Full Description
Jerome Rothenberg's final anthology—an experiment in omnipoetics with Javier Taboada—reaches into the deepest origins of the Americas, north and south, to redefine America and its poetries
The Serpent and the Fire breaks out of deeply entrenched models that limit "American" literature to work written in English within the present boundaries of the United States. Editors Jerome Rothenberg and Javier Taboada gather vital pieces from all parts of the Western Hemisphere and the breadth of European and Indigenous languages within: a unique range of cultures and languages going back several millennia, an experiment in what the editors call an American "omnipoetics."
The Serpent and the Fire is divided into four chronological sections—from early pre-Columbian times to the immediately contemporary—and five thematic sections that move freely across languages and shifting geographical boundaries to underscore the complexities, conflicts, contradictions, and continuities of the poetry of the Americas. The book also boasts contextualizing commentaries to connect the poets and poems in dialogue across time and space.
Contents
Contents
Pre-face
Thanks & Acknowledgments
PRELUDIUM
America before America
(Patagonia, Argentina)
from Cueva de las Manos
(Lower Pecos River, Texas)
from The White Shaman Mural: Narrative & Vision
Emilio Adolfo Westphalen: from The Amber Goddess
Is Back
(Epi-Olmec)
The Tuxtla Statuette
(Adams, Ohio)
American Earthworks: The Great Serpent Mound
(Inuit)
Inuksuk (Helper)
(Mayan, Palenque, Mexico)
from Temple of the Tree of Yellow Corn
(Quechua)
A Narrative Quipu
(K'iche' [Quiché] Mayan)
from Popol Vuh
Jerome Rothenberg: An Academic Proposal
(Mbya-Guaraní)
from The Ayvu Rapyta: The Origins of Human Language
Jorge Elías Adoum: "In the Beginning ..."
See excerpt for complete Table of Contents
