Carter Revard Stati Uniti - Cheyenne inglese Carter Revard, scrittore, poeta ed insegnante è di ascendenza Osage da parte di padre. È anche noto con il nome Osage, Nom-Peh-Wah-La, datogli nel 1952 da sua nonna, Josephine Jump.
Nato a Pawhuska, in Oklahoma nel 1931, la sua prima educazione nella riserva Osage è stata in una classe unica nella auqle convivevano tutti i gradi della scuola. In questo ambiente, il lavoro scolastico veniva abbinato a lavoretti di agricoltura. Revard iniziò in quell'ambito a sviluppare il suo interesse per la letteratura e la scienza. Una borsa di studio vinta in un quiz radiofonico gli ha consentito di conseguire una laurea presso l'Università di Tulsa, e lì le sue capacità gli fecero ottenere una nuova borsa di studio che gli ha permesso di studiare all'università di Oxford, conseguendo una nuova laurea e poi un dottorato di ricerca presso la Yale University nel 1959.
Revard ha insegnato prima all'Amherst College e poi per la maggior parte della sua carriera,presso la Washington University di St. Louis, a partire dal 1961.
È stato visiting professor presso l'Università di Tulsa e l'Università di Oklahoma. Insolitamente per un professore "nativo americano", il focus principale del suo studio e della sua carriera è stato lo studio di manoscritti medievali inglesi e il loro contesto sociale.
Revard ha anche prodotto lavori scientifici di linguistica (in particolare sulla transizione tra inglese medioevale e le forme successive del linguaggio) e in Letteratura nativa americana.
È andato in pensione nel 1997. Oltre che su riviste letterarie, le sue poesie sono state raccolte in tutte le principali antologie di poesia indiana contemporanea e nei volumi "Ponca War Dancers" (1980), "Cowboys and Indians, Christmas Shopping" (1992) e "An Eagle Nation" (1993), "Family Matters, Tribal Affairs" (1998) (una raccolta di saggi pubblicata dalla University Arizona Press. Nel 2001, sempre la University Arizona Press, ha pubblicato la sua autobiografia "Winning the Dust Bowl".
Viene considerato uno dei più importanti ed autorevoli scrittori nativi americani. In Italia le sue opere sono state raccolte nell’antologia "Le parole nel sangue" (Mondadori), "Piste perdute, piste ritrovate" (Jaca Book) e in un volumetto dal titolo "In parata con i veterani delle guerre straniere" della Multimedia Edizioni.
Carter Revard è un interessante contrasto tra il serio professore universitario che si occupa di storia e letteratura medioevale e il ricercatore entusiasta e attento alle tradizioni e ai cerimoniali del suo popolo, attivo sostenitore dei diritti delle Nazioni dei Nativi d’America.
Ha partecipato in Italia alle manifestazioni "Lo spirito dei luoghi. Incontri internazionali di poesia" (1996), "Verba Volant. Incontri internazionali di poesia" (1997), "Napolipoesia. Incontri internazionali di poesia" (1999 e 2002), "Sidaja" (2001), Incontri internazionali di poesia di Sarajevo (2003).
Opere pubblicate
How the Songs Come Down, Salt Publications (2005)
Winning the Dust Bowl, University of Arizona Press (2001)
Family Matters, Tribal Affairs University of Arizona Press (1999)
An Eagle Nation, University of Arizona Press (1997)
Cowboys and Indians Christmas Shopping, Point Riders Press (1992)
Ponca War Dancers, Point Riders Press (1980)
Antologie
Genocide of the Mind, Marijo Moore (Editor), Thunder's Mouth Press.
Verse and Universe; Contemporary Poems about Science and Math, Kurt Brown (Editor), Milkweed Editions.
Indian Summer issue of phati'tude
Home Places : Contemporary Native American Writing from Sun Tracks, (Sun Tracks, Vol. 31), Larry Evers & Ofelia Zepeda (Editors), Univ of Arizona Press.
Columbus & Beyond: Views from Native Americans, Southwest Parks & Monuments.
Returning the Gift: Poetry and Prose from the First North American Native Writers' Festival, (Sun Tracks Books, Vol. 29,) University of Arizona Press.
Durable Breath: Contemporary Native American Poetry, John E. Smelcer, D. L. Birchfield (Editors), Salmon Run Pub.
Smoke Rising: The Native North American Literary Companion, Janet Witalec, Visible Ink Press.
The Riverside Anthology of Literature, Douglas Hunt (Editor), Houghton Mifflin Co.
Earth Power Coming : Short Fiction in Native American Literature, Simon J. Ortiz (Editor), Navajo Community College Press.
The Remembered Earth : An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature, Geary Hobson (Editor), Univ of New Mexico Press.
Talking Leaves : Contemporary Native American Short Stories, Craig Lesley, Katheryn Stavrakis (Editor) Dell Books.
American Indian Literature: An Anthology, by Alan R. Velie, Univ. of Oklahoma Press.
Voices of the Rainbow : Contemporary Poetry by Native Americans, Kenneth Rosen (Editor), R.C. Gorman, Aaron Yava (Illustrator), Arcade Pub.
The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy (Editors), 4th Edition , W W Norton & Co.
Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, Duane Niatum (Editor), HarperCollins.
New Worlds of Literature : Writings from America's Many Cultures, Jerome Beaty & J. Paul Hunter (Editors), W W Norton & Co.
Sound and Sense : An Introduction to Poetry, Laurence Perrine, Thomas R. Arp, Harcourt Brace College & School Div.
Premi e riconoscimenti
• 2007 - American Indian Festival of Words Author Award
• 2005 - Lifetime Achievement Award, Native Writers' Circle of the Americas
• 2002 - Finalist, Oklahoma Book Award, Nonfiction category
• 2000 - Writer of the Year, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers
• 1994 - Oklahoma Book Award, Poetry category
The Coyote Bard Howls: Carter Bevard and Native-American PoeticsThere’s a staggering number of Native American poets whose work embodies a can’t-talk-it-down excellence. To mention only the most obvious, Paula Gunn Allen, Joy Harjo, Carter Revard, Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, Simon Ortiz, Leslie Marmon Silko and Maurice Kenny. Of these poets, it’s perhaps Carter Revard’s work that reveals tribal patterns of memory with greatest ease to uninitiated readers.
Revard, a member of the Osage Nation that once dominated the prairie plains between the Red Rivers and Missouri, is a professor emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. Osage tribal rhythms are not so much encoded in his lines as gently pressed into an exquisitely subtle range of sounds detectable only if you slow down and take the time to listen. Some of the titles of Revard’s poems hint at the point of this poetry: “Coyote Tells Why He Sings,” “Making a Name,” “A Song that We Still Sing,” “Getting Across,” “Spirituality 101: Snakeroot.” An abundance of sound in Revard’s lines strikes one as being as miraculous as the fact of Beethoven’s musical compositions, and for a similar reason: Revard has been deaf for most of his poetic career. Read “Coyote Tells Why He Sings” out loud:
There was a little rill of water, near the den,
That showed a trickle, all the dry summer
When I born. One night in late August, it rained –
The Thunder waked us. Drops came crashing down
In dust, on stiff blackjack leaves, on lichened rocks
And the rain came in a pelting rush down over the hill,
Wind blew wet into our cave as I heard the sounds
Of leaf-drip, rustling of soggy branches in gusts of wind.
And then the rill’s tune changed – I heard a rock drop
That set new ripples gurgling, in a lower key.
Where the new ripples were, I drank, next morning,
Fresh muddy water that set my teeth on edge.
I thought how delicate that rock’s poise was and how
The storm made music, when it changed my world.
Revard’s analysis of how natural sound patterns give birth to a Coyote’s song stubbornly refuses to sacrifice perception for cultural sustenance – within Native American consciousness, perception and culture are one and the same.
What makes contemporary Native American poetry like Revard’s so vital to our survival in this millennium (in contrast to the exhaustion of much contemporary Euro-American verse) is not only the lucidity and accessibility of its language and style and the authenticity of its forms, but also its practitioner’s steadfast commitment to the belief that poetry is about something external to poetic language. For many Native American poets, poetry serves as a living means of resisting the genocide of the mind that Euro-American culture has been perpetrating on American Indians since before the U.S. government banned the Ghost Dance, an institution that provided defeated Plains Indians a final means of remembering and enacting the sacred rhythms of their scattered tribes.
Native poetry is a form of memory. Indeed, this poetry promises, to the sensitive reader, to reveal essential and enduring forms of tribal memory, not as a replacement but as an extension of ways of remembering. To enter into the forms of Native American poetry is to participate in rhythms once demonized and outlawed and now forgotten or ignored, which alone should make Native poetry compelling to North American radicals.
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