English 766

Dr. Kenneth Sherwood

21 September 2005

Leon Stennis

Leon’s Response to Readings 9/21/05

Maria Sabina Selections, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, with texts and commentaries by Alvaro Estrada and others, is a complex account of Sabina’s belief in the mushroom’s healing language, the translation of her Mazatec Indian-Mexican biography and oral poetry, and an application of ethnopoetics.

Sabina, who died in Nov. 23, 1985, was unsure of the date of her birth in Huautla, Mexico. “I don’t know in what year I was born, but my mother, Maria Concepcion, told me that it was in the morning of the day they celebrate the Virgin Magdalene, there in Rio Santiago, an agenica of the municipality of Huautla,” she says (3). “None of my ancestors knew their age.”

Unsure of the date of her birth or not, Sabina’s life made an impact on the world of poetry, especially 20^th century American poetry and ethnopoetics. “I never thought that the biography of Maria Sabina would have the success it has had in being translated into various languages around the world,” notes Alvaro Estrada a Matzatec speaker and fellow townsman of Sabina’s who engaged her in a series of recorded conversations (132). He translated the recordings into Spanish and made them the basis of her “oral biography.”

The book is framed by ethnopoetics throughout with its focus on culture values of not only Sabina, but the Mazatecs and Mexico. An example is found in chapter one, which was written by Rothenberg and Estrada. Here they detail Sabina’s belief in the mushroom’s healing language, which influences not only her poetry, but her life as well. They write about how her use of the mushrooms began. “We were (she and her sister) were seated under a tree when suddenly I saw near me, within reach of my hand, several mushrooms They were the same mushrooms that the Wise Man Juan Manuel had eaten,” Sabina says (13). “`If I eat you, you, and you I know that you will make me sing beautifully’ I said to them.” After eating the mushrooms she said she first felt dizzy, but “Later we felt good. It was like a new hope on life (13).

The translation of Sabina “autobiography” and her oral poetry are definitely two pluses for the book. They bring out the role of shamanism in her works. Shammanism is the belief in an unseen world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits responsive only to the shamans. Shamans are priests who use magic for the purpose of healing the sick, divining the hidden and controlling events.

Sabina’s belief in an unseen world of gods, and demons, and ancestral spirits, as well as Christianity (Catholicism) can be seen in chapter three, which focuses on her “The Folkways Chant.” This part of the poems speaks her ability to go to heaven, expand the water (apparently of the oceans), etc.:

I am woman of the great expanse of the waters, says

I am the woman of the expanse of the divine ocean, says

Because I can go over the grate expanse of the waters, says

Because I can go over the expanse of the divine ocean, says (89).

Another part of the poem speaks of the woman out of the ground (ancestral spirit), and a “woman of berries”:

Woman torn up out of the ground

Woman who resounds

Woman torn up out of the ground

Woman of principal berries, says

Woman of sacred berries, says (94)

And yet another part of the poem combines expressions about figures of Christianity with the expressions about figures from the unseen world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits:

Saint Peter woman

Saint Paul woman

Ah, Jesusi

Book woman

Book woman

Morning Star woman

Cross Star Woman

God Star Woman

Ah, Jesusi

Moon woman

Moon woman

hmm hmm hmm

hmm hmm hmm

Sap woman

Dew woman (95)

“The Folkways Chant” is a good example of how Rothenberg shows the intertwining religious inspiration and artistic expression in Native Americans, or in this case Native Mexican culture. The Indians of Mexico were also the first inhabitants of that country. Of course many of them through marriages over the centuries have been assimilated into the general Mexican population and have adapted fully to Spanish or Mexican culture and traditions, including the Catholic religion. On the other hand, others like Sabina (at least until the time of her death) have remained close to traditional residences, culture, language, and religious tradition. Rothenberg also used “The Folkways Chant” to bring out the traditional mixing of expressions about nature in oral composition done in the Indian tradition. “Chants,” it seems to me, is the most indigenous poetry about Indians that I have ever seen. It blends individual creativity and tradition from religious or spiritual values with oral expression of a society that is not literate. We see more of the Indian cultural traditions expressed in chapter three, whose title is “The 1970 Session: Three Excerpts,” and chapter four, which is titled “The Mushroom Velada: Three Excerpts.” In this excerpt, from “The Mushroom Velada: Three Excerpts,” it is clear that in the traditional Indian culture women play many roles:

Woman who is more than human am I, he says,

Lawyer woman, am I, he says,

Woman of affairs am I, he says, yes, Jesus Christ says,

Yes, Jesus says, I only throw about, I only scatter, he says,

Woman of Puebla am I, he says,

Woman with “balls” am I, he says

Important eagle woman am I, he says,

Clock woman am I, he says, (119)

The fifth chapter, “Introduction to the Life of Maria Sabina,” written by Estrada, is an account of a woman who was born and lived a good deal of her life in poverty, yet she transcended what some would view as the “pitfalls” of her culture to become one of the most written about women of the 20^th century.

In her long poem, “Fast-Speaking Woman,” poet Anne Waldman makes use of free association and internal rhymes to pay tribute to Maria Sabina. The lines “I’m an abalone woman / I'm the abandoned woman / I’m the woman abashed, the gibberish woman / the aborigine woman, the woman absconding” are an example (4). Waldman said that, “As I began to write “Fast-Speaking Woman,’ I had in my head that I would do a list-change telling all the kinds of women there are to be, interweaving personal details (how I see myself) (35). That she did.

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