Finding the Centre: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians

"A brilliant gathering of Zuni narrative poetry collected by anthropologist Dennis Tedlock in New Mexico...Tedlock's Zuni narrators seem like singers of some pueblo Beowulf, orchestrating oral traditions with voices they use like instruments, and whose inflections Tedlock captures in differing type faces." - "Newsweek." "Dennis Tedlock's splendid translations of ten tales from the Zuni represent the first fresh gathering of Zuni narrative material (he recorded 100) since the work of the 1930s Boasians, Ruth Benedict and Ruth Bunzel. But Tedlock's versions represent a great deal more, and mark nothing less than an epoch in translation by anthropologists...Tedlock has represented pauses in the Zuni with line and strophe breaks, and degrees of pitch and intensity with a handful of standard typographic devices. The text that results is one that we recognize, of course, as poetry scored for voicing; but we also recognize - and this is the kingpin - that an oral tradition has emerged in its own proper character." - "The Nation." "Tedlock's poetic gifts combine with his perceptions as an anthropologist to bring us narratives which reenact in their own way what is at once a form of social life and a way of understanding society and nature in dramatic terms." - "New York Times", "Book Review". "Tedlock, using devices taken over from Concrete Poetry ..., has managed to recapture for us not only the communal spirit of the stories but also, because the stories are alive and poetry, at least some feeling of what it's like to be a Zuni, something anthropological monographs can't seem to tell us." - "Harper's Magazine". An Associate University Professor of Anthropology and Religion at Boston Universitv, where he edits Alcheringa, a magazine of oral poetry, Dennis Tedlock is the coauthor, with Barbara Tedlock, of "Teachings from the Indian Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy."

About the Author :
Dennis Tedlock is James H. McNulty Professor of English and a research professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the translator of "Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life" and the author of "Breath on the Mirror: Mythic Voices and Visions of the Living Maya."

Review :
"[An] extraordinarily impressive collection."--"New York Times Book Review" "A brilliant gathering of Zuni narrative poetry . . . Tedlock's Zuni narrators seem like singers of some pueblo Beowulf, orchestrating oral traditions with voices they use like instruments."--"Newsweek" "A genuine artistic breakthrough . . . Recapture[s] for us not only the communal spirit of the stories but also . . . at least some feeling of what it's like to be a Zuni, something anthropological monographs can't seem to tell us. . . . I know of no other retellings of traditional tales that move me to delight as these do."--"Harper's Magazine" "Splendid translations . . . Tedlock has represented pauses in the Zuni with line and strophe breaks, and degrees of pitch and intensity with a handful of standard typographic devices. The text that results is one that we recognize, of course, as poetry scored for voicing; but we also recognize--and this is the kingpin--that an oral tradition has emerged in its own proper character."--"The Nation" "Tedlock's book introduces . . . a verbal notation of the speech dynamics of the original narrators. . . . The realization comes over one with a shock that our infatuation with story has, for all these years, obliterated all but the most rudimentary considerations of style."--"American Anthropologist"