic.
With Griaule, for Mackey's purposes it does not matter if he was correct from an anthropological point of view. What matters was that he was sincere. I am using this word to mean that he tried his best to understand people very different from the way he is. If he failed, and Mackey made use of his failure, so long as it was a sincere failure, one that stemmed from the urge to communicate as freely as possible through the inevitable creaks of cultural and linguistic contact, Mackey's poetics should not suffer.
The sort of difficulties Griaule encountered are just what Mackey is exploring in his poetry.
Caveat: Not only Mackey, but all poets run a risk when using science, either natural or social, as the basis for part of their poetry. Science moves not by proving anything correct, but by proving something incorrect and developing a new explanation for the phenomena under consideration. This means that scientific developments may compromise a poetics by forcing readers to go back and consider now out of date social and natural science in order to understand the poems fully.
This is where the problem lies with Mackey's use of Griaule. It is not at all an epistemological issue or a poetics issue, but a practical one. I am having a hard time digging up translations of Griaule's books from libraries. While his status as an important figure in French anthropology is, for the time, secure, I am not sure how long this will last. A biography was just published on him, but that is no guarantee of long-term recognition.
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