A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

languages, she has a sure command of the vernacular: “we was goin / sing but hahd / afta
cry so much” (19).
A different aspect of the creative engagement of several senses at once are
attempts at concrete poetry, as exemplified by the late Wayne Westlake, Richard
Hamasaki, and Joe Balaz (not to mention his multimedia experiments as well as bradajo’s
calligraphy). The three have collaborated on several levels, which in turn inspired each
writer’s poetry. Westlake’s blockprints are of a putative simplicity, such as the scattering
of the letters of the word pupule (=crazy, insane) all over a page, or endlessly looping
“Hawaiians eat fish eat Hawaiians eat fish eat Hawaiians eat fish […]” to signify a food
chain of sustenance and acceptance. Visualizing the written words can be as functional as
choosing onomatopoetic words, or building lines and sentences that flow, unwind, or
crash like breaking waves. In each instance, linguistic choices are made because of the
writer’s connection to place, culture(s), and community. To see how such linguistic,
stylistic, and formal choices are informed by the Hawaiian language, the metaphorical
quality of that language needs to be appreciated. Few root words branch out to encompass
and combine complex sets of meanings – and, by extension, values. A pertinent example
is the cluster of words and values related to the cultivation of the land, the family, and the
culture, the close connection of aloha ‘aina and ‘ohana. Sumida elaborates on this:
The root of the word for family is ‘oha (taro growing from the older root).
Figuratively, ‘oha means ‘offspring, youngsters,’ or the second generation of a
family line growing from its progenitor kalo (taro) planted in Hawaii’s earth and
water. The terminology of taro culture goes on to include taro shoots called keiki
(children), a term used metaphorically in a great many contexts. […] These
symbols and metaphors, integral to the Hawaiian language, bind love of the land
(i.e., if you love and cultivate the land, the land will return that love by feeding
you), family, sustenance, and culture itself into a rich complex of values – values
involving reciprocity among people and between people and nature. 530
530 Sumida 1991: 108-9. Kiana Davenport has incorporated this conception in her novel Song of the Exile, in
which at some point a native chanter performs at an anti-statehood rally: “She told how the sacred word
‘aina, land, came from the root word ‘ai, to feed, and how the sacred word ‘ohana, family, came from the
root word ‘oha, sprouts of the heart-shaped taro plant, the staple and heartbeat of Hawai’ians, each family
an offshoot of a larger stock. Thus, ‘aina nourished the ‘ohana” (310-1). Another example is the word luau,
which today signifies a feast with ‘native’ foods and entertainment, and which stems from the word for
young taro tops. To put it in more general terms: “So close is the association of man with land that the basic
terms for human kinship identification spring from the land and the plants grown in the soil” (Morales 1984:
202