When It Rains: Papago and Pima Poetry by Ofelia Zepeda

Abstract

368 Western American Literature critical assessment is more often than not about one page in length. Living writers were invited to submit a short statement, and some have done so. Twentieth-Century Western Writers is, then, a source book on writers of “westerns,” some of them major novelists who get no more space than begin­ ning or obscure writers. No one is going to check every detail in a book of this size, but in general the biographical data are correct, even to some little-known facts. A few errors, such as allowing Forrester Blake to live on, are inevitable, partly because there must have been a gap of several years between the gather­ ing of information and the publication date. Perhaps the weakest part of the format is the “Critical Studies” notation, missing from most writers and inade­ quate for the others. The selection of writers included in this book, we are told by the editor, was based on the recommendations of R. Jeff Banks, Richard Etulain, Leslie Fiedler, James Folsom, Thomas Lyon, C. L. Sonnichsen, and Jon Tuska. These gentlemen managed to come up with an even 100 writers unknown to me. They also skipped a few who are listed in A Bibliographical Guide to the study of Western American Literature. Sonnichsen, who, if anyone, has looked into all 312 writers, provides an excellent Preface to the book in which he tackles the problems of definition of “West” and “western,” emphasizes the great variety of fiction that can in some way be called “western,” and discusses the formula and the myth as well. This essay must be consulted by anyone wishing to pursue further the “western” genre. Twentieth-Century Western Writers is both an enlightening and an entertaining tour through an American genre. For sheer information it is invaluable; for literary evaluations it should be taken with a grain of salt. JOHN R. MILTON University of South Dakota When It Rains: Papago and Pima Poetry. By Ofelia Zepeda. (Tucson: Uni­ versity of Arizona Press, 1982. 82 pages, $8.95.) The emphasis of this collection of contemporary Papago and Pima poetry falls upon its tribal sources as an expression of developing interest in the ances­ tral language and the production of a Native American literature. The poems in this attractively printed volume are all short lyrics in English with the Papago original on the facing page. One can only applaud the enterprise that encourages writers to extend their language into new poetic forms. Unfortu­ nately, the work suffers from the problem poetry in translation often presents: it seems flat and not interesting as poetry. On my way to Albuquerque I see many beautiful desert scenes, Mountains, rivers, cliffs and trees. Reviews 369 All were gleaming in their unique ways. How grateful I felt to Mother Earth. Typically an expression of feeling, this small lyric is not meant to be analyzed to death. It is illustrative, however, of the translation problem. A shift in tense aside, the reader is told about the feeling rather than shown it. The desert scenes may be “beautiful,” but we have no evocative descriptions of the “mountains, rivers, cliffs and trees” that make them so. We are told they “were gleaming in their unique ways,” but neither “gleaming” nor “unique” help us visualize these qualities. The poem is really about “gratefulness,” a delight­ ful feeling, certainly, but not one that can be shared by a reader without the necessary “objective correlatives,” the gleaming specifics of this landscape. What we know is that a narrator felt “grateful,” and that is all. Part of the problem is that this is specifically Papago and Pima poetry, its specialness derived from its native roots. But many of the poems could have been written by any poet anywhere. My Grandmother My grandmother isold But she knows how to make baskets She makes baskets all day, When she finishes a lot, she sells them With the money she buys groceries In this way my grandmother never goes hungry. If few of us have grandmothers who make baskets, the generality of descrip­ tion here smooths out the attractiveness of this particular grandmother. What kind of baskets does she make? What are their...