- Editorial:
- MILKWEED
- Materia:
- Estudios mayas
- ISBN:
- 978-1-57131-468-0
THE POPOL VUH
SEEDBANK #1
BAZZETT, MICHAEL
Michael Bazzett is the author of The Interrogation; You Must Remember This, which received the 2014 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry; Our Lands Are Not So Different; and a chapbook, The Imaginary City. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Ploughshares, The Sun, Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, and Best New Poets. A longtime faculty member at The Blake School, Bazzett has received the Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. He lives in Minneapolis. The Popol Vuh is a Mayan creation myth. Originally shared orally, and written down in the K'iche' language in the sixteenth century, it was copied and translated by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
In the beginning, the world is spoken into existence with one word: "Earth." There are no inhabitants, and no sun--only the broad sky, silent sea, and sovereign Framer and Shaper. Then come the twin heroes Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Wielding blowguns, they begin a journey to hell and back, ready to confront the folly of false deities as well as death itself, in service to the world and to humanity.
This is the story of the Mayan Popol Vuh, "the book of the woven mat," one of the only epics indigenous to the Americas. Originally sung and chanted, before being translated into prose--and now, for the first time, translated back into verse by Michael Bazzett--this is a story of the generative power of language. A story that asks not only Where did you come from? but How might you live again? A story that, for the first time in English, lives fully as "the phonetic rendering of a living pulse."
Table of Contents:
Contents
Introduction
Translator's Note
The Popol Vuh
Part One
Preamble
The Beginning
The Creation of Animals
Figures of Mud and Figures of Wood
The Flood
Part Two
Seven Macaw
The Fall of Seven Macaw
The Shooting of Seven Macaw
Zipacna and the 400 Boys
The Defeat of Zipacna
The Defeat of Cabracan
Part Three
The Story of the Father of Hunahpu and Xbalanque
The Summons to Xibalba
The Descent into Xibalba
Lady Blood and the Tree of One Hunahpu
The Ascent of Lady Blood from Xibalba
Lady Blood and the Miracle of Maize
Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the House of Xmucane
The Fall of One Batz and One Chouen
Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the Maizefield
Hunahpu and Xbalanque Discover the Gaming Things
The Summons of Hunahpu and Xbalanque to Xibalba
The Descent of Hunahpu and Xbalanque into Xibalba
Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the House of Cold
Hunahpu and Xbalanque in Jaguar House
Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the House of Fire
Hunahpu and Xbalanque in Bat House
The Head of Hunahpu Restored
The Death of Hunahpu and Xbalanque
The Resurrection of Hunahpu and Xbalanque
The Summons of Hunahpu and Xbalanque
Hunahpu and Xbalanque Dance before the Lords of Xibalba
The Defeat of the Lords of Xibalba
The Miraculous Maize of Hunahpu and Xbalanque
The Sun, Moon, and Stars
Part Four
The Creation of Humanity
The Discovery of Maize
The First Four People
The Vision of the First Men
Gratitude of the First Men
The Displeasure of the Gods
The First Four Women
The Beginnings of the People
The First Dawn
Notes
The Popol Vuh A Reader's Companion
