How to Read an Oral Poem

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     How to Read an Oral Poem

     John Miles Foley

     University of Illinois Press

　　October 2002
　　280 pages. 6 x 9 inches. 6 photographs.
　　Cloth, ISBN 0-252-02770-1. $44.95
　　Paper, ISBN 0-252-07082-8. $19.95
　　Poetry / Comparative Literature

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　　Though they appear diverse, Homer's Odyssey and slam poetry from contemporary urban America draw from the well of oral tradition. This unique, practical, and user-friendly guide explores the cultural contexts of verbal art to provide more-than-textual methods for understanding the structure, principles, and social applications of oral poetry.
　　Drawing on dozens of examples, including a North American slam poet, a Tibetan paper-singer, a South African praise-poet, and an ancient Greek bard, John Miles Foley shows that although oral poetry long predates the invention of writing, it continues to be a vital culture-making and communications tool in societies all over the world. Based on fieldwork and archival research on epics, folktales, lyrics, laments, charms, and other oral traditions, How to Read an Oral Poem answers the questions, What is oral poetry? How does it work? What is reading, literally and figuratively?

　　This accessible and engaging work is enhanced by audio and video examples of oral poetry, which are available at http://www.oraltradition.org. The book can also be used as companion volume to Foley's Teaching Oral Traditions.

　　John Miles Foley is Curators' and Byler Professor of Classical Studies and English at the University of Missouri and director of its Center for Studies in Oral Tradition. He is the author of Homer's Traditional Art, The Singer of Tales in Performance, Immanent Art, Teaching Oral Traditions, and numerous scholarly articles.
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　　Welcome to the e-companion to How to Read an Oral Poem by John Miles Foley (http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f02/foley.html). This resource provides photo, audio, video, and bibliographic support for the various chapters or "words" in that book. The site has been designed to offer examples and additional information that are best presented via the web, the kinds of materials that don't fit comfortably between the covers of a conventional book. In this sense we're trying to take advantage of both media -- book and web -- and to underline the kinship between oral poetry and the Internet (a subject discussed in HROP).

　　A few tips on how to use what you'll find here. To start, you can navigate most successfully with the book in one hand and your mouse in the other. The various materials can be located by clicking first on Table of Contents and then following the links. The individual items available include: a complete table of contents, photographs to illustrate the Four Scenarios, an audio clip of lines from Beowulf in the original Old English (to accompany the First Word), a video of Lynne Procope performing her slam poem, "elemental woman" (to accompany the Fourth Word), photos of slam poets performing at the Nuyorican (to accompany the Seventh Word), an audio recording of a healing charm from the Former Yugoslavia (with text and English translation, to accompany the Eighth Word), an original-language text and English translation of a healing charm (to accompany the Eighth Word), and an audio recording of The Widow Jana, an epic from the Former Yugoslavia (also with text and English translation, to accompany the Eighth Word). In addition, clicking on Annotated Bibliography will bring you a version of HROP's bibliography with each book and article summarized in a few sentences.

　　So much for the basic content of the e-companion. We will be adding materials and links as appropriate in the future, seeking to make the site an ever more useful resource for those interested in how to read an oral poem.

　　Contents vii
　　Prologue xi
　　Pronunciation Key xvii
　　Four Scenarios 1
　　　　#1. A Tibetan paper-singer
　　　　#2. A North American slam poet
　　　　#3. A South African praise-poet
　　　　#4. An Ancient Greek bard
　　What the Oral Poets Say (in Their Own "Words") 11
　　　Mujo Kukuruzovic
　　　Salko Moric
　　　Ibro Basic
　　　What's in a "Word"?
　　First Word: What is Oral Poetry? 22
　　　Media technologies and our species-year
　　　Oral tradition and the present day
　　　Media bias
　　　Explaining the title: Four questions
　　　What is oral poetry?
　　　　Step 1. Opening up the poetic line
　　　　Step 2. Opening up the poetic genre
　　　　Step 3. Opening up the oral-written dichotomy
　　　　Step 4. Opening up media dynamics Oral Performance
　　　　　　　Voiced texts
　　　　　　　Voices from the Past
　　　　　　　Written Oral Poems


　　Second Word: Contexts and Reading 58
　　　　Detachable speech?
　　　　What is an oral poem?
　　　　What is reading?
　　　　　　Autonomous versus ideological literacy

　　　　The complexity of reading: three cases
　　　　　　Foreign language in an Indonesian village
　　　　　　Sonorous texts in Tibet
　　　　　　An ancient library of Hebrew scriptures

　　　　Reading Bellerophon's tablet

　　Third Word: Being there: Performance Theory 79
　　　　What do we mean by how?
　　　　　　Ways of reading

　　　　Three perspectives
　　　　How Performance Theory works
　　　　　　What difference does performance make?

　　　　Keys to performance Special codes
　　　　　　Figurative language
　　　　　　Parallelism
　　　　　　Special formulae
　　　　　　Appeals to tradition
　　　　　　Disclaimer of performance

　　Fourth Word: Verbal art on its own terms: Ethnopoetics 95
　　　　Does oral poetry need to be read differently?
　　　　Reading, representing, and reperforming
　　　　Scoring oral poetry
　　　　Voiced Texts: Slam poetry
　　　　Voices from the Past: Beowulf

　　Fifth Word: Traditional implications: Immanent Art 109
　　　　What difference does repetition make?
　　　　The great experiment
　　　　From structure to meaning
　　　　The model
　　　　　　Register, Performance arena, Communicative economy
　　　　From model to application
　　　　Dovetailing: Word-power

　　Sixth Word: A Poor Reader's Almanac 125
　　　　Why *proverbs*?
　　　　An almanac of *proverbs*
　　　　　#1. Oral poetry works like language, only more so.
　　　　　#2. Oralpoetry is a very plural noun.
　　　　　#3. Performance is the enabling event, tradition is the context for that event.
　　　　　#4. The art of oral poetry emerges through rather than in spite of its special language.
　　　　　#5. The best companion for reading oral poetry in an unpublished dictionary.
　　　　　#6. The play's the thing (and not the script).
　　　　　#7. Repetition is the symptom, not the disease.
　　　　　#8. Composition and reception are two sides of the same coin.
　　　　　#9. Read both behind and between the signs.
　　　　　#10. True diversity demands diversity in frame of reference.

　　Seventh Word: Reading Some Oral Poems 146
　　　　Case studies and the grid
　　　　　　Zuni and Kaqchikel Mayan oral poetry
　　　　　　Slam poetry
　　　　　　　　At the Nuyorican
　　　　　　　　Slam as performance
　　　　　　The Odyssey
　　　　　　The Siri Epic
　　　　　　The Song of Roland
　　　　A repertoire for reading oral poetry

　　Eighth Word: An Ecology of South Slavic Oral Poetry 188
　　　　Healing the body: Magical charms
　　　　Healing the spirit: Funeral laments
　　　　Tracking identity: Genealogies
　　　　Living the heritage: Epics
　　　　　　Christian epic: Marko, Kosovo, The Widow Jana
　　　　　　Moslem epic
　　　　Speaking in poetry: An unclassified species
　　　　A diverse ecology

　　Post-Script 219
　　　　Pre-script, para-script, post-script
　　　　Pathways
　　　　Cyber-editions and e-readers

　　Bibliography 227
　　Index 243



　　"How to Read an Oral Poem sets out to provide guidance in how to perform a very tricky intellectual exercise: the competent 'reading' of texts that exist in oral performance. It engages all the most pertinent scholarship with mastery and understanding."
　　-- Barre Toelken, author of Morning Dew and Roses: Nuance, Metaphor, and Meaning in Folksong and The Dynamics of Folklore


　　"John Miles Foley is unrivaled in his familiarity with the fascinating range of worldwide oral traditions. . . . A lucid and passionate introduction to oral poetics."
　　-- Richard Peter Martin, Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics at Stanford University