April is National Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, a celebration initiated by the Academy of American Poets after the success of Black History Month (February) and Women's History Month (March). Does every month have an official celebration attached to it? Is there a registry for such things? Who was that man with the clipboard? The one shouting, "November's still available! Anyone for November?"

In 1900, field linguist and Franz Boas student John Swanton began recording (in phonemic transcript) Haida myths and legends (and histories, of course) as told to him by Haida poet-storytellers Skaay and Ghandl, which, with the assistance of Haida Henry Moody, Swanton translated into English. In 1995, the anthropologist John Enrico, working with two Haida speakers in their nineties (Hazel Stevens and Kathleen Hans) produced from this transcription-translation a new English version, called Haida Myths and Histories, which Haida elders like the artist Guujaaw (above) believe to be the most faithful. Four years later, Robert Bringhurst published A Story as Sharp as a Knife, a seductive collective of verse poems made from Swanton's original transcription-translation.

Accusations of cultural appropriation/theft aside, one of the more interesting commentaries that accompanied Bringhurst's book was Enrico's contention that, despite their oral origins, the Haida myths and legends and histories are closer to prose poems than to verse poems, and that Bringhurst clothing them in verse (in addition to taking liberties with his translation) make them more about Bringhurst than the Haida people to which they belong.

I bring this up because the conversation concerning prose poetry and verse poetry is on poets' minds of late. Poet rob mclennan, a one-person hub for much English-language poetry, saw fit to give this discussion some space in a recent issue of his online journal periodicities. So thank you to rob, and a Happy Poetry Month to those who read and write it!