Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp 232–236, ISSN 0193-5615, electronic ISSN 1548-1409.© 2005 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Direct all requests forpermission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’sRights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

Poems

2005 Poetry Contest Winners (Each poet is asked to give an “explication” of the poem—its context in their lives and work.)

First Place

KRISTINA LYONS

Department of AnthropologyUniversity of California at DavisOne Shields Ave.Davis, CA 95616

Then Silence (For Four Voices)—Nosara, Costa Rica 2001

Thanks to G. E. Patterson

I am sitting on a bus seven hourswith a dead man Savanna trees in the dry seasonstrung together outside a haze of midday heatpaper-cut figures scraping against The blown-out tire’s prayer

the windowarriba abajo1 adentro2 A man is deadleaning (chinchin . . .)3 beneath a stained curtainagainst a vinyl seat back Still more people climbing inNo one knows voices colliding their shoulders almost

touchingA man is dead then silence stepping on his head

Notes

1. Arriba abajo. Up, down.2. Adentro. Inside, an allusion to arriba, abajo, pa’ centro, pa’ dentro � a famous

rhyming toast before drinking alcohol, “up, down, to the center, to the inside.”3. Chinchin. Cheers said before drinking.

Lyons’s Statement:

Upon Traveling to Nosara came about as a reaction to an encounter I hadwhile on a highway leaving the Greater Metropolitan Area of San José, CostaRica. At this time, Costa Rica had one of the highest rates of roadway accidents

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in the world. I understand the poem to be a snapshot as well as a compilationof disparate voices that reflect people’s individual and collective reactions tothe quotidian presence of death. The notion of space is also important in thispiece—for example, the space between live bodies and the corpse, between thepassengers in the bus and what lies outside the windows, as well as the diversereactions that arise as people both attempt to observe the accident and processtheir interpretations and emotions. The poem is meant to be performed by agroup of four people. Read horizontally it is one single poem. However, each ofthe three vertical columns is also meant to stand alone. I chose this form for thepoem after listening to a reading by G. E. Patterson at the 2001 BreadloafWriter’s Conference at Middlebury College. The performative nature reflectedin the use of overlapping voices and the interchangeability of the phrasesseemed best to convey the multiple sensory dynamics at work in public spaces,especially public transportation. I also intended the poem to imitate theordering of disorder at play as people make sense of the crash.

This poem reflects the way that I understand the world and in turn writeabout it. Anthropologically speaking, my notion of theory is deeply informedby ethnography, and my mode of analysis is inseparably enmeshed in place.When I sit down to write what is referred to as academic work, what firstcomes to mind and what first appears on paper are images, slices ofconversation, repetitions, and sensations. From my perspective these thingsare what were and remain and continue to circulate among us. The act ofwriting has been important to me for as long as I can remember, and amongother reasons, I chose to study anthropology because I believe it to be adiscipline of storytelling and creative writing. In my mind, there is noseparation between the scholar and the poet or storyteller. I see anthropologyas a space from which to understand how others, as well as we ourselves,tell, remember, invent, resist, witness, and erase.

2005 Poetry Contest, Second Place

LORRAINE HEALY

Fine ArtsNew England College24 Bridge St.Henniker, NH 03242

Lorraine Healy is an Argentinean poet and photographer living on WhidbeyIsland, Washington. The winner of several national awards, including aPushcart Prize nomination for 2004, she has been published extensively. Theauthor of two published chapbooks, she is currently an M.F.A. candidate atNew England College, New Hampshire.

Healy’s Statement

The inspiration for this piece is the factual break-in of General Perón’s tomb,which concluded with the anonymous thieves taking his sawed-off hands.

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