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The pun, or to use a more erudite, and perhaps more precise term – paronomasia, reigns over poetic art, and whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable.Roman Jakobson (1959, p. 238)The art of failureJohn Ciardi (1961, p. 17), in a piece for the Saturday Review, famously (if often misattributed) called translation « the art of failure ». Ciardi was the poetry editor for the Saturday Review and had been engaged for fifteen years in an effort to translate Dante’s Inferno. He argued, in the end, that the goal of the translator – and he is rightly uncomfortable with this term because it assumes an isomorphism, not just of denotation but of register (my term), of history (his term), and of « muscularity » (his term), between languages – is to create « the best possible failure » (Ciardi 1961, p. 17). While Ciardi would surely concur with Jakobson’s (1959, p. 238) quote above, that it seems clear that « poetry by definition is untranslatable », there is, at least, an art in the failure of translation. There is value, intellectual and aesthetic, in our failures of translation. Jakobson (1959, p. 238), for his part, would call such failures of translating poetry, from one language to another, « creative transpositions » and specifically this would be an example of « interlingual transposition ».Like Ciardi, I have spent more than fifteen years attempting to translate the poetry of Navajo poet Rex Lee Jim (Webster 2004, 2006, 2009, 2015a, 2015b, 2017; Mitchell and Webster 2011). Jim’s poetry, as I have described elsewhere, is replete with puns (see, for example, Webster 2013, 2015a, 2017). The very sounds of the poem, its physicality, have proven impossible for me to translate (see Webster 2015c). The muscularity of producing the poems, the feel of saying the poem, has also proven impossible to translate (see Mitchell and Webster 2011; Webster 2015c). I do not consider these failings to be trivial. « Sound », as Jim once explained to me, « is very important ». As Rosmarie Waldrop (2009, p. 60) has noted, in a perceptive piece on the perils of translating the sound in and of poetry, « it is impossible to translate the sound in poetry because the union of sound/sense will not be the same in any other language ». This is true as far as it goes, but – and here is what I find so useful in Ciardi’s piece – there is also the muscularity, the physicality of producing (speaking) the poem. One thing that gets lost, as it were, in translation is the sounds of the poem. Another thing, equally important, is the feel of saying the poem, the physicality of expression1.This article is an attempt at thick translation and a creative transposition of a short poem in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim. I will, however, begin with some reflections on recent discussions in anthropology on translation and voice – both of which will be relevant to the argument advanced in my discussion of Jim’s poem. The article takes a discourse-centered approach (Sherzer 1987, 1994), in that the core of the article will be the working through of a stretch of discourse – an interview between myself and Jim. I will supplement the transcript with commentary that I hope will make clearer some of what Jim tells me. I follow that by offering a creative transposition, or more precisely a failure, of the poem, and engage in a bit of exegesis and philology about the poem. The goal is to bring a concern with voice into dialogue with a concern with theorizations of translation. Mostly, though, this article is a contemplative exercise in the art of failure and in attending to the value of such an intellectual and aesthetic endeavor.Translating the phonosonic nexusOf late, in anthropology and ethnomusicology, there has been much concern with the muscularity and physicality of speaking (or singing) and in the materiality of such sounded phenomenon (see Weidman 2006, 2015; Feld et al. 2004; Harkness 2013; Jacobsen 2014; Kunreuther 2014). David Samuels and Thomas Porcello (2015, p. 95) describe it as « the sonic materiality of speech » and argue for the importance of attending to « the material embodiment of language as socially circulating sound » (Samuels and Porcello 2015, p. 96). Part of this concern has developed out of the twin and twined senses of « voice » (Weidman 2014, 2015; Kunreuther 2014). On the one hand, voice is understood as a metaphor for human agency (« finding one’s voice », « voice of the people », etc.). On the other hand, « the materiality of voice has to do with sound itself as well as with the bodily processes of producing and attending to voices » (Weidman 2015, p. 235). Nickolas Harkness (2013, p. 12) calls this the « phonosonic nexus ». By this he means that « the voice [is] an ongoing intersection between the phonic production, shaping, and organization of sound, on the one hand, and the sonic uptake and categorization of sound in the world, on the other » (Harkness 2013, p. 12). Paul Friedrich (1986, 1998), in his richly evocative work, described this materiality and physicality of language, of voice, as the music of language(s).Another developing strand in linguistic anthropology has been a renewed theorizing about translation as social practice (Severi and Hanks 2015; Gal 2015; Silverstein 2003). Here translation is understood not just as between languages, but also « cross-cultural translation » as one of the « perennial challenges facing anthropologists » (Hanks 2015, p. 21; see also Keesing 1989). The work in Carlo Severi and William Hanks (2015) also calls attention to concerns with intralingual and intracultural translation. Intralingual translation has been an on-going concern in discussions of esoteric and ritual language (see, for example, Bahr 1983). Much of this work pushes us to think more critically not just about denotation but also indexicalities of languages as embedded in and constitutive of social practices (Silverstein 2003; Gal 2015). As Hanks and Severi (2015, p. 2) note, « translation is both how we constitute our objects and how we make claims about them ». While there are risks, as John Leavitt (2015, p. 261) suggests, in treating « translation » of cultures and languages as equivalent, there is also value in attending to the semiotics of such acts, such processes, of « translation ».If these arguments have a failing though, it is a general lack of interest in the sounds of languages and in iconicity, in what Samuels (2001, p. 289) has termed « phonological iconicity » (roughly sounds resembling sounds in language) and, in particular, to recall Jakobson’s discussion of poetry above, punning. While Hanks and Severi (2015, p. 10), for example, take up Stephen Levinson’s (2003, p. 28) critique of « simple nativism » and merely finding the right « phonetic clothing » for « preexisting mental representation[s] », they do not take that « phonetic clothing » seriously. This becomes clear in the following claim by Hanks and Severi (2015, p. 16):Every language and every culture are not only different from each other; they are also translatable into each other. No untranslatable language, or culture, has ever existed. This quality of being translatable is inherent in all forms of human communication, as well as in the generation of cultural differences.What are we to make of this claim that, « all forms of human communication » are translatable? Is poetry, certainly a form of human communication, translatable? Jakobson, as we saw in our opening epigraph, argues to the contrary that it is untranslatable. Why is poetry, according to Jakobson (1959, 1960), untranslatable? Partly this is definitional in nature. According to Jakobson’s (1960, p. 356) famous formulation of the poetic function it is a « focus on the message for its own sake » ; it is the very form of the message that matters here and no two languages share the same sound and sense configuration. As Jakobson (1960, p. 372) notes, « in poetry, any conspicuous similarity in sound is evaluated in respect to similarity and/or dissimilarity in meaning ». Form is content in poetry. And here punning becomes paramount: « the supremacy of poetic function over referential function does not obliterate the reference but makes it ambiguous » (Jakobson 1960, p. 371)2. Resolving the ambiguity of poetry is not to translate poetry, but to convert it into not poetry (into exegesis, perhaps, or thick translation)3. The simultaneity of a pun, its bivalency (its very pun-ness!), is lost when the pun is resolved in translation (see Woolard 1998). Sonic equivalencies (the twining of sound and sense) are lost across languages. Lost in such discussions of translation is any attention, then, to the phonosonic nexus, the music, of language. To put it succinctly, many of these discussions of translation are predicated on a language ideology (or, perhaps, an entailed semiotic ideology) that denies the materiality of languages (see Samuels 2004; Leavitt 2006, 2015; Bauman and Briggs 2003 for some of the relevant history).Concurrent with this renewed concern in anthropology about translation, or at least as an interested party to the debates occurring about a re-theorized notion of translation, has been an ethnopoetically informed concern with the doing of translation (Sammons and Sherzer 2000; Woodbury 2007; Leavitt 2006, 2015; Nuckolls 2000; McDowell 2000; Kozak 2012). Here there has been concern with the craft, or art, of translation. Much of this concern has been rooted in a concern with ethnopoetics and verbal artistry. Kwame Appiah (1993), Anthony Woodbury (2007), and John Leavitt (2006) all call this « thick translation ». By « thick translation », Leavitt (2006, p. 79), for example, means a « combination of an anthropologist’s attention to cultural context with a nearly or truly philological attention to the specifics of texts ». Leavitt (2006, 2015) is influenced by, among others, the work of Paul Friedrich (1979, 1986), the modern philology of Alton Becker (1995), and the anthropological philology qua ethnopoetics of Dell Hymes (1981, 2003). While Leavitt (2006, p. 104) argues that many anthropologists have been adept at exegesis, of contextualization and interpretation, he notes that, « what anthropologists still tend to neglect… is philology, the music and mechanics of the text itself in the original language ». Taking a cue from Hymes (1981), Leavitt (2015, p. 288) concludes his later piece on translation by noting, « As Dell Hymes (1981) called for anthropological philology, perhaps this would be philological anthropology. » This philological anthropology or thick translation (and I’ll use the terms interchangeably), with its attention to the music of the text, the sounds of the text, should provoke consideration, as well, of discussions concerning voice. It seems to me that a concern with voice, or the phonosonic nexus, the muscularity and materiality of speaking, its very physicality, should be a part of discussions of thick translations and/or philological anthropology.Perhaps, conceding to Jakobson (1959) that the best that can be done with regard poetry is a kind of « creative transposition », we might think of our work as both a thick translation and creative transposition. Though Jakobson (1959) is not entirely clear on this point, by « creative transposition », I take him to be suggesting the writing/creating of a poem in another language (or another register or another modality) that is inspired by a poem in a different language4.« I am a poet »I met my first Navajo poet in March of 2000. We met in Window Rock, AZ at what was then the Navajo Nation Inn. I was there trying to figure out a dissertation project. He was there having lunch but graciously agreed to wait around for me so that we might meet and talk. The poet I met that day was Rex Lee Jim. At the time he was teaching at the recently renamed Diné College (formerly Navajo Community College). He had published three books of poetry at that time: two were entirely in Navajo (Jim 1989, 1995), the third in Navajo, Gaelic, and English (Jim 1998). Over the next several months I would interview him multiple times about his poetry and other things (the way interviews often go). Later, Jim would go on to run for the Tribal Council and get elected and then he would run for Navajo Nation President, lose in the primaries, and then be tapped as Ben Shelley’s running-mate. Jim would then go on to serve as vice president of the Navajo Nation (his term only came to end in the spring of 2015), though the role of poet continued to be important to Jim. On April 3, 2015, at a poetry reading and while still vice president, Jim told the audience that, « I am a poet. I always say if I’m going to be defined as anything, it’s a poet » (Silversmith 2015).I want to go back to an October evening in 2000 and an interview I did with Jim overlooking the historically and culturally important place Tséyi’ (also known as Canyon de Chelly)5. It was Jim’s suggestion to do the interview outside that night at Tséyi’. Our interview was, ostensibly, to be about a poetry manuscript that Jim had shared with me. Though it seems now to me that Jim had certain things he wanted to talk about. The manuscript had been submitted to a press by the time Jim shared it with me. What was interesting about the manuscript, given Jim’s reputation for writing in Navajo, was that it was mostly in English. There were no Navajo language poems in it. The title of the manuscript, spirit echoes spirit, hinted at the fact that Jim was attempting to do in English the kinds of things he had done in his Navajo poetry as well (that is, playing with the multiple senses of « spirit »). The poems worked in English because, as he said, they « pushed » English, just as some of his poems in Navajo « pushed » Navajo. They played with homophones and polysemous words and forms. They reveled in the poetic maxim: be ambiguous. I make this point because the press responded to Jim’s manuscript by asking for the Navajo versions of the poems. They said they’d be happy to publish the manuscript but only with the Navajo versions. It goes without saying, but I guess I should say it, that there were no Navajo versions. Spirit echoes spirit has not been published. Jim had been typecast as the Navajo poet who wrote in Navajo.Unlike many of the other poems by Jim that I have written about, the poem I discuss here does not come from Jim’s (1995) all-Navajo collection saad. Instead, I first heard this poem (and another poem) during an interview with Jim in 2000. The poem would not be published, as far as I can find, until 2010. Then it was published in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (Jim’s an alumnus) as a « web bonus » part of a feature on Jim and his emerging career as a politician (Bernstein 2010). The « web bonus », titled « What I Write About », contained, for a time, a video interview with Jim and a discussion of three poems (Jim 2010)6. Two of the poems were poems that Jim told me about in that October interview we did in 2000. The third poem (actually the first poem performed by Jim on the video and in the written portion) is a revised version of a poem that appears in saad (Jim 1995, p. 22)7. Unlike the poems in saad, where there are no English versions, Jim (2010) does provide English versions for the three poems. Jim discusses, in some detail, the third poem – the one dedicated to Princeton’s 200th anniversary – but does not say much about the first two poems. I will discuss in detail the second poem from that video and the text by Jim (2010). I will return to a discussion of the video performance and the publication version from 2010 later.« Fragile like a cobweb »: transcript and commentaryHere I’d like to turn to several portions of the transcript of our interview that night. That night we had driven from Tsaile, AZ, over to Chinle, AZ, and had dinner at the Holiday Inn. We then drove to Canyon de Chelly National Monument, along the south rim drive and stopped at Tsegi overlook. It was a cool night; cloudless, the stars were out, an occasional breeze came through the canyon. The first spoken voice on the tape is mine and I note that one can see the Big Dipper in the sky. It was not the first time I had interviewed Jim, nor would it be the last. Once the interview begins, I start that night by foregrounding my dissertation research concerns – which were on language choice, language ideologies, and language and identity in and through poetry (Webster 2004) – and asking him why he wrote the book in English. Jim responded by asking me, « Why not? » It was a good question and one I have often reflected on since then. Elsewhere (Webster 2009, 2015a), I have very much been concerned about the heteroglossia found on and around the Navajo Nation and in the poetry written by Navajos (see also Field 2009; Peterson and Webster 2013). Poets write, as I have discussed, in Navajo, English, and Navajo English and various combinations (Webster 2009, 2015a). They write far less frequently, though it is spoken quite often, in what is called – among other things – Navlish (a merging of Navajo morphology and English lexical items) (see Webster 2009). Jim went on to tell me, after chastising me – rightly – for my question, that he was, « kinda to the point in my life that English is now a part of me ».I will now present portions of the transcript with Jim. The presentation is organized into lines based on pausing (a blank line indicates a longer pause). I do this not to argue that Jim (or I) spoke in poetry that night but rather to give a sense of the cadence, the rhythm of the conversation. I will intersperse commentary that will clarify some of what Jim tells me. I don’t claim to clarify all or even most of what Jim told me, but I hope enough to make my interpretations below sensible. I present the transcript so that others can also use it as a way to think through this poem and Jim’s poetry more generally. I’ve left out certain parts of the transcript for the sake of space and because, while interesting, those portions might confuse the purpose of this article. (RLJ = Rex Lee Jim; AKW = Anthony K. Webster)RLJ:English allows me to go beyondwhat Navajo has to offerit offers new experiencesnew possibilitiesand when I switch to Englishwhat it also does for me iswhen I switch back to Navajoit says, « why not in Navajo in this area as well »AKW:mhmRLJ:so it allows me to push the Navajo language in those areasand in so doingI think I’m expanding the capacity of the languagein many waysfor one way come up with new vocabularyto to explain the possibilities in certain areas that didn’t exist beforeand but exist in Englishand I think it’s the same way the other way aroundEnglish has its own limitationsand boundariesand when I switch to Englishand I come to the realization thatI can’t push English beyond thisandit’s it’s the realityit’s a new realitywhat Navajo can do so easilyand soit allows me to push Englishinto those areas as welland when the two work togetherit pushes me as a personfurther than either one of the languages couldLet’s just follow my interview with Jim a bit more. Inelegantly, I then ask Jim about something I’ve noticed in his poems – and something that Navajos – including Jim – have begun to intimate to me as well – first in the English poems, but over time in the Navajo poems as well. I call it here alliteration – Jim takes up that term – and homophones – in more technical garb I’ve called it phonological iconicity, Navajos that I know call it saad aheełt’éego diits’a’ « words that resemble each other by sound » or punning (Jim too will call it punning) (see Webster 2015a, 2015b, 2015c).AKW:Well one of the things you do in the poems, at least that I saw, was that you use a lot of alliteration in a in the poemsa lot of homophones as wellwords that sound sameyou knowdo you think that’s an English thing or do you think aalliteration is common in NavajoRLJ:I thinkalliteration, whatever that means [laughter]is how the human mind worksit’s sorta like associationsAKW:mhmRLJ:You think of somethingtreethen you think of the branchesand that looks like broccolithen it goes to broccolithat looks like foodyou know how it starts connected, I thinkAKW:RightRLJ:for me the alliteration it’s something similar to thatthat there’s certain wordsand yet they look like something elseor they sound like something elseand there just connected different thoughtsand it’s sorta like a spider webseems like they’re very connectedthey’re fine lines whereI guess in a sensethe whole idea, for me, of alliteration is likesomething that’s fragile like a cobwebthatthat you could read it one wayand have a totally different interpretationbut if you read it a different wayyou’ll have a different meaning, a different experienceand that life is like thatthere are these interconnectionsthatyou go into a situationyou could think of it as hardshipor you could think of it as a great challengeAKW:mhmRLJ:you think of the situation and saygive upor you could say« how do I resolve this »or go into a situation and say, um« I can’t do this. » Or you could say, « this is a great chance for me to learn something new ».There’s always that.And so I think of some these alliterationsworks that wayallows you to go either this way or this way or another wayregardless of what will be up or downbut when you begin tounderstand how that worksthen you can goany direction and come back to the center againAnd I think for me the idea behind the earth is roundif you can go deep down into ityou get to the core where it’s all the sameand if you knowif you get to the core you can surface on any part of the earthand you’ll understand the situation therepeople always say you need to go beyond language, beyond cultureyou need to go beyond the personal things to understand othersI disagree with thatI thinkwe must go through culture and languagewe must go through ourselvesto get to the coreAKW:mhmRLJ:and that means going deep and withinand once we do that we can surfaceanywhereand understandthe heart of thingsthatan example is the more and more Navajo I think I becomethe more and more genuinely Navajo I think I becomeAKW:mhmRLJ:people like my work moreeven though they’re not Navajosand I’ve come to the realizationthat in doing thatI become more and more humanand when I get to the core of humanitythrough my own language and my ownbiases and prejudices and preferencesI come to realize« hey, I’m a human being and this is who I am »and what I speak and write out of thatothers understand thatthe language may be differentthe images may be a little bit differentmaybe more desert coyote imagesbutwhen you really get to the heart of ityou ask them they say, « yes I understand that »and so I think alliterationallowsthat to take placeif you want to get at the heart of the poemthen you can go either wayandthat’s the way it isAKW:mhmThis image, of the linking of words through sound as « fragile like a cobweb », is a particularly compelling image. Jim argues that it is not by overcoming differences of language and culture, but only by diving deeply into them, that we can be reminded of our shared humanity. Notice also, while Jim calls it « alliteration », he is really talking about punning here and the intellectual value, the moral value, of punning. He makes this point again a short time later:RLJ:andso itI think that oneso it is a conscious choice to really look at itand the sounds toothatand even in NavajoNavajo is very good atalliteration and punseven the pronunciationif you slightly pronounce it just a little bitbecause it’s a tonal languageyou change the entire meaning of the whole thinga lot of the poems in Navajoare written that wayespecially the smaller onesI then ask Jim about why he uses the Navajo words sin « song » and saad « language, word » to bracket the English language poems in spirit echoes spirit. Here is part of what he tells me:RLJ:Because saadI guess you could translate it as wordAKW:mhmRLJ:or languageAKW:mhmRLJ:or speechbut before that for mesaad means soundsound that communicates[car goes by loudly]even if my eyes are closed the sound that just passed bytells mecar went byAKW:RightRLJ:and if you live way out in the countryyou can even get to know the sound of vehiclesby hearing it you know who’s comingand it’s the same way if somebody knocks at your doorsometimes you will know whose action by the way they knockor whether if it’s midnight and someone starts banging at your doorthat tells you somethingSo for me it isSoundThat conveys some sense of meaningThat communicateSomething that IPerceive as meaningfulThatAffects me in some wayEven the sound of crickets [can be heard in background]They remind me of whole historyThey remind me of things that I’ve suppressedAnd force meTo recall those and think them through againOr it could remind me of happy timesAnd allow me to dance and smileAnd so for meSound is the beginning of all things.Another poet, Blackhorse Mitchell, once told me, when discussing the approach some linguists and anthropologists take to the Navajo language, that « the validity of Navajo is in its sounds, not in the neat things it does » (see Webster 2015a). Sound in these poems is quite important. Jim told me that as well in a later interview (see Webster 2006, 2015c). Indeed, he challenges the conventional translation of saad into English as « word, language » and argues instead that saad is « sound that communicates » and « sound that conveys some sense of meaning » and this meaning, as his example of crickets suggests, is not reducible to mere semantics. Indeed, the fact that we are outside, and we can hear both crickets and cars going by, affords Jim examples of the meanings of sounds. An interview inside would have, most likely, suggested different sounds. Notice that both Mitchell and Jim seem to argue against a view that disentangles sound from language, that denies the materiality of language (see also Reichard 1944; McAllester 1980). They argue for language as a sounded phenomenon (see Webster 2015a).Where does poetry come from? I ask Jim how he writes his poems, where does the inspiration come from. Jim tells me there are, essentially, three ways that he composes poetry: 1. he works and reworks them (call this the craft of poetry); 2. he hears other people say something and then writes it down (call this found poetry in the speech of others); and 3. they come to him by way of the Little Wind (níłch’i ‘áłts’íísí). Let me quote James McNeley (1981, p. 36) on Little Wind in Navajo philosophy, « it is these Little Winds sent by the Holy Ones that are thought to provide the means of good Navajo thought and behavior ». He goes on to note that, « Little Winds sent from the Holy Ones in the four directions work to strengthen the Wind within one towards the end that it will continue to be capable of helping the individual to lead a good life » (McNeley 1981, p. 49). Little Winds are messengers/messages from the Holy Ones (deities) to Navajos on proper moral behavior.I should note that the messages from these Little Winds are « absolutely faultless » (ts’ídá ba’ádinii). McNeley (1981, p. 54) makes this point when he notes that:the complex of behavioral traits subsumed by the term « being faultless » are a function of existing under the influence of aspects of Wind that are also faultless. This Wind is sent to the individual by deities such as Talking Gods and Calling Gods who are inner forms of the sacred mountains and who are themselves absolutely faultless.Here it is well to reflect on Jim’s description of those poems as « masterpieces ». The poems were with Jim long before he wrote them down. He recited them to friends and family. These poems, having come from Little Wind, resist any tampering with or reworking by Jim. They are complete unto themselves. He just needs to hear them, to recognize them. This hearing is done by not being « too egotistical or full of it ». In this sense, these « masterpieces » aren’t the work of Jim. He can’t really take credit for them. He is, then, not the author of these « masterpieces », but their animator (see Goffman 1981, p. 144 on the distinction between « author » and « animator »).Here’s the relevant portion of the transcript from Jim (with a tin-eared question from me in the middle). Jim often enjoyed teasing me during interviews about the assumptions behind my questions. I’ve learned to appreciate the value of such teasing more and more over the years (see Webster 2009). I’ll discuss in more detail the first poem Jim recites in the next section. Note that Jim does not translate the poems for me that night. He recites them only in Navajo.RLJ:And some of them likenáhookǫsndináhookǫsornieiyayaah nithey come in the middle of the nightand you get upand write them downand the next day you try to improve on itso you write several pages that doesn’t workyou try to add or delete somethingand it doesn’t workthey just comeand they are considered masterpiecesyou can’t do anything to itI’ve tried and it doesn’t workand in many ways I feel that it’s not my workbecausethey just appearout of nowhereand sometimes I think about what Navajos say about the Little Wind telling you something [wind in background]after so much experienceand so much trials and errorsthat somehow your human mind is ready to receive somethingfrom somewhere elseor maybe has already been therebut you were just tooegotistical or full of itthat you never allowed it to sink in [laughter]I don’t know how it worksall I know is it feels like somebody is telling you towrite itand so some of them come like thatand so some of the poems like thatI don’t know whether I can claim them or notAKW:So when do you do your writing then?RLJ:When I’m not being interviewed [laughter]AKW:Okay. [laughter]Besides when you are not being interviewed [laughter]When do you write your poems?RLJ:I have a notebook by my bedLike sometimes ideas come to me in the middle of the nightI just wake up and writeSometimes I write for the rest of the nightOr sometimes I just jot things down and go back to sleepAnd sometimes I compose in my mindAnd a poem is in my head for years before I write them downI recite them, I redo itJust, um, like the one náhookǫs ndi náhookǫsLike I said I hiked top of Lukachukai Mountains two in the morning with snowFebruaryAnd repeated that phrasenáhookǫsndináhookǫsTo actually look at itAnd to then look down hereAnd what does it meanAnd I’d try it out by myselfOr sometimes when I’m with friendsOr sometimes we have a cookout at night with my familyAnd I’d repeat itnáhookǫsndináhookǫsWhat does the whole thing meanWhat does it do to a personAnd finally after so many yearsOf saying that and doing createsOkay, I’ll write it downSo you write it down.Lot of timeWith these shorter poems come that wayI am struck in listening to the tape, and offer no theory and no explanation for it (other than, of course, that winds blow through canyons), by the wind that breezes through the canyon as Jim mentions « Little Wind ». The Lukachukai (Lók’a’ch’égai) Mountains run north and south along the New Mexico and Arizona border. They are a prominent feature on the landscape. Navajos that I know have sacred places, places where they go to pray and to contemplate, in those mountains (see Kluckhohn and Leighton 1962, p. 204; Kelley and Harris 1994, p. 42-46).Creative transposition: náhookǫs ndi náhookǫsI want to interrupt the transcript and discuss the first poem he recites; extracted and artifacted from the flow of the interview I did with him and based on my transcription of the Navajo. I’ll return to the transcript in the next section when I ponder something like an interpretation of this poem. I present the poem from the first time he recited it that night. In transcribing the poem, I have followed the Navajo orthography found in Young and Morgan (1987). It is also the orthography that Jim often uses.Before we look at the poem, let me also say something more about the phonology and prosody of this poem. Understanding that phonological descriptions are always only partial (see Port and Leary 2005), this will stand as an approximation for the sounds of the poem: /n/ is an alveolar nasal stop (which repeats at the beginning of each line), /á/ is a high tone low back vowel, /h/ is a voiceless glottal fricative, /oo/ is a long mid back vowel, /k/ is an aspirated velar stop, /ǫ/ is a nasal mid back vowel, /s/ is a voiceless alveolar fricative, /t/ is an unaspirated alveolar stop (this is written as &#60;d&#62; in the standard orthography and I follow that convention here), and /i/ is a high front vowel (see Young and Morgan 1987, p. xii-xv; McDonough 2003a). As for prosody, Navajo does not have stress (McDonough 2003b; Kidder 2008). Instead, prominence – « generally some combination of the amplification of duration, intensity, and local pitch perturbances such as pitch range expansion » – aligns with the verb stem (the most semantically salient content morpheme and also often the rightmost content morpheme) (McDonough 2003b, p. 204)8. Prominence occurs on the verb stem -kǫs in lines one and three. The particle ndi that makes up line two does not take prominence. Because of this rightmost prominence on the verb stem, in both my tape-recording and in the performance of the poem for Princeton, the poem seems punctuated by the repetition of -kǫs. These are all, or should be, considerations in attuning to the music – the phonosonic nexus – of the poem.In the presentation of the poem, lines have been separated based on pause structure (pause equals line break) and coincide with words (note that the second time he recites the poem that night, he does not pause at all during it – thus creating a single line; but the next two times he recites it, he does pause after each word).náhookǫsndináhookǫsI now want to present how the poem is written in Jim (2010):nahookosnidinahookosNotice that in the Princeton version the nasal hook and acute accent for high tone are not used. In another poem that Jim (1995, p. 45) wrote concerning náhookǫs in saad he writes náhookǫs9. I think it likely that the Princeton website did not have the capacity to present the diacritics. In any event, the poem is performed on the video by Jim with a high tone on the first vowel /á/ and nasality on the final vowel /ǫ/10. Another difference is between ndi and nidi. On the tape that I have of the interview with Jim, I am relatively certain that I hear ndi and not nidi (though the two forms are very close in sound and so I will never have absolute certainty, nor do I think certainty is needed). On the video from Princeton, it also sounds like ndi (but I am, again, less than certain). Both forms I have been told by Navajos that I have asked about it can be used as a contradictory particle and Jim translates it that way as « even ». Indeed, Robert Young and William Morgan (1987, p. xv) point out that the syllable /ni/ is often reduced to syllabic /n/ and give as one of their examples of this process: nidi = ndi « but ». I think, however, Jim spelling the word in its full form is not accidental and I will return to that point later. Here it is well to remember that while spoken poetry has sonic form, written poetry – whether it is read aloud or not – has visual form (see Becker 1995, p. 195-197)11. A compromise of formats might be to include the diacritics (for high tone and nasality) and to represent the particle in its full form:náhookǫsnidináhookǫsHaving discussed the visual and sonic form of the poem, let us turn to something of the twining of sound and sense. According to both Navajos I have talked to about this and to various bilingual dictionaries of Navajo to English, náhookǫs can be translated any number of ways into English. First, as to the morphology: náhi- seriative, one after another (here likely in the progressive aspect as náhoo-) + -kǫs (this is the verb stem -kę́ę́z « slender stiff or thin rigid object, falling or flying through air » or a « slender solid object revolves » (see Young and Morgan 1987, p. 542). And while the morphology is certainly important, Jim would make this point to me in another interview, after all, as he told me, he was trying to get people to think about etymologies; we should not think that discerning the morphology tells us everything about the work of this poem (see Mitchell and Webster 2011 on this point). The form is conventionally translated into English as « north », « turn », « Big Dipper », or the geometric shape of the swastika (see Young and Morgan 1987, p. 542). Jim and I, in a later interview, translated its use in another poem as « gyre » (influenced, as we were, by a poem by W.B. Yeats – « The Second Coming » – that we had been talking about). It can be understood as both a verb and/or a noun. Thinking about it as only a noun can be misleading.A number of years ago, Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton discussed some of the linguistic issues concerning náhookǫs. Here is what they wrote:[T]here is enough idiom in Navaho to make a literal etymological translation meaningless in many cases. For instance, náhookǫs (north) translates literally as « one stiff slender object makes a revolution » (from the constellation of the dipper which revolves around the North Star). For purposes of conveying meaning the etymology does not matter, and such a rendering would merely compound confusion – to say the least – save for the purposes of the scientific linguist.This not to say that etymology is irrelevant to all nuances of communication. While it would be absurd to pretend that the whole etymology of náhookǫs is present to the consciousness of a Navaho every time he says the word, still the sheer formal nature of the verb as well as the meanings of its separable elements must carry with them a background of association and connotation that is altogether lacking in the English noun « north ». (Kluckhohn and Leighton 1962, p. 289)While I agree about the dangers of literal translations, it is important to realize that náhookǫs is also used as a verb in everyday expressions. Young and Morgan (1987, p. 542), for example, give the following example sentence (I’ve bolded náhookǫs):Tsinaabąąs shił yilwołgo łeezh bee hahalkaadí 'ii' sitánę́ę hááhgóóshį̔į̔ náhookǫsAs I ride along in the wagon, the shovel lying inside is really turning around and aroundHere náhookǫs is used to describe the movement of the shovel. Note as well that Kluckhohn and Leighton reduce the meaning of náhookǫs to only « north » and this misses the other senses of the form (for example, the geometric shape swastika or the Big Dipper). In certain contexts, then, náhookǫs can be used as either a verb or a noun and the meaning of the noun is polysemous12. It is also important to remember that for Jim, getting Navajos to think about the « semantics and etymology » of words was a part of the goal of his poetry. As Jim pointed out to me in another interview, « most of my poems are written to stimulate thoughts, and that involves thinking about semantics and etymology » (see Webster 2006, p. 44). It is the polysemy here that Jim seems most interested in exploiting. We should not assume that only the « scientific linguist » is interested in etymologies. Navajos that I know often enjoy speculating about word affinities and etymologies (see Webster 2009; Peterson and Webster 2013).N(i)di can be translated as the contradictory « even » or « but » (see Reichard 1951, p. 328) – though I have a sense that it can also be heard as ni’di « on earth » (ni’- « earth » + -di « at, on » locative enclitic indicating less proximate and more general [see Young and Morgan 1987, p. 18])13. The first poem in spirit echoes spirit seems a paraphrase of this poem and seems to confirm as well my suspicion about « on earth »:even big dipper turns,turns,turns on earth. (Jim nd, p. 4)« On earth » makes sense if we hear the pun between n(i)di and ni’di. Jim’s writing out of the full form makes the resemblance between nidi and ni’di more acute. If we accept the possibility of a pun between n(i)di and ni’di and combine it with the polysemous quality of náhookǫs we realize that every line in this poem is ambiguous.Here’s my attempt at a creative transposition:northgyregyrebig dippergyrenorthbig dipperbig dippernorthnorthevenevenevenevenevenevenevenevenevenevengyresgyresbig dippersgyresnorthsbig dippersbig dippersnorthsnorthsgyresI’ve tried to highlight the multiplicity of meanings of náhookǫs and the way that the poem seems to turn on itself (hinting here at the seriative). What I have sacrificed in quickness14 (one of the deficiencies here) and sound (gone is the recurrent alveolar nasal stop line initial, gone too the prominence of the verb stem, gone as well many of the sounds in the Navajo version, including the consistent echo of the first and third line), I hope to have compensated for in an exuberance that highlights the complexity, the ambiguity, of some of this poem. For now, anyway, I leave n(i)di consistently translated as « even ». In attempting to capture something of the simultaneity of the verb-ness and noun-ness of náhookǫs in my version, I have treated the third line as verbs, where -s is an agreement marker for the third person singular noun. Of course, the -s can also be read as a plural marker and thus a new kind of ambiguity is introduced. I use « gyre » because it can be used as both a noun and verb, has a particular sound sense that I find pleasing here, and also because it reminds me of another poem that Jim and I worked on where we used « gyre » for náhookǫs.Let us consider, briefly, Jim’s three versions of this poem in English. The first version is the version from spirit echoes spirit:even big dipper turns,turns,turns on earth. (Jim nd, p. 4)Above, I called this a paraphrase. It does seem to paraphrase some of the semantic content of the Navajo poem and it makes explicit, perhaps, a pun that works in Navajo but does not work in English (n(i)di ≈ ni’di). « Turns » is repeated three times in the poem, but the fulcrum n(i)di is moved to the beginning of the poem15. While Jim is able to keep at least one alveolar nasal stop in each line, it does not pattern the same as in Navajo (where it occurs word initial). Gone too are /á/, /h/, /oo/, /k/, /ǫ/, /t/, and /i/. The poem, not surprisingly, sounds radically different. Added, are a whole host of sounds, including the voiced alveolar stop /d/, which does not occur in Navajo (the Navajo practical orthography writes the unaspirated alveolar stop /t/ as &#60;d&#62; – this sometimes leads to confusion for people trying to learn Navajo) and the voiceless interdental fricative &#60;th&#62;. Added too is the aspirated voiceless alveolar stop /th/ (written here as &#60;t&#62;) that is found in Navajo (but not in Jim’s poem) and contrasts with the unaspirated voiceless alveolar stop /t/ (written here as &#60;d&#62;). English stress patterns (which are variable) differ as well from the rightmost prominence found on the verb stem in Navajo. In English, words take stress and there is no tendency for rightmost prominence. Thus the very rhythm of the poems is different. The mouth seems – especially in the first line – busier when reciting the English version.The ambiguities are different as well. Lost is the polysemy associated with náhookǫs. « Even », on the other hand, has its own polysemy and ambiguity (e.g., « even money »). « Big dipper », which provides a descriptive image of the asterism, is not the same image as evoked in náhookǫs. Three words in Navajo are converted into eight words in English. Like my version, there is an exuberance of words in the English version. Jim’s version is best considered a creative transposition – it is a poem in English that was inspired by the Navajo poem. Paraphrase then seems the wrong term. It is, instead, a poem in English that has resonances – mostly semantic, not sonic – with a poem in Navajo.Here are the next two versions. The first is how Jim (2010) translates the poem in writing. The second is how Jim translates the poem on the video.big dippereventurns. (Jim 2010)eventhe big dipperturnsBoth these versions seem minimalist. The first version matches exactly the word order of the Navajo version (though it cannot maintain the repetition of the same word in the first and third line). It uses the asterism « big dipper » – which has its own ambiguities in English (that is, it can be heard as not an asterism). As with the previous example, it sounds and feels (when saying) different than the Navajo version. One obvious example is that the first line and the third line do not echo each other given their identical form in the Navajo version. Like the above example, it introduces its own ambiguities. For example, besides the polysemy of « even », we can also think about the myriad senses of « turns » in English. One sense, that of « revolving », seems to align with something of náhookǫs (the slender stiff object sense seems missing in « turns »), but « turns » also adds a sense of « becoming » (e.g., « he turned into a frog ») that seems, at least in my understanding of náhookǫs, absent (see, for example, Young and Morgan 1992, p. 323-325). As Becker (1995), following Ortega y Gasset (1959), has noted, translations are always exuberant (adding in more than was in the original) and deficient (leaving out much as well). This sense of « turns » as « becoming » seems exuberant when compared to the Navajo version. Much the same could be said for the third version as well. Here, though, Jim rearranges the word order and adds the article « the ». Navajo does not use articles. The English article « the » is exuberant here.I make these points, not to criticize Jim’s English versions but rather to call attention to the art of failure in « translating » poetry. My own creative transposition is also a failure. Yet, I have learned much about English and Navajo – about their respective attunements – in reflecting on how one might translate the poem into English. There is value – aesthetic and intellectual value – in such practices, such contemplations.« And I will not tell you all about that »What then to make of this poem? To make of this « masterpiece » that might well have been given to Jim by the Little Wind? North, like many things in Navajo philosophy, is polyvalent. On the one hand, the north is routinely associated with death (see Kluckhohn and Leighton 1962, p. 184). On the other hand, there is also a view that north is associated with old age and with reflection and assurance. With the ability to recognize what you have done in life. North in this way of thinking is associated with moral judgment, the ability to recognize good and evil (Aronilth 1991, p. 98). And then, of course, the whole thing repeats. You take what you’ve learned and begin again. Here is how Vincent Werito (2014, p. 27) describes it:The Diné philosophy is associated with and orientated to the four cardinal directions, starting with the east direction… so in relation to human life, this process of orientation for living and learning guides how an individual lives and develops respect and/or reverence for self, his or her relatives, and the natural world. These four aspects of the Diné philosophy of learning and living are Nitsáhákees (Thinking), Nahat’á (Planning), Iiná (Living), and Siihasin (Assurance), in respective order. These four aspects of Diné philosophy are understood to represent life principles that guide our processes of thinking or conceptualization, planning or self-actualization, doing by establishing relationships with others, and reflecting or being self-reflective and aware of others and the natural spiritual world.Deborah House (2002, p. 96) discusses it in the following manner:This four-direction cycle concludes with the north, only to begin again with nitsáhákees in the east. North is associated with old age, folding darkness or night, the sacred Obsidian Mountain, Dibé Ntsaa (Hesperus Peak or La Plata Mountain in Colorado), winter, and sihasin, which means « to make strong and stable, to secure, to develop confidence, and to have a clear path ». It is in the sihasin stage that you will learn whether your thinking, planning, and implementation were successful. If they were, you will want to replicate and maintain what you have accomplished, perhaps making adjustments based on your evaluation of what you have done. This is also the state in which you will recognize the consequences of errors or neglect in your previous states. When the cycle is repeated, you will know what to do differently to remediate the problems or errors.What of the resonances with the Big Dipper? How might we think of the Big Dipper within Navajo philosophy? First, here is a version of the myth of the origin of the asterism the Big Dipper as told to Washington Matthews (1994 [1897], p. 223-224):The following is the tale as told by Náltsos Nigéhani: « Now First Man and First Woman thought it would be better if the sky had more lights, for there were times when the moon did not shine at night. So they gathered a number of fragments of sparkling mica of which to make stars, and First Man proceeded to lay out a plan of the heavens, on the ground. He put a little fragment in the north, where he wished to have the star that would never move, and he placed near it seven great pieces, which are the stars we behold in the north now. »Trudy Griffin-Pierce (1992, p. 153) in her discussion of Navajo astronomy notes that, like much in Navajo philosophy, there is a male náhookǫs biką’ii (« male one who revolves » or Big Dipper) and a female náhookǫs ba’áadii (« female one who revolves » or Cassiopeia). Though conventionally, náhookǫs used alone denotes, among other things, the asterism we call the Big Dipper16. Here is what one of Griffin-Pierce’s (1992, p. 153) consultants said about náhookǫs:Chanter A… « They tell us [by their example] to stay at home, to stay around your fire ». Here the implication is that these constellations set a moral example for the Earth Surface People to remain home to carry out their familial responsibilities.Chanter A offered a slightly different interpretation of these same constellations at an interview held three months previously. Then he had referred to the two Náhookǫs as leaders, as sources of wisdom and knowledge always available to the Earth Surface People; they are also visual reminders to leaders on earth that they must always be willing and ready to help their people.Not surprisingly, other chanters – ritual specialists – give different interpretations of náhookǫs (see Griffin-Pierce 1992, p. 153-156). What interests me about Chanter A’s analysis is that it resonates with the conversation I had with Jim that October night. It is the visual reminder that interests me here. Jim tells me that after the poem came to him he climbed to the top of the Lukachukai Mountains in the winter (associated, as it is, with náhookǫs) at two in the morning. On top of the mountain, he was able to actually observe náhookǫs (as, I might add, we were that night in October) as he repeated the poem. Standing on earth, he could see náhookǫs and he could reflect on what it might mean. All these considerations (and certainly some I am not aware of as well), however, have acutely influenced my creative transposition.Here’s what Jim said on the meaning of some of his poems that night:RLJ:There’s alwaysthe poem presents and identifies a problemI shouldn’t say alwaysmany of the poemsidentifies a problem and at the same time offers a solution of somethingand I will not tell you all about that [laughter]you have to come to that yourself [laughter]That seems fair and echoes with what other Navajos have told me about not forcing an interpretation on others (see Mitchell and Webster 2011; Webster 2015a). I don’t want to force an interpretation here either. My creative transposition has suggested something of an interpretation (as it must).I should add that Jim was talking, in the above excerpt, not just about the poems that come by way of Little Wind, but also the found poems he writes and the poems he crafts. Here and in other conversations with Jim, I take him to be suggesting, to adapt a phrase from Kenneth Burke (1974), poetry as equipment for living (see also Becker 1999). Poetry, in this view, won’t make you more moral, but it might make you more reflexive, more aware of your humanity and the humanity of others. Ultimately, you must « come to that yourself » (see also Webster 2015c, p. 287-288). In this view, I hear echoes of W.H. Auden’s introduction to The Poet’s Tongue:Poetry is not concerned with telling people what to do, but with extending our knowledge of good and evil, perhaps making the necessity for action more urgent and its nature more clear, but only leading us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational and moral choice. (Mendelson 1977, p. 329)Jim’s poems, then, act as equipment for living. They present to Navajos possibilities for reflection and these possibilities, I would add, are bound up in the puns, the sounds, of the poems. The poems do not force one to be moral, but they make moral choices possible. Ultimately, as some Navajos say, t’áá bí bee bóholnííh « it’s up to her/him to decide » (see Mitchell and Webster 2011; Webster 2015a; Lamphere 1977; Rushforth and Chisholm 1991). People must make their own decisions.Let me turn, finally, to how our conversation that October evening ended, with Jim reflecting on the three ways he wrote poetry in Navajo and on how that might work in English as well.RLJ:At least that’s how the Navajo ones come aboutI don’t know about the EnglishMaybe something similarHere, it seems, is a suggestion that some English language poems may also be messages from the Little Wind. Afterward, I packed up my tape-recorder, dropped Jim at his truck, and then I drove, under a clear starry night sky, back to my little cabin north of Lukachukai.ConclusionsAs anthropologists, we must be willing to admit to our failures of translation (see Fabian 1995; Webster 2017). We should also be explicit about our creative transpositions, the art of our failures. Such explicitness should be predicated on attending to « the music and mechanics of the text » (Leavitt 2006, p. 104). This is the work of a thick translation or philological anthropology. It is the work I have engaged in here. In such work, we catch a glimpse of what Becker (1995, p. 397) called the « attunement over time » of every language, « a unique way of sounding, shaping, remembering, interacting, and referring ».In this article I have tried to show the value of attending to the « unique way of sounding » of a poem in Navajo and how those sounds, especially in the twining of sound and sense and in punning, make translating poetry impossible. I have come down squarely on the side of Roman Jakobson (1959, p. 238) when he states that « poetry by definition is untranslatable ». I have made this argument based both on the use of punning in poetry, but relatedly on the materiality, the phonosonic nexus, of poetry. While I have focused exclusively on poetry, the argument concerning the materiality and muscularity of language – its phonosonic nexus – extends well beyond poetry to all language in use (see Samuels and Porcello 2015). The poetic function, for example, does not exist exclusively in poetry. While recent concerns with voice have not focused on questions of translation, I think it important that the insights from that research be applied to considerations of translation as well. Such a consideration brings into relief the ofness of language, its materiality, its physicality, its muscularity. The voice – the phonosonic nexus – of a language matters. No two languages share the same phonetic clothing, the same twining of sound and sense. No two languages permit the same ambiguities based on puns, on phonological iconicity. We must take seriously the phonetic clothing – the sounds – of languages and the imaginative work such clothing allows and inspires. As Dwight Bolinger (1949, p. 56) beautifully noted:The phonetic elements of a language are like the keys of a piano. They have been played so often and in so many combinations that even a random chord, struck by an object accidentally falling on them, will have some vague semblance of meaning.This is another way of restating Jakobson’s (1959, p. 238) point, that « phonemic similarity is sensed as semantic relationship ». Or as Rex Lee Jim told me that October evening, « sound is the beginning of all things ».