So Chris-- first, Ofelia, I love that you opened with the poem
in O'odham --It was very nice to hear that language in the ear.
And I'm also wondering if you have
any of the poet whom you translated to Icelandic
that you could read.
I didn't bring it.
What about the poem you recited on the radio in Cleveland?
I can recite an Icelandic poem.
That would be great.
OK.
I'd love to hear it.
Yeah.
Yeah, this poem is actually by one
of the Icelandic modernists.
Icelandic modernism happened within a span
of about 10 years.
So anyhow, what distinguished Icelandic modernism
was writing about the common people.
It took it out of this rarified air of poetry.
So this is by David Stefànsson, and the poem is called "Ég
sigli í haust," "I Sail in the Fall."
Sumarið líður. Sumarið líður. Það kólnar og kemur haust.
Ég er fuglinn sem flýgur, skipið sem bylgjan ber. Kvæði mín eru kveðjur. Ég kem og ég fer.
Ofelia, could you say something about how you got interested
in language?
Both your native language and studying language
and [INAUDIBLE]
My work in language and linguistics
really was by accident.
My first language is O'odham.
That's the only language we had in our household.
And when I first came here to the university
I found some publications at the university bookstore,
and there was two of them.
One was a little dictionary, a word list basically,
called "Papago to English Dictionary,"
and the other one was "Legends and Lore of the Papago and Pima
Indians."
And they were both written-- one side was O'odham,
one side was English.
And I looked at it.
I just assumed that because I can speak this language
I should be able to read it.
That does not happen.
Somebody has to teach you the system that these things are
written in.
And so I sought out someone who had worked on O'odham here
in our anthropology department, and he taught me
how to read and write O'odham.
And after that, I met totally by coincidence one
of the most famous linguists, who has since passed away,
who worked on O'odham and other Uto-Aztecan languages,
languages related to O'odham, Dr. Ken Hale.
He was visiting faculty then here.
And also at the same time, the linguistics department
was being created.
And so it was all very fortuitous.
I always consider myself to be one of those people who
are always in the right place at the right time,
and also sort of thoughtful enough
to react when I was in those right places.
And so Dr. Hale was very influential in getting
me to think about working on O'odham, and all of that
just evolved.
And one of the reasons that I started writing poetry,
when I first started writing it was just
for my O'odham language students because we need stuff to read.
As you know, most American Indian languages
for classroom teaching has very limited materials
and resources.
So as I was teaching language here
I had to create material as I taught.
And one of the things that we just happened upon
was to try and write some short pieces.
And we started writing poetry for each other,
and we got published, too, myself and my students
back in the early '80s.
And it just sort of evolved from there.
And some of my students still write along with me
at different points.
Thank you for your question.
Well, thank you both very much.
I'm sorry, do you have questions?
Just I was going to ask Ofelia I often wrote [INAUDIBLE]..
I want to know are there any other [INAUDIBLE]
poets that you know of or writers
who are writing in your native language?
I'm looking for [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah.
Yeah, so my friend [?
Sherwin wants to know ?}, there are other O'odham writers out
there.
We had one in Mr. Lopez, Daniel Lopez,
who only recently passed away.
He published with us early on, too,
and he continued to write up to his death.
And some of his students have been writing.
They're just very hard to find because a lot of times
they won't admit that they do that,
so you do have to ask them in a certain way
and they will come forward.
But the language I think lends itself to poetry very well,
both in the first language and also they
respond to the English forms.
And so I think there are some that
are just difficult to locate unfortunately.
So I can help you beat some bushes and find some.
Yeah.
I have a question for Chris.
I noticed a lot of poems you write today deal with the self.
You know, what is the self?
And I wondered if you could speak
to how that concept relates to your study of Buddhism
if it does.
Is that on?
It's dead.
Did everybody hear that?
Write about the self and [INAUDIBLE]??
Well, Sandy asked because I seem to write
a lot about the self and the poems I did read today
are quite a bit, how does my Buddhist practice influence
what I'm writing in my poetry?
Well, in a sense, very much.
This idea of the self as being a fixed thing, as being
a continual entity, is, according to Buddhism,
illusory, and so the self arises and drops away.
It's a process of resurrection and dying.
So what I'm exploring actually within each poem
is this idea of this arising and falling away
and how that really leads away from this idea of things
in life, reality, being fixed.
There's other things involved.
The way my teacher teaches about the self and the nature
of the self is in regards to these two activities
of expansion and contraction that happen simultaneously.
It's a manifestation of the breath.
As you breathe in, you're also exhaling.
As you inhale, you're exhaling, too.
And that's a way of understanding.
Through this contemplative act, it's
a way of understanding the nature of the self.
And so long story short, I think that's what I'm exploring
is this idea of self.
To me I think that's inexhaustible.
Yes.
Ofelia, you mentioned in your poem that language [INAUDIBLE]..
You also just briefly mentioned other writers
who have to ask it a right way because they [INAUDIBLE]..
In the process of taking your language and putting
[INAUDIBLE],, I don't want to say is there less difficulty,
but what is lost?
What is the struggle with putting your language
into this other form?
The question was what is lost over the process of putting
the O'odham language into print?
Well, I don't like to think that there's
something lost because what happens when
I'm writing in O'odham is that the whole process starts
in O'odham.
So I can see if you were talking about translation where there's
a certain level that you go through to move from one
language to the other depending on the piece, of course,
or the pieces.
But for me, I create the O'odham pieces,
if they're going to be in O'odham,
the whole idea, everything, starts in that language.
I'm thinking about it, trying out words, trying out phrases,
and so forth, and figuring out how it all fits together,
and saying it out loud to see if it all flows well.
I know the piece that I read that
was an O'odham is sort of very strongly influenced
by a traditional O'odham song, and so I borrowed
some concepts from that.
I did try to translate the song.
I sort of took the idea of how the song works
and the content that the song is about
and put it in my own piece.
So I think if I tried to move the song over,
certainly it wouldn't be the same piece anymore.
I know that and I'm very sensitive to that.
Then like I said, I think the reason
that I don't feel that there's a gap
or that there's something lost is
because I do that initial creation in the first language.
Thank you for your question.
[INAUDIBLE]
That's a really hard question simply because I began life
speaking Icelandic, and then I lost it
after coming to the United States, in a way.
I mean, it no longer became my primary language.
I have moments and times in dream
where I'm speaking Icelandic again.
And when I go home, I struggle a bit at first
to get back into it.
So I haven't ever written in Icelandic
and then translated it over.
I do know that in my translations of Jóhann's work,
I read the poem.
I read it until I begin hearing him.
And there's some kind of alchemical process
that I begin hearing it in English.
And so my [INAUDIBLE] is the first draft of the translation,
is pretty close to what my final translation is.
There is some word tweaking and revision that happens,
but it's not a major.
So I don't know if that's--
is that?
OK.
One more question.
Last question, please.
Ofelia, you said that O'odham was the language of your home.
Did you also speak English as a young child
or did that come later?
It came later when I went to school.
And I went to school late, so probably
about eight years old or so.
So it probably wasn't until between eight and nine years
old that I learned to speak English.
And my only first English-speaking models
were my teachers and people whose first language
was English.
And you went home, you sort of left it on the bus.
At home you went to O'odham.
Thank you for your question.
Thank you very much.