ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 begins with Sapir’s publication of four translated Québécois folk songs in Poetry. These poems testify to Harriet Monroe’s keen interest in both ‘folk poetry’ and fairly traditional verse. That there is a crucial ethical dimension to Sapir’s poetic treatment of ‘folk’ materials becomes evident as we consider his poem “The Blind, Old Indian Tells His Names,” in which Sapir plays fast and loose with stories and people he encountered during his field work among the Nuu-chah-nulth, raising the question of an anthropologist-poet’s ethical obligations toward the subjects of his research. I then turn to the poem “Zuni” to show how Sapir uses poetry to give professional advice to Benedict and to evoke the sensuous plenitude of another culture even as he calls upon Benedict to detach herself from that culture’s allure.
