Excerpt from 15 Flower World Variations - Jerome Rothenberg

flower

         with the body of a fawn

                   under a cholla flower

standing there

         to rub your antlers

                   bending

turning where you stand to rub

         your antler

                  in the flower world

the dawn

         there in its light

                  under a cholla flower

standing there

         to rub your antlers

                  bending turning where you stand

to rub your antlers

         flower

                  with the body of a fawn

under a cholla flower

         standing there

                  to rub your antlers

bending

         turning where you stand to rub
                   your antlers

The 15 Flower World Variations (Membrane Press, 1984) are derived from Yaqui Deer Dance songs by poet-translator-anthologist Jerome Rothenberg, using literal translations by Carleton Wilder et al. The full work can be found at the wonderful Ubuweb ethnopoetics site. 


Rothenberg's work has been called "anthology-assemblages." He identified with both the twentieth-century avant garde and with tribal poetry. The poems here are a literary manifestation of Yaqui (northern Mexican) cosmology. 

The Yaqui conception of the world is considerably different from that of their Mexican and United States neighbors. For example, the world (in Yaqui, anía) is composed of five separate worlds: the desert wilderness world, the mystical world, the flower world, the dream world, and the night world. Much Yaqui ritual is centered upon perfecting these worlds and eliminating the harm that has been done to them, especially by people (source)

Recently, I have had the privilege of reading the poetry of both Caroline Goodwin and Robert Hass, whose attention to the natural world I found refreshing but also sort of out of place in modern life -- which may explain the former. 

Hass laments 'the declining value we ascribe to the natural world', and assigns a duty to poets to correct this. Tuesday Poem thrives on contemporary poetry but it's hard not to appreciate the variational verse that carries this poem, and for me it resonates with the idea of nature as part of a diurnal cycle that constantly turns on itself.

Bernadette Keating is the editor of this week's Tuesday Poem. She is currently studying towards a postgraduate diploma in art history at Victoria University. She also writes poetry and occasionally blogs about writing and art. Bernadette lives in Wellington, New Zealand.


Curator's Note: One week after the earthquake that devastated Christchurch, it is good to be reminded of the beauty of the natural world - as evoked in the Rothenberg work - as well as its terrors. All Tuesday Poets living in the area (and the families of Tuesday Poets living there) are safe and well despite coping with hardships as the city continues to recover the dead and get back on its feet. All our thoughts are with you, Christchurch.