Author: Karl Reichl File Type: pdf Oral epic poetry is still performed by Turkic singers in Central Asia. On trips to the region, Karl Reichl collected heroic poems from the Uzbek, Kazakh, and Karakalpak oral traditions. Through a close analysis of these Turkic works, he shows that they are typologically similar to heroic poetry in Old English, Old High German, and Old French and that they can offer scholars new insights into the oral background of these medieval texts.Reichl draws on his research in Central Asia to discuss questions regarding performance as well as the singers training, role in society, and repertoire. He asserts that heroic poetry and epic are primarily concerned with the interpretation of the past in song the courageous deeds of ancestors, the search for tribal and societal roots, and the definition and transmission of cultural values. Reichl finds that in these traditions the heroic epic is part of a generic system that includes historical and eulogistic poetry as well as heroic lays, a view that has diachronic implications for medieval poetry.Singing the Past reminds readers that because much medieval poetry was composed for oral recitation, both the Turkic and the medieval heroic poems must always be appreciated as poetry in performance, as sound listened to, as words spoken or sung.ReviewHe is not out to identify the authentic and strip away the spurious. He understands that such categories have at least as much to do with the interpretive desires of their proponents as they do with the texts they set out to study. The performative element is central to Reichls ways of reading, as one would expect of someone who has heard and recorded so many such events across Central Asia. . . . It gives us a larger world for reading heroic poetry, and for that we should be grateful.Nicholas Howe, Speculum, July 2004Karl Reichls brilliant work with little-known modern Turkic oral literatures casts unexpected light on more familiar works of medieval literature (such as Beowulf) while western texts and concepts (such as genre) provide a context for facilitating appreciation of the more exotic products of his remarkable fieldwork.Joseph Harris, Harvard UniversityKarl Reichl studies oral and oral-derived narrative from a uniquely productive vantage point, combining his own fieldwork and recording of Central Asian oral epic with his deep knowledge of western European vernacular literature in the Middle Ages. The result is an intriguing look at a living oral poetics and a fresh, informed reconstruction of the verbal arts of the early medieval period.John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, University of Missouri Language NotesText English Oral epic poetry is still performed by Turkic singers in Central Asia. On trips to the region, Karl Reichl collected heroic poems from the Uzbek, Kazakh, and Karakalpak oral traditions. Through a close analysis of these Turkic works, he shows that they are typologically similar to heroic poetry in Old English, Old High German, and Old French and that they can offer scholars new insights into the oral background of these medieval texts.Reichl draws on his research in Central Asia to discuss questions regarding performance as well as the singers training, role in society, and repertoire. He asserts that heroic poetry and epic are primarily concerned with the interpretation of the past in song the courageous deeds of ancestors, the search for tribal and societal roots, and the definition and transmission of cultural values. Reichl finds that in these traditions the heroic epic is part of a generic system that includes historical and eulogistic poetry as well as heroic lays, a view that has diachronic implications for medieval poetry.Singing the Past reminds readers that because much medieval poetry was composed for oral recitation, both the Turkic and the medieval heroic poems must always be appreciated as poetry in performance, as sound listened to, as words spoken or sung.ReviewHe is not out to identify the authentic and strip away the spurious. He understands that such categories have at least as much to do with the interpretive desires of their proponents as they do with the texts they set out to study. The performative element is central to Reichls ways of reading, as one would expect of someone who has heard and recorded so many such events across Central Asia. . . . It gives us a larger world for reading heroic poetry, and for that we should be grateful.-Nicholas Howe, Speculum, July 2004Karl Reichls brilliant work with little-known modern Turkic oral literatures casts unexpected light on more familiar works of medieval literature (such as Beowulf) while western texts and concepts (such as genre) provide a context for facilitating appreciation of the more exotic products of his remarkable fieldwork.-Joseph Harris, Harvard UniversityKarl Reichl studies oral and oral-derived narrative from a uniquely productive vantage point, combining his own fieldwork and recording of Central Asian oral epic with his deep knowledge of western European vernacular literature in the Middle Ages. The result is an intriguing look at a living oral poetics and a fresh, informed reconstruction of the verbal arts of the early medieval period.-John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, University of Missouri Language NotesText English

Author: Marianne Boruch File Type: pdf A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation. The line between poetry (the delicate, surprising not-quite) and the essay (the emphatic so-there!) is thin, easily crossed. Both welcome a deep mulling-over, endlessly mixing image and idea and running with scissors certainly each distrusts the notion of premise or formulaic progression. Marianne Boruchs essays in The Little Death of Self emerged by way of odd details or bothersome questions that would not quitWhy does the self grow smaller as the poem grows enormous? Why does closure in a poem so often mean keep going? Must we stalk the poem or does the poem stalk us until the world clicks open? Boruchs intrepid curiosity led her to explore fields of expertise about which she knew little aviation, music, anatomy, history, medicine, photography, fiction, neuroscience, physics, anthropology, painting, and drawing. Theres an addiction to metaphor here, an affection for image, sudden turns of thinking, and the great subjects of poetry love, death, time, knowledge. Theres amazement at the dumb luck of staying long enough in an inkling to make it a poem at all. Poets such as Keats, Stevens, Frost, Plath, Auden, and Bishop, along with painters, inventors, doctors, scientists, composers, musicians, neighbors, friends, and familyall traffic blatantly or under the surfaceand one gets a glimpse of such fellow travelers now and then. **