Carter Revard
Carter Curtis Revard (Nacido el 25 de marzo 1931) (Osage) es un poeta americano, erudito y escritor. Él es Osage y francés canadiense por parte de su padre y también tiene ascendencia europea-americana; Creció en la reserva tribal en Oklahoma. Tuvo una educación temprana y ganó una beca para la universidad, asistió a la Universidad de Tulsa para su licenciatura.
Su nombre Osage, Nom-Pe-Wah-El (Nompehwahthe), le fue dado en 1952 por su abuela paterna Josephine Jump. Ese año, ganó una beca Rhodes para estudios de postgrado en la Universidad de Oxford. Después de completar un doctorado en la Universidad de Yale, Revard concluyó la mayor parte de su carrera académica en la Universidad de Washington en St. Louis, donde se especializó en literatura medieval británica y lingüística.
Desde 1980, se ha convertido en notable como poeta nativo americano y escritor, y ha publicado varios libros, así como numerosos artículos sobre literatura. Ha recibido numerosos premios por su trabajo.
Libros de Carter Revard
How the Songs Come Down , Salt Publications (2005), poetry
Winning the Dust Bowl , University of Arizona Press (2001), autobiography
Family Matters, Tribal Affairs, University of Arizona Press (1999), autobiography
An Eagle Nation , University of Arizona Press (1997) poetry
Cowboys and Indians Christmas Shopping , Point Riders Press (1992), poetry
Ponca War Dancers , Point Riders Press (1980), poetry
El coyote cuenta por qué canta
Había un arroyo, junto a la madriguera,
que se volvía un cordel, a lo largo del verano seco
en que nací. Una noche, a finales de agosto, llovió
—nos despertó el Trueno. Las gotas percutían
contra el polvo, sobre las hojas tiesas del roble, sobre las piedras
cubiertas de liquen,
y vino la lluvia a cántaros, bajando la colina,
el viento mojado sopló hacia nuestra cueva y resonaron
los sonidos
del escurrir de hojas, el susurro de ramas empapadas en ráfagas
de viento.
Y entonces cambió la tonada del arroyo —oí caer una piedra
que hizo las nuevas ondas murmurar, en un tono más bajo.
En el sitio de las nuevas ondas, la próxima mañana, bebí
agua fresca y enlodada que me dio dentera.
Pensé en qué delicado era el equilibrio de la piedra y cómo
la tempestad se hizo música, cuando cambió mi mundo.
Traducción de Katherine Hedeen
y Víctor Rodríguez Núñez
Sobrevivir así
Sobrevivir, sé cómo hacerlo así.
Así, sé.
Llueve.
Las montañas y los desfiladeros y las plantas
crecen.
Hemos viajado así,
medimos nuestra distancia en historias
y amamos a nuestros hijos.
Les enseñamos
a amar sus nacimientos.
Nos dijimos una y otra vez
y otra, "sobreviviremos
así".
Poema de Carter Revard (Ponca) en traducción de Márgara Averbach
Survival this way
Survival,
I know how this way.
This way, I know.
It rains.
Mountains and canyons and plants
grow.
We traveled this way,
gauged our distance by stories
and loved our children.
We taught them
to love their births.
We told ourselves over and over
Again. "We shall survive
this way".
HIPEREQUIPAJE POSCOLONIAL
Ah, si Vuitton hiciera una valija
con hipertexto y módem... o por lo menos
ventanas
para que pusiéramos ahí nuevas carpetas, donde
las solapas no se arruguen y todas
las medias llenas de olor puedan colgarse con
cuidado
en el cajón de hierbas del hiperespacio
y con archivos todavía más frescos
cuyas trufas de chocolate nunca se derritan
en el suéter de cachemira.
Necesitamos esos agujeros negros prolijos reversibles
para cruzar Fronteras, cosas que podamos empacar
y cerrar en un solo roce
y nunca abrir una costura o desgarrar un cierre.
Harían que el eurodólar subiera como un cohete
y ey, piensen solamente, se podría reemplazar a los bombarderos
invisibles por equipajes diplomáticos llenos de asesinos virtuales,
se podría descartar a los terroristas usados en el Cesto de Basura,
para que quedara sólo una Realidad Virtuosa.
Todas las Reservaciones Indias podrían desaparecer
en el Valle de la Muerte,
accesible a través de su ícono de oro,
el dólar Sacajawea.
A esa Apple de Pandora, creo yo,
podría haberla vendido hasta el Satán más sórdido
a los más inteligentes Adán y Eva,
sólo con decirles un poquito de esto,
mis queridos, y ahí están,
en el Edén de nuevo.
POSTCOLONIAL HYPERBAGGAGE
If only Vuitton would make a suitcase
with modem and hypertext--or at least windows
to let us put new folders in, where
jackets won't wrinkle and all
the smelly socks can be hung with
care in the hyperspace herb-drawer--and with still
cooler files whose chocolate
truffles would never melt
into a cashmere sweater. We need these
neat reversible black holes for crossing Borders,
things we could pack and close
at a single touch and never pop a seam
or rip a zipper. They'd make the Eurodollar
zoom up in value--
and hey, just think,
Stealth Bombers could be replaced
by diplomatic pouches full
of virtual assassins,
used terrorists could be dumped
out of the Trash Can, leaving
a Virtuous Reality.
All Indian Reservations could be tucked
into Death Valley, accessible through
its golden icon, the Sacajawea Dollar.
Such a Pandora's Apple, I think,
even the seediest Satan could have sold
to the smartest Adam and Eve, just by saying
one taste of this, my dears,
and you're back in Eden.
EN AUTO EN OKLAHOMA
Sobre goma que susurra a lo largo de este cemento blanco
el corazón leve entre las gravedades de origen y destino
como un hombre a medio camino de la luna
en esta burbuja de silbido sin canción
a cien kilómetros por hora desde los ventiletes,
sobre olas de praderas que suben y bajan,
sobre la rampa rápida,
lateral que cae hasta la ruta inferior
y el camión que truena por debajo
cuando paso con la música country que sale,
vibrando, de mis ventanillas,
voy trazando un surco en esta autopista
y siento que la tecnología es el otro nombre de la libertad cuando
-una alondra cruza navegando mi parabrisas
con el pecho brillante amarillo
y cinco notas perforan el parabrisas
como un fogonazo de néctar en la mente
que se fue mientras la música country hace una ola y sube
y me deja caer rodando abajo por mi desfiladero de cielo
con fondo de cemento entre mi casa y lejos
y hace que quiera moverme de nuevo a través de campo
que un pájaro definió totalmente con canción
y quizás la próxima vez ver cómo vuela tan fácil,
cuando canta.
Driving in Oklahoma
On humming rubber along this white concrete,
lighthearted between the gravities
of source and destination like a man
halfway to the moon
in this bubble of tuneless whistling
at seventy miles an hour from the windvents,
over prairie swells rising
and falling, over the quick offramp
that drops to its underpass and the truck
thundering beneath as I cross
with the country music twanging out my windows,
I'm grooving down this highway feeling
technology is freedom's other name when
—a meadowlark
comes sailing across my windshield
with breast shining yellow
and five notes pierce
the windroar like a flash
of nectar on mind,
gone as the country music swells up and drops
me wheeling down
my notch of cement-bottomed sky
between home and away
and wanting
to move again through country that a bird
has defined wholly with song,
and maybe next time see how
he flies so easy, when he sings.
"Driving in Oklahoma" from How the Songs Come Down.
Another Sunday Morning
What I walked down to the highway for,
through the summer dawn,
was the Sunday funnies,
or so I thought—
but what I remember reading there
in the shadowless light
among meadowlarks singing
was tracks in the deep warm dust
of the lane, where it parted
with its beige dryness the meadow’s dew—
the sleek trail where a snake had crossed
and slid into tall grass;
the stippled parallels
with marks between them where
a black blister-beetle had dragged
its bulbous belly across
in search of weeds more green;
the labyrinth of lacelike
dimples left by a speed-freak
tiger-beetles’s sprints that ended
where it took wing
with a little blur of dust-grains;
and stepping through the beetle-trails,
the wedge-heels and sharp-clawed hands of skunk-track
crossing unhurried and walking
along the ditch to find
an easy place for climbing;
not far past that,
a line of cat-prints running
straight down the lane and ending
with deep marks where it leaped
across the ditch to the meadow
for birds asleep or wandering baby rabbits:
and freshly placed this morning,
the slender runes
of bob-whites running, scuffles
of dustbaths taken—
and there ahead
crouched low at the lane-edge
under purple pokeweed-berries
four quail had seen me,
and when I walked slowly
on toward them, instead
of flying they ran
with a fluid scuttling
on down the lane and stopped frozen
till I came too close
—then quietly when
I expected an explosion
of wings they took off low and whispering
and sailed, rocking and tilting
out over the meadow’s tall bluestem,
dropped down and were gone until
I heard them whistling, down by the little pond,
and whistled back so sharply
that when I got back to the house
they still were answering
and one flew into the elm
and whistled from its shadows
up over the porch where I sat
reading the funnies while the kittens
played with the headlines
till when the first gold sunlight
tipped the elm’s leaves he flew
back out to the meadow and sank
down into the sun-brilliant dew
on curving wings,
and my brothers and sisters waked
by the whistling came pouring out
onto the porch and claimed their share
of the Sunday funnies—
and I went on to read
the headlines of World War Two,
with maps of the struggling armies leaving
tank-tracks over the dunes of Libya
and the navies churning their wakes
of phosphorescence in the Coral Sea
where the ships went down on fire
and the waves bobbed and flamed
with the maimed survivors , screaming
in Japanese or English until
their gasoline-blistered heads
sank down to the tiger sharks
and the war was lost or won
for children sitting in sunlight,
believing their cause was just
and knowing it would prevail,
as the dew vanished away.
“Another Sunday Morning” from How the Songs Come Down.
In Oklahoma
When you leave a Real City, as Gertrude Stein did, and go to Oakland, as she did, you can say, as she did, there is no there, there. When you are a Hartford insurance executive, as Wallace Stevens was, and you have never been to Oklahoma, as he had not, you can invent people to dance there, as he did, and you can name them Bonnie and Josie. But a THERE depends on how, in the beginning, the wind breathes upon its surface. Shh: amethyst, sapphire. Lead. Crystal mirror. See, a cow-pond in Oklahoma. Under willows now, so the Osage man fishing there is in the shade. A bobwhite whistles from his fencepost, a hundred yards south of the pond. A muskrat-head draws a nest of Vs up to the pond’s apex, loses them there in the reeds and sedges where a redwing blackbird, with gold and scarlet epaulets flashing, perches on the jiggly buttonwood branch. Purple martins skim the pond, dip and sip, veer and swoop, check, pounce, crisscross each other’s flashing paths. His wife in the Indian Hospital with cancer. Children in various unhappiness. White clouds sail slowly across the pure blue pond. Turtles poke their heads up, watch the Indian man casting, reeling, casting, reeling. A bass strikes, is hooked, fights, is reeled in, pulls away again, is drawn back, dragged ashore, put on the stringer. In Oklahoma, Wally, here is Josie’s father. Something that is going to be nothing, but isn’t. Watch: now he takes the bass home, cleans and fries it. Shall I tell you a secret, Gert? You have to be there before it’s there. Daddy, would you pass them a plate of fish? See friends, it’s not a flyover here. Come down from your planes and you’ll understand. Here.
Carter Revard, “In Oklahoma” from An Eagle Nation.
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