Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

H.S. McAllister. "`The Language of Shamans': Jerome Rothenberg's Contribution to American Indian Literature." Western American Literature, 10:293-309.

An assessment of the contribution of the publication of Jerome Rothenberg's Shaking the Pumpkin (1972), an anthology of North American Indian traditional poetry, to the field of American Indian studies. Explicates the nature of the "aural word" (297) and the aesthetic differences in reading, as opposed to hearing, poetry. Praises Rothenberg's success at communicating a "non-European sense of man's relationship to his language" (309).
Area: AI, CN, CP