A review by natchewwy
Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages by Chris McCabe

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.