Intimate Grammars: An Ethnography of Navajo Poetry - Softcover

Webster, Anthony K.

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9780816534197: Intimate Grammars: An Ethnography of Navajo Poetry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816534195 ISBN 13: 9780816534197

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 2016

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On April 24, 2013, Luci Tapahonso became the first poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, possibly the first Native American community to create such a post. The establishment of this position testifies to the importance of Navajo poets and poetry to the Navajo Nation. It also indicates the Navajo equivalence to the poetic traditions connected with the U.S. poet laureate and the poet laureate of the United Kingdom, author Anthony K. Webster asserts, as well as its separateness from those traditions.

Intimate Grammars takes an ethnographic and ethnopoetic approach to language and culture in contemporary time, in which poetry and poets are increasingly important and visible in the Navajo Nation. Webster uses interviews and linguistic analysis to understand the kinds of social work that Navajo poets engage in through their poetry.

Based on more than a decade of ethnographic and linguistic research, Webster’s book explores a variety of topics: the emotional value assigned to various languages spoken on the Navajo Nation through poetry (Navajo English, Navlish, Navajo, and English), why Navajo poets write about the “ugliness” of the Navajo Nation, and the way contemporary Navajo poetry connects young Navajos to the Navajo language. Webster also discusses how contemporary Navajo poetry challenges the creeping standardization of written Navajo and how boarding school experiences influence how Navajo poets write poetry and how Navajo readers appreciate contemporary Navajo poetry.

Through the work of poets such as Luci Tapahonso, Laura Tohe, Rex Lee Jim, Gloria Emerson, Blackhorse Mitchell, Esther Belin, Sherwin Bitsui, and many others, Webster provides new ways of thinking about contemporary Navajo poets and poetry. Intimate Grammars offers an exciting new ethnography of speaking, ethnopoetics, and discourse-centered examinations of language and culture.

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Book Description:

This book takes an ethnographic, ethnopoetic, and discourse-centered approach to language and culture to explore the
social work of contemporary Navajo written poetry that is performed orally on the Navajo Nation (and beyond). Based
on over a decade of ethnographic and linguistic research, the author explores such topics as the emotional value
assigned to the various languages spoken on the Navajo Nation (from Navajo English, to Navlish, to Navajo, to
English) through poetry, why Navajo poets write about the “ugliness” of the Navajo Nation, the way contemporary
Navajo poetry is meant to create affective connections between young Navajos and the Navajo language, how some
contemporary Navajo poetry written in Navajo challenges a creeping standardization of written Navajo (and with it
Western notions of modernization), the role of the boarding school experience in the ways Navajo poets imagine and
write poetry and in the kind of historical memory work such poetry does, and finally the ways that contemporary
Navajo poetry is read and appreciated (or not appreciated) by other Navajos.

About the Author:

Anthony K. Webster is a linguistic anthropologist. He is the author of Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics, as well as numerous articles on Navajo language, ethnopoetics, and culture. He lives in southern Illinois.

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