kyra_ann_writes's review against another edition
5.0
I loved Poems from the Edge of Extinction because of the collection's emphasis on the beauty and art of language sovereignty through poetry. My heart swells and breaks and mends just for it to do that all over again as I reflect on these poems. I definitely plan to revisit this collection and I recommend it to others with a passion for language justice.
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
4.0
There are two ways for languages to go extinct: either they die, or they are killed. A natural death can happen when a language is gradually replaced by others (such as the slow decline of Latin), or when a language evolves into something else entirely (such as the passage from Old to Middle to Modern English). Unnatural deaths are almost always the result of genocide.
Belarusian, one of the languages represented in this anthology, is a good example of a language struggling against an unnatural death: Russian has been steadily killing it for decades if not centuries. Other examples of similarly dying languages include Gaeilge, Welsh, and Scots (all attacked quite purposefully by English), or minority Chinese languages (including Cantonese), or any of the various Amerindian languages.
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The languages represented in this anthology are Assyrian, Belarusian, Chimwiini (Bravanese Swahili), Gaeilge, Māori, Diné bizaad (Navajo), Patuá (Macanese), Fäeag Rotuạm (Rotuman), Sámi, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Yiddish, and Zoque (O'de püt). Representative poets are Joy Harjo, Jackie Kay, Aurélia Lassaque, Nineb Lamassu, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Valzhyna Mort, Laura Tohe, Taniel Varoujan, and Avrom Sutzkever. I was quite curious as to why these particular languages were selected, but really there's no good answer, because no language is inherently more important or valuable than any other, right? Except Dutch. Dutch has absolutely zero value, and should definitely die.
Belarusian, one of the languages represented in this anthology, is a good example of a language struggling against an unnatural death: Russian has been steadily killing it for decades if not centuries. Other examples of similarly dying languages include Gaeilge, Welsh, and Scots (all attacked quite purposefully by English), or minority Chinese languages (including Cantonese), or any of the various Amerindian languages.
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The languages represented in this anthology are Assyrian, Belarusian, Chimwiini (Bravanese Swahili), Gaeilge, Māori, Diné bizaad (Navajo), Patuá (Macanese), Fäeag Rotuạm (Rotuman), Sámi, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Yiddish, and Zoque (O'de püt). Representative poets are Joy Harjo, Jackie Kay, Aurélia Lassaque, Nineb Lamassu, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Valzhyna Mort, Laura Tohe, Taniel Varoujan, and Avrom Sutzkever. I was quite curious as to why these particular languages were selected, but really there's no good answer, because no language is inherently more important or valuable than any other, right? Except Dutch. Dutch has absolutely zero value, and should definitely die.
karenreader's review
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
5.0
While I wouldn’t give each poem a 5, the book overall, especially the explanations about the poet, language culture, and poet were amazing.
natchewwy's review against another edition
4.0
Sat down to read this for poetry month. I'm always a little leery of language documentation for the sake of scientific inquiry/linguistic ecology/the historical record—however well intentioned, it isolates the spoken words from their speakers and tends to center language death as a tragedy for Humanity's Linguistic Diversity, instead of a symptom of cultural and communal death. "we discovered that we ourselves were the language" Valzhyna Mort writes (trans. from Belarusian) in this collection, which does an admirable job of keeping the focus on the speakers of endangered languages, and what their words mean to them. Every poem is accompanied by an English translation, an overview of the language, a bio of the poet, and a short but thoughtful close read of some of the poem. Poetry is a wonderful genre for documentation because it exposes the inadequacy of recorded grammars that attempt to comprehensively catalogue dying languages—there's always room for creative expression, for novelty. Underrepresentation of non-European endangered languages notwithstanding, this was an insightful read and it compelled me to explore some of the featured poets' other work.
tessaf's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not going to say a couple of the translation methods didn't make me flinch. But it was fascinating.