The Popol Vuh

by Michael Bazzett Narrated by Michael Bazzett

Overview

A*NEW YORK TIMES*BEST POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR

In the beginning, the world is spoken into existence with one word: “Earth.” There are no inhabitants, and no sun-only the broad sky, silent sea, and sovereign Framer and Shaper. Then come the twin heroes Hunahpu and Xbalanque.*Wielding blowguns, they begin a journey to hell and back, ready to confront the folly of false deities as well as death itself, in service to the world and to humanity.

This is the story of the Mayan*Popol Vuh, “the book of the woven mat,” one of the only epics indigenous to the Americas. Originally sung and chanted, before being translated into prose-and now, for the first time, translated back into verse by Michael Bazzett-this is a story of the generative power of language. A story that asks not only*Where did you come from?*but*How might you live again?*A story that, for the first time in English, lives fully as “the phonetic rendering of a living pulse.”

By turns poetic and lucid, sinuous and accessible, this striking new translation of*The Popol Vuh-the first in the Seedbank series of world literature-breathes new life into an essential tale.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for The Popol Vuh

“For nonscholars, the first test of any translation is simply whether it’s pleasurable to read, and Bazzett’s limpid, smoothly paced version is more than satisfying on that score. And it’s a good thing to be reminded, perhaps especially now, and perhaps especially by a text originating in Guatemala, that “However many nations / live in the world today, / however many countless people, / they all had but one dawn.”—New York Times, Best Poetry of 2018

"Mr. Bazzett's translation offers a welcome path into the power of The Popol Vuh as beautiful literature. . . . [his] arrangement and format give the work its own authentic-sounding rhythm and cadence, something that is lost a bit in the recent scholarly editions . . . Mr. Bazzett writes that his intent was to create a more accessible source for students, 'a version of the myth they could disappear into, a verse version that truly sang.' He has succeeded."—Wall Street Journal

"Milkweed's Seedbank series is one of the most exciting and visionary projects in contemporary publishing. Taking the long view, these volumes run parallel to the much-hyped books of the moment to demonstrate the possibility and hope inherent in all great literature." —Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books

"With Bazzett's translation, The Popol Vuh has been reincarnated . . . in a clear, elegant English that allows the reader to visualize the epic adventure of the Hero Twins and the universal story of human creation. It's a boon for readers everywhere." —Rain Taxi

“[Bazzett’s] translation of The Popol Vuh is a superb demonstration of literary translation, and the book, as a whole—containing an authentic and transparent translator’s introduction, the creation epic itself, and a reader’s companion—should be incorporated into every literary translation program.”—Literary Review

“A creative and fascinating version that’s a pleasure to read: Michael Bazzett has made intriguing choices and invested a huge amount of work. The result is both poetic and—in many cases—moving.”—Allen Christenson, Brigham Young University

Praise for The Interrogation

“Michael Bazzett’s staggering new collection, The Interrogation, is the record of a poet curious about, and in dialogue with, absolutely everything. If poems are buildings erected to house our wonder, then Bazzett has gifted us a metropolis—one teeming with life and endlessly hospitable to visitors. We are the beneficiaries of such good fortune, this generous making.”—Kaveh Akbar

“‘You don’t expect / our warmth / to be the thing / that obscures us,’ Michael Bazzett writes in a book that explores the limits of identity and definition. His work is a vivid reminder that imagination makes the world strange in order for us to see what we’ve forgotten or taken for granted. He’s a poet who’ll take you where no one else can.”—Bob Hicok

“The Interrogation reminds me that we always have the choice to revel in the striking strangeness of the world we live in, and that we do not have to accept anyone’s life at face value, especially our own. In this daringly disarming world built of wondrous and wondering words, cities have faces, moonlight is poured into aquariums, a man with no mouth speaks, mothers prank call their sons, and fire has many names. To read Michael Bazzett’s poems is to reach through the thick veil separating us from the most tender, timeless, and true parts of ourselves that we both dread and cherish.”—Tarfia Faizullah

“Michael Bazzett establishes himself as a keen questioner of the eye and ear; a poet fully able to construct and inhabit this world, and those beyond, through lush aural and visual engagement. With the lyrical dexterity and sonic authority of a master craftsman, Bazzett gleans epistemic truths from both natural and preternatural sources and delivers crisp, unforced poems of sheer beauty. Readers will find themselves rapt by Bazzett’s audacious and perfect storm of song, symbol, and earnest sight.”—Airea D. Matthews

“How special it is to read the record of Michael Bazzett’s keen looking and bizarro dreaming. I didn’t know I wanted poems about moles being comets or pubic hair performance artists, but I did. I needed this book. I needed to laugh and wonder and wince and gasp. I needed to see all this glorious seeing. You need this book too. You need to walk through Bazzett’s funhouse and let these mirrors do their alchemy on you.”—Danez Smith

Praise for You Must Remember This

“Michael Bazzett’s poems keep pleasantly surprising me with their innocent brutality. I’m not sure I have any way to clearly describe this except to say that it is the sort of heart stopping honesty about humanity we see in work like Donald Barthelme’s ‘The School’ or Toni Cade Bambara’s ‘The Lesson.’ Both of these are short stories, I understand, but I’m okay with that because Bazzett’s talky, lyrically twisted narratives seems to ride the same sort of line between story and poem that we see in Borges and chunks of Calvino.”—Camille Dungy, The Rumpus

“You Must Remember This is a book of unnerving wonders, one in which improbable events are narrated with strange intimacy, lucidity, and sly wit. But Michael Bazzett is much more than a writer of imaginative narratives. Somewhere beneath the surfaces of these wild and lovely poems, I hear the clashing of individual personality with popular myth. You Must Remember This is an amazing book, one that continues to whisper in my ear after I’ve put it down.”—Kevin Prufer

“Powered by the engine of the tricky dreaming mind, the poems in You Must Remember This are both hauntingly fable-like and delightfully idiosyncratic. Offering spectacular insight into the idea of longing for one’s own estranged self, Michael Bazzett’s poems are as tragic and unsettling as they are compelling and beautifully precise.”—Ada Limón

“A debut collection whose mercurial sensibility and loose-woven free verse place Michael Bazzett somewhere between Robert Hass and Patricia Lockwood. His pages stand out, amid so many other mildly quirky or eccentric first books, because their verse comes closer than most to presenting real people in his imagined world.”—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192642306
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	04/30/2024
Series:	Seedbank
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The Beginning

Here we are. All is still.

All is still silent and waiting.
All is silent and calm. Hushed and empty is the womb of the sky.

These are the first words.
This is the first speaking.

There is not yet one person,
one animal, bird, fish,
crab, tree, rock, hollow,
canyon, field or woven forest.

The broad sky is all alone.
The face of the earth is not yet here.
The expanse of sea is all alone,
along with the womb of the sky.

Nothing has been gathered.
All is at rest. Nothing stirs.
All is drowsing. Nothing stands.
Only the breadth of water, only the tranquil sea.

There is no thought of what might be.
All lies dark and silent in the only night.

All alone are the Framer and the Shaper,
the Sovereign and the feathered serpent,
the ones who have borne children and the ones who have planted them.

They are luminous in the waters,
wrapped in feathers of quetzal and cotinga.
Brilliance glimmers through the gaps.

And so they are called Quetzal Serpent,
and hold deep wisdom in their bones.

And so they are called Heart of Sky.
And this is said as the name of the god.

***

Then came the word.

Heart of Sky arrived in the dark of the only night.

Heart of Sky arrived with Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent.

They talked together then.
They pondered and wondered.

They reached an accord,
braiding together their words and their thoughts.

They heartened one another and it came clear: the conception of humans born beneath a luminous sky.

Then they conceived the generations of trees and the generations of thickets,

the germination of all life in the darkness of pale dawn,
by Heart of Sky, who is called Hurricane.

Lightning Hurricane is first.
Newborn Thunderbolt is second.
Sudden Lightning is third.

These three as one are Heart of Sky.
They came together with Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent.
Their joining conceived both light and life:

“How shall it be sown?
When should dawn come?
Who will feed these worlds?
Who will sustain them?”

“Let it be like this.

Let the water clear away so the plate of earth comes toward the light.
Let the land gather and level out.

Then it can be sown.
Then the dawn can come.”

“But there will be no words of praise or prayer to sing of what we frame and shape until humanity is born, until true people have been made,” they said.

When it was time to make the earth:
it only took a word.
To make earth they said, “Earth”

and there it was: sudden as a cloud or mist unfolds from the face of a mountain,
so earth was there.

Then mountains were called from the water and instantly the mountains rose.

It was simply their pure spirit,
their glinting spark of insight that conceived the mountains and the valleys,
whose face grew sudden groves of cypress and pine.

And the feathered serpent was pleased with this:

“It is good you came, Heart of Sky.
Lightning Hurricane, Newborn Thunderbolt,
and you as well, Sudden Lightning.
The shape of our work will turn out well.”

And so the earth formed first,
folded in mountains and valleys,
and water channeled the land and streams threaded the slopes,
divided by the land as it rose.

This was the formation of things called forth by Heart of Sky and Heart of Earth,
as they are called, for they were the first to conceive it.

The sky was set apart and the earth was set apart within the water.
So the world was made complete when they pondered and they wondered.

*****

Lady Blood and The Tree of One Hunahpu

This, then, is the story of a maiden:
the daughter of the lord named Gathered Blood.
She was the daughter of a lord,
and thus was known as Lady Blood.

When she heard the account of the fruit tree from her father,
she was astonished by the tale.

“Can’t I somehow see this tree,
to better understand its strangeness?

I’ve heard that the fruit is truly delicious,” she said,

and she left alone to wander beneath the calabash tree at Devastation Ballcourt.

“Ah!
What is this fruit?

How could it not be delicious,
the fruit borne by this tree?

I will not die.
I will not be lost.

Who would even hear if I picked one?” asked the maiden.

Then the skull spoke there in the midst of the tree:

“What could you desire from this?
It’s just bone, a round thing stuck in the branches,”

said the head of One Hunahpu when it spoke to the maiden.

“You do not desire it,” she was told.

“But I do desire it,” said the maiden.

“Then open your right hand and reach up into the branches so that I can see it,” said the skull.

“Very well,” said the maiden,
and she stretched her right hand

up to the face of the skull and it squeezed out a little spit into her open palm.

Then she looked into her hand—
she wasted no time, but the skull’s saliva was gone.

“The saliva was a sign that I have given you.

This head of mine no longer functions:
a skull without flesh just doesn’t work.

It is the same with the head of even a great lord:
it is merely the flesh that makes it look good

and then when he dies,
people are frightened because of the bones.

His son remains behind,
spat into the world:
his spittle, his essence.

If his son becomes a lord, a great sage,
a master of speech,

nothing is lost:
the line continues to be fulfilled and made complete.

The face of the lord is not ruined or extinguished.
The warrior, the sage abides in his daughters and sons.

Thus it will be so,
as I have now done to you.

Climb, then, to the face of the earth.
You will not die. You have entered

into the word. So be it,” said the skull of One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu.

This came from the mind,
from the thoughts of Hurricane,
Newborn Thunderbolt, and Sudden Lightning:

This was their word.

And so the maiden returned home,
having been given much instruction.

Children were created straightaway in her womb.
They came simply from the saliva.

This, then, was the creation of Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

Once the maiden had arrived and spent six moons at her home,
she was found out by her father,
Gathered Blood was his name.

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