Indigenous California Language Survival

I would love to have an easy grace with languages, with picking up and using unfamiliar languages, especially. I’m good at English. I’ve studied Spanish, Portuguese, American Sign Language. I learned a lot from my studies, though I can’t claim any communicative fluency. But I would love to learn a language native to where I grew up, native to California. I doubt it will happen. I read work in translation, the next best thing?, and I am grateful to those who are able to bring meaning over from one language to another. 

Sadly, of all the endangered things in this world, the languages of indigenous peoples are especially close to the edge. So I was pleased to read in a book of English versions of California indigenous oral literature that robust effort is being put into keeping alive many of the source languages. 

One of the most promising of recent efforts to turn things around is California’s own Master/Apprentice Language Learning Program. (The MALLP is conducted and administered by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival … which is an affiliate of the Seventh Generation Fund, an important umbrella organization for a number of Native American activist groups. … Since its first season in 1993, the Master/Apprentice program has initiated training sessions for more than seventy master/apprentice pairs, involving (at the time of writing) twenty-five languages — most of them down to their last handful of fluent speakers — with more being added every year.

There’s also some hope that languages that currently have no speakers who grew up speaking it can be revived from “fieldnotes, recordings, and publications of the linguists who worked with the last generation of fluent elders.” Hats off to anyone who takes on that goal. It will require dedication! 

source: Surviving Through the Days: a California Indian reader edited by Herbert W. Luthin. 2002. University of California Press, Berkeley CA

pile of reading

I have three piles of books these days. With each pile I read a little of one book, a little of another. The main pile is by the bed. It tends to have several books, more than I’m actively reading. This is in case while I’m reading in bed I decide I want to try something new but don’t want to get out of bed to go looking for it. There are also books that I’ve gotten some way into but have stalled on — hit a slow part or something. I’m not going to list the ones I’ve stalled on. If I get back to them, they’ll be eligible for another pile post. 

The second pile is on the windowseat in the library upstairs. I love windowseats! The third pile is at my desk at the public library. Since I am stalled in those books by default right now — with the libraries closed, I have no access — I won’t list them here. 

Upstairs pile:

Haiku World: an international poetry almanac

by William J. Higginson

1996. Kodansha International, New York

I just started Haiku World this morning. It’s both an anthology of haiku from around the world and something different, a handbook for classifying haiku by season. Japanese poets have recourse to these sorts of handbooks (called saijiki). It’s a reference, like a rhyming dictionary; poets use them to … well, I guess it’s to make sure you used the right season word? … Here in Berkeley the contrast between the seasons is not great. It can be quite cool in the summer with the fog in and we never get snow. The season-obsession of Japanese haiku is not mine. Flipping through the book I see Higginson give a term, Scarecrow, say, or Kelp-Bladder Popping, both of which are words evoking autumn, he says. Higginson provides something of a definition (“In autumn … kelps wash up on the beach, and children love to pop their air-pockets.”) Often there are two or three haiku under the season term. In the case of Kelp-Bladder Popping, there’s one by June Hopper Hymas:

no children with me

to pop the kelp bladders

ocean’s salt-bitter smell

Multi-America: essays on cultural war and cultural peace

edited by Ishmael Reed

1998. Penguin Books, New York

Collections of essays are like crackers. I munch my way through them, nodding or shrugging. I’ve been enjoying this. Various thoughtful takes on “multiculturalism,” mainly in the context of the US, although there’s a personal essay by a black woman in Berlin, and another on the neglected history of British people of color. 

Shake the Kaleidoscope: a new anthology of Modern poetry

edited by Milton Klonsky

1973. Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster, New York

With its Mod cover, depicting five poets crowded into a window, I expected this mass market size anthology to feature all the usual suspects and most the usual poems. But I’m pleased to say editor Milton Klonsky has eccentric tastes. The poets are Americans and Brits, but not all are familiar names. When the name is familiar, the poem may not be. There’s one poem by Elizabeth Bishop, but it’s not “The Fish” or “The Art of Losing”; rather it’s “Visits to St Elizabeth’s”. I don’t mind. I like “Visits”! Klonsky gives three pages to Samuel Greenberg who wrote in obscurity, but whose poems were discovered by Hart Crane (Crane also stole some of them). The anthology clearly reflects the tastes of its editor. I like that.

A House for Mr Biswas

by V. S. Naipaul

1961/1984. Vintage / Random House, New York

This is the novel that made V. S. Naipaul famous. It’s quite long, almost 600 pages in this mass market edition. Mr Biswas lives on the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean among an Indian immigrant community. The narrator refers to the main character as “Mr Biswas” even when flashing back to childhood: “Mr Biswas loved the calf … He took it for walks across damp fields of razor grass and along the rutted lanes between the cane fields, anxious to feed it with grass of many sorts and unable to understand why the calf resented being led from one place to another.” The novel can strike me just right and I can read it for an hour or two. But I’ve stalled in it a couple times. 

Bedside Pile:

Tales of Magic Land, vol. 1: The Wizard of the Emerald City and Urfin Jus and His Wooden Soldiers

by Alexander Volkov 

translated from the Russian by Peter L. Blystone

1991/2010. Red Branch Press, Staten Island, NY

The Wizard of the Emerald City is a translation/adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. In producing his Russian version Alexander Volkov added some incidents — an ogre, a flood — and eliminated some — the dainty China Country, the fighting trees. Volkov’s Wizard was originally published in 1939. It was a hit! It was such a hit that Alexander Volkov went ahead and wrote his own sequels. Though L. Frank Baum wrote several sequels to The Wizard, Volkov’s sequels were independently created, were not translations from Baum. Peter Blystone says Volkov even revised his Wizard further to prepare readers for his own sequels. The Baum books were not available in the Soviet Union, so a generation of kids behind the Iron Curtain grew up fans of Volkov’s Oz rather than Baum’s. 

I was always curious about the Russian version of Oz, which Volkov called Magic Land. I’m glad we have Peter Blystone’s translations. Only the first sequel was available in an English version until Blystone came along. I read that version 30 years ago or so. When I got Blystone’s Volkov I started with book number three. But now I’ve come back around to the series. Last month I read Blystone’s version of Volkov’s Wizard. It’s not that much different from Baum. Blystone even uses Baum’s original phrasings sometimes, and maybe he shouldn’t have because Volkov is not Baum. Anyway, I’ve now started Urfin Jus and His Wooden Soldiers. 

Poems for the Millennium, vol. 4: The University of California book of North African literature

edited by Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour

2012. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA

Not a skinny book! At our 750 pages it’s a book that I’ve been working on for some time. I like it. It’s a rare poem that strikes a personal chord, but that doesn’t mean I’m not learning things and enjoying the experience.

Blue Unicorn: a tri-quarterly of poetry

vol. XLII, no. 2; spring 2019

John Hart, editor

San Rafael, CA

This issue has a poem by me in it. Blue Unicorn favors poems in traditional forms, though publishes much free verse. 

Poetry 

vol. 201, no. 5; February 2013

Christian Wiman, editor

Chicago, IL

The first 13 pages are devoted to the adventures of a schizophrenic (?) who chooses not to take his medicine. There’s a several-page feature in the middle devoted to the painter Joan Mitchell. 

Namesake: book two

by Isabelle Malancon and Megan Lavey-Heaton

self-published, originally appeared on the web

https://www.namesakecomic.com

I ordered the first two hard copy volumes of Namesake after an Oz friend enthused on Facebook. The story is mostly set in Oz, though it is no more Baum’s Oz than was Volkov’s Magic Land. I like the art and the story’s pretty good. I have the feeling, though, that the story has barely begun. I’m a third of the way into book two and it feels like there are several volumes of story to come. 

The Uninhabitable Earth: life after warming

by David Wallace-Wells

2019. Tim Duggan Books / Crown / Random House, New York

This is my last library book. I’ve finished all the others and they are waiting patiently to be returned. The topic of Uninhabitable Earth alone kept me from being eager to read it. One might expect the book to be a drag — all doom and gloom! And it is. But I didn’t expect to find the author so annoying. On page six Wallace-Wells offers, “I am not an environmentalist.” Later he says something to the effect that if not for all the bad effects global warming will have on the human race, he wouldn’t much care. After all, he’s not “a nature person.” I’ll probably finish the book. I seldom abandon books, especially if I think they’re of value. But … hmf. 

Best Poems of 2019

Basho … two haiku

Boncho … one haiku (“the brushwood”)

Linnea Brett … bird avenue

Buson … seven haiku

Chippewa song … Sometimes I Go About Pitying Myself

Sheila Dong … Prayer

Giles Goodland … Bees

Katharine Harer … Death Over Breakfast

Christopher Jon Heuer … The Hands of My Father

Jackleen Holton Hookway … Luxury

Hokushi … haiku (“I kept hanging the moon”)

Issa … three haiku

Joso … haiku (“above the noise”)

Julie Larios … What Bee Did

Dorianne Laux … The Lost

Michelangelo Buonarroti … 90. Sonnet; possibly for Tammaso

Jim Murdoch … Shadow Writing

Otsuji … haiku (“the spring rain”)

Roka … haiku (“the water-fowl swims”)

Ryokan … haiku (“the burglar”)

Shiki … three haiku

Michael Dylan Welch & Tanya McDonald … Between Night Hills (a haiku sequence)

**

I have a loose leaf notebook into which I copy out poems. The above were the poems I copied out in 2019.

Titles Read in 2019

January 

My Neighbor, a 4-poet haiku chapbook, Paul Miller, editor

Best Gay Poetry 2008 edited by Lawrence Schimel

Phoebe 2002: an essay in verse by Jeffery Conway, Lynn Crosbie, and David Trinidad

The Last Five Miles to Grace by David Lerner

Between the Cracks by Julia Vinograd

Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, v.17 n.2, 1998

Futures Trading, anthology four. 2017. Caleb Puckett, editor

frogpond, v.39:1, winter 2016. Haiku Society of America

Bijou in the Dark by John Yau

While England Sleeps by David Leavitt

The Best American Poetry 2008 Charles Wright, guest editor; David Lehman, series ed.

Jazz & other hot subjects: new and selected poems by Katharine Harer

The Hot Breath of War by Alixopulos

frogpond, v.39:3, autumn 2016

Jim, 2014 edition, by Jim Woodring

February

Querelle by Jean Genet, translated by Anselm Hollo

The Largeness the Small is Capable of edited by Crag Hill [ebook]

Mipoesias, 2015 edited by Nin Andrews [ebook]

Has the Gay Movement Failed? by Martin Duberman

Hanging Loose, 103, 2014; Hershon, et al, editors

Invincible Ultimate Collection, v.12: #133-144 Robert Kirkman, writer; Ryan Ottley artist

Pieces of Eight: haiku offerings by Jerry Ball

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr

The Weary World Rejoices by Steve Fellner

Haiku, vol.1: Eastern Culture by R. H. Blyth

March

Unthinkable: an extraordinary journey through the world’s strangest brains by Helen Thomson

Hanging Loose, 93, 2008; Hershon, Lourie, et all, editors

Across the Great Divide by Tobey Kaplan

The Complete Peanuts: 1959-1960 by Charles M. Schulz

W. W. Denslow by Douglas G. Greene and Michael P. Hearn

The Darker Fall by Rick Barot

Konfidenz by Ariel Dorfman

The Complete Peanuts: 1961-1962 by Charles M. Schulz

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

Smith Going Backward by Steve Carey

A Spy in the House of Years by Giles Goodland

Facts About the Moon by Dorianne Laux

April

Benefits of Doubt by Cyrus Armajani

Saigon Calling: London, 1963-1975 by Marcelino Truong

The Book of Men by Dorianne Laux

Brief Histories of Everyday Objects by Andy Warner

Deaf American Poetry: an anthology edited by John Lee Clark

The Best American Poetry 2009 David Wagoner, guest ed.; David Lehman, series ed.

So Bright the Vision by Clifford D. Simak

Getting Lost in a City Like This by Jack Anderson

A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses by Anne Trubek

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

May

I’m Not Even That into Astrology by Linnea Brett

Babel: around the world in twenty languages by Gaston Dorren

Haiku, vol.2: Spring by R. H. Blyth

Yellow Moving Van by Ron Koertge

Olympusville by Ron Koertge

Look Back and Laugh: journal comics by Liz Prince

Gods in Color: polychromy in the ancient world Brinkmann, Dreyfus, Koch-Brinkmann, editors

Moon Crumbs by Sheila Dong

The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: poems for men edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman, Michael Meade

X-Men Grand Design, vol.2: Second Genesis by Ed Piskor

From the Estuary to the Offing by Kevin Bertolero

The Rise and Fall of the Bible by Timothy Beal

June

Once I Was Many Other Things by Jessie Knoles

Inside Star Trek: the real story by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman

Ticket to Exile: a memoir by Adam David Miller

The International Homosexual Conspiracy by Larry-Bob Roberts

Big Dreams: into the heart of California by Bill Barich

War on Peace: the end of diplomacy and the decline of American influence by Ronan Farrow

Haiku, vol.3: Summer - Autumn by R. H. Blyth

July

The Best American Poetry 2012 Mark Doty, guest editor; David Lehman, series editor

Gay and Lesbian Poetry: an anthology from Sappho to Michelangelo edited by James J. Wilhelm

Hasib and the Queen of Serpents by David B. 

Shenandoah, v.34 n.2, fall 2004

I Killed: true stories of the road from America’s top comics edited by Ritch Shydner and Mark Schiff

Mama’s Last Hug: animal emotions by Frans de Waal

Kid Gloves: nine months of careful chaos by Lucy Knisley

August

On That One-Way Trip to Mars by Marlena Chertock

Detour by John Rowe

Merry Men by Robert Rodi and Jackie Lewis

Parkland by Dave Cullen

Haiku, vol.4: Autumn - Winter by R. H. Blyth

Modern Japanese Tanka edited by Makoto Ueda

Broken World by Joseph Lease

Senryu: Japanese satirical verses by R. H. Blyth

Nepantla: an anthology for queer poets of color edited by Christopher Soto

The Body Ghost by Joseph Lease

Europe in Sepia by Dubravka Ugresic

Look Busy by Jane McDermott

September

Married at Fourteen by Lucille Lang Day

Cenzontle by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

The Best American Poetry 2013 Denise Duhamel, guest ed.; David Lehman, series ed.

The Trouble with Gravity by Richard Panek

The Penguin Book of Haiku translated and edited by Adam L. Kern

New Poets of the American West Lowell Jaeger, editor

Can Grande’s Castle by Amy Lowell

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor

Only as the Day Is Long (the New Poems section) by Dorianne Laux

October

The Best American Poetry 2014 Terrance Hayes, guest ed.; David Lehman, series ed.

Wide Awake by David Levithan

Guts by Raina Telgemeier

Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan

Where Do Camels Belong? by Ken Thompson

November

Voices of the Soviet Space Program: cosmonauts, soldiers, and engineers who took the USSR into space by Slava Gerovitch

Bindweed Anthology 2018: Devil’s Guts edited by Leilanie Stewart and Joseph Robert

The Best American Poetry 2015 Sherman Alexie, guest ed.; David Lehman, series ed.

Monsters I Have Been by Kenji C. Liu

Calypso by David Sedaris

Bloom by Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

The End of San Francisco by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

December

Daughters of Destiny by L. Frank Baum writing as Schuyler Staunton [ebook]

Animal Man, vol.1, issues 1-9; Grant Morrison, writer; Chas Truog, artist

Spell by Ann Lauterbach

a poet’s accounting

I’ve never before seen an accounting of a poet’s earnings for a poem. So when I came across the one below in the notes at the back of the Best American Poetry anthology, I took note. 

Thomas Sayers Ellis writes:

I was paid $2,230 for the publication of [my poem] in Poetry magazine, $250 for the recording of the poem for the Poetry Foundation’s podcast; and $500 more, by the Poetry Foundation, when the poem received the Salmon O. Levinson Prize. The appearance of ‘Vernacular Owl’ in this anthology will add $100, bringing the total to $3,080[.]

The poem takes up seven pages, so the original payment works out to about $320 per page. Not bad! I know the Poetry Foundation is awash in money due to a bequest from someone superrich, so I’m glad to see that they are paying poets decently. And they don’t charge reading fees. It would be nice if they took a little less time to make a decision, though. It’s been six months since I sent them poems. 

source: Best American Poetry 2015 Sherman Alexie, editor; series editor, David Lehman. Scribner Poetry / Simon & Schuster, New York

notes toward an autobiography by others

When the [yoga] class is small, the teacher gives instruction and walks around helping students make adjustments. When she came to help me as I struggled with a posture she asked me if I had any injuries. 

“Well,” I said. “I had a really difficult childhood.”

When I read this passage I had an intense feeling of deja vu. I said exactly that in answer to the yoga teacher’s question. Different yoga teacher (I’m sure), different class. 

Have you had any injuries? she asked. 

“An unhappy childhood,” I answered. 

source: Look Busy: one hundred 100-word stories by and for the easily distracted by Jane McDermott

2014. Fourteen Hills Press, San Francisco CA

the only reason you need rights is cuz you’re ugly

“We women . . . . !”

A skinny creature

Stands there.

— Chinchabo

“It is no accident that most suffragettes and women workers are unattractive people. Beautiful women have their privileges which they properly value more than their rights,” adds editor and translator R. H. Blyth in a note appended to the senryu. 

This isn’t an argument. It’s merely a taunt. Ha ha! You’re ugly! If you were pretty you’d be happy. 

If you want to classify the fallacy, call it ad hominem; as Wikipedia has it, “genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument.” Fits this one to a T. 

Blyth follows up by elevating “rights” over “privileges,” which basically translates to I Got Mine So Shut Up, in Blyth’s version of What Women Want.

Hmph.  

source: Senryu: Japanese satirical verses

translated and explained by R. H. Blyth

1949. Hokuseido Press

another possible epigraph

A year ago I put up a post that included a few lines I thought might make a good epigraph for “Autobiography of a Book.”

This poem by the Greek poet Strato of Sardis has good possibilities as an epigraph too:

Lucky little scroll, I am not jealous. Some boy

while reading you might squeeze you, touch his chin with you,

or press you to his dainty lips, or even place you on 

his tender thighs to roll you up, most blessedest of scrolls.

You will often rest there on his bosom, and when he puts 

you on his chair, fearless you will dare caress his bottom.

You will hold conversations all alone with him.

I beg you, little scroll, put in a word for me quite often.

Scrolls were the book equivalent of the time. Strato was writing in the second century A. D. The translation is by James J. Wilhelm.

source: Gay and Lesbian Poetry: an anthology from Sappho to Michelangelo

edited by James J. Wilhelm
1995. Garland Publishing, New York