Rothenberg and Nelson: "In-present factors"

Rothenberg hit on the very point I've unknowingly been trying to articulate and wrap my head around since the first meeting of our class. He acknowledges the cultural stigma native oral traditions have over non-native poetry and gives us the term "in-context factors." Rothenberg describes these in-context factors saying, "until our poetry becomes an integral part of the socio-spiritual fabric of our community, it will only pale as a unifying cultural force when compared to the work of the most primitive tribal shaman." In other words, the "poetry" (for acknowledged lack of a better term) of a tribal shaman is designed and executed around and for the unification of a culture. So then, what is the non-native oral tradition if not "an integral part of the socio-spiritual fabric of our community"? What then, is the potential value of our modern poetry or the translations of native poetry if it is not a unifying cultural force?

First of all, what is the value of such pieces of translated indigenous poetry such as those in Technicians of the Sacred? On the surface it doesn't appear to be a communication/art form designed for the unity of a culture or society. But, I'd like to argue that translated indigenous poetry is the direct result of uniting cultures. While this oral poetry is no longer being practiced solely for the religious and social traditions of a single culture, it is now being examined and interpreted and in turn units two separate cultures. The unification of these two separate cultures results in texts such as Technicians of the Sacred. So maybe we need to stop searching for the "in-context factors" which I believe to be so engrained into the native oral tradition, and so removed from present day society that it is virtually impossible for us, as modern beings, to fully understand and appreciate that oral tradition of and in itself--and start appreciating the translated text with its "in-present factors" as an avenue for unifying the oral history of two cultures. The "in-present factors" can serve as an integral part of the socio-spiritual relations between an ancient and present culture.

So instead of looking at books such as Rothenberg's Technicians of the Sacred and trying to pin point what these words meant to a culture of the past and trying to see what we can "figure out" about who they were as people, we need to look at the culture which is translating these poems and analyze why they were choose to interprete and the way in which they were interpreted has to say about today's culture and its relations to past and present. Maybe I'm suggesting an entirely new field--the study of ethnopoets as opposed to the study of ethnopoetics...what I'm saying is, we learn about our selves as we are today in the translation and appreciation of ethnopoetics and oral tradition. By interpreting these translations through "in-present factors" instead of only "in-context factors" this new poetry becomes an integral part of the socio-spiritual history of our country and in turn a unifying cultural force.