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almond_cheese's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
4.0
jaina8851's review
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
What an incredible collection. I loved the layout of the book with the poem in its original form on the left and the English translation on the right. I found this a very interesting book to read the same year that I read Babel, to contrast the theme of "translation as violence" with "translation as preservation". Of course, colonialism is a driving force for so many of these languages going extinct. I particularly loved the interstitial text describing the language, the culture, and the method of translation each poem underwent. The idea of a poem going through an intermediate language before getting to English and still managing to convey the original meaning is incredible. I also really appreciated the moments where the author pointed out something about the rhythm or rhyme of the original text and I was able to flip back and notice "oh yes all the lines DO rhyme, incredible!" Such a cool book, very glad I have it on my shelf.
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.