Imagining Syntheses

Abstract

A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things.1... for those of us who think of poetry as linked to, as that very process of unfolding & changing, let me venture a guess that what we're recovering is the oral tradition [...], but what we're creating is an oral tradition - & that we'll get to the first only by shooting for the second.2Like the nomad herself, a nomadic poetics doesn't stop moving. This final chapter is no conclusion, then, no place where the book can be laid to rest. Certainly, I will synthesize some of the key ideas that have emerged during the discussion in order to consolidate a theory of an AustralianChilean postcolonial poetics. These syntheses are the first of many, however, rather than the end-points. Any nomadic poetics must be as permeable as the poems themselves. Thus, this chapter will emulate a waterhole, providing a place of rest and reflection from which we may continue on our own.Aboriginal and Mapuche poems have provided us with ?mobile meeting grounds', in which we have been able to sit down and engage with indigenous poetics and philosophies. While seated, we have seen that these meeting grounds are far from silent, empty places; rather, they are full of people, and their often noisy clamour is part of an attempt to throw off modernity's stifling cloak. We haven't been able to stay seated for long, however, because each meeting has been only temporary; before long, everyone has packed up and moved on. Such fleeting glimpses into indigenous cultures haven't frustrated our analysis. By reading poems nomadically, we didn't need to insist that someone stick around long enough to explain things carefully and com1 prehensively. Instead, just like everyone else, we've got our gear together and have set off once more.Before we could come to terms with the context and importance of an indigenous nomad poetic, we first needed to look at the Western lyric form, and at how canonical, non-indigenous writers have used the form so problematically. The ?universal individual' emerged in the poems of Judith Wright and Pablo Neruda, whereby ?the world', or everything that was other to the poet him- or herself, was generalized by the gaze of a transcendental T (or eye). A disturbing consequence of detaching the poetic voice from the limits of the human body was that it no longer enjoyed any compensating balance; as a flow of expression, therefore, it could keep on going forever, flooding the lands beneath it. One of the most primal motivations behind indigenous poems was a need to reclaim the voices that settler poets like Neruda and Wright had assumed.The next stage of the discussion traced recent developments of poetic traditions with histories far longer than that of the printing press. A crucial component of song-poetry was a ?country-reflexivity', in which the source of poetic inspiration lay not in the individual poet but in the poet's country. Country-reflexivity means that the song-poem is part of a larger ecosystem. We can't see this entire environment, because we, too, are embedded in particular areas of it; opacity is thus a necessary part of the poetics. The structures of song-poetry constantly re-emerged in later parts of the book, too. In particular, Gularabulu provided a stepping-stone between contemporary, avantgarde Aboriginal poetry and its musical, oral heritage.Common to much of the indigenous poetry has been an emphasis on the progressive nature of the present moment, revealing dynamic, moving environments. Contemporary indigenous poets have remained in close contact with the virtual energies of their ancestors, so that their poems not only recall the memories of their heritage but also seek - like the song-poem - to emphatically relativize the primacy of the present moment. Furthermore, Aboriginal and Mapuche poetry continues to be characterized by a strongly performative dimension. The spoken word is irrepressibly potent, and enjoys a strong presence in the written text. …