Finding the Center

Praise for the first edition: "A brilliant gathering of Zuni narrative poetry ... Tedlock's Zuni narrators seem like singers of some pueblo Beowulf, orchestrating oral traditions with voices they use like instruments." - Newsweek. "Splendid translations ... Tedlock has represented pauses in the Zuni with line and strophe breaks, and degrees of pitch and intensity with a handful of standard typographic devices. The text that results is one that we recognize, of course, as poetry scored for voicing; but we also recognize - and this is the kingpin - that an oral tradition has emerged in its own proper character." - The Nation. "[An] extraordinarily impressive collection." - New York Times Book Review. "A genuine artistic breakthrough ... Recapture[s] for us not only the communal spirit of the stories but also ... at least some feeling of what it's like to be a Zuni, something anthropological monographs can't seem to tell us... I know of no other retellings of traditional tales that move me to delight as these do." - Harper's Magazine "Tedlock's book introduces into folklore an attempt to create a verbal notation of the speech dynamics of the original narrators... The realization comes over one with a shock that our infatuation with story has, for all these years, obliterated all but the most rudimentary considerations of style."--American Anthropologist.