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Ethnopoetics is the study of folk poetry traditions. Typically it has been undertaken as studies of folk poetry of non-western, often indigenous peoples, even though the term could be applied to the study of all folk poetries.

Within the field of linguistics and Anthropology, the term refers to a particular method of analyzing linguistic use and structure in oral literature such as poetry, prose narratives, such as folk tales, ceremonial speech and other forms of extended utterances in stylized registers and describing it in a way that pays attention to poetic structures within speech. The development of Ethnopoetics as a separate field of study was largely pioneered from the middle of the 20th century by anthropologists and linguists such as Dell Hymes and Dennis Tedlock.

Depending on point of view ethnopoetics can be seen as a subfield of either Ethnology, Anthropology, Folkloristics, Stylistics, Linguistics, or Literature. Because of its subject and methodology is also an important field within translation studies.

Contents 1 Folk poetries by region 1.1 Folk poetries of the Americas 1.2 Folk poetries of Asia 1.3 Folk poems of Asians 1.4 Folk poems of America 1.5 Folk poems of Indonesia 1.6 Folk poems of The Ocean 2 Styles of folk poems 3 Transmission of folk poems 4 Bibliography

• Poetry of the Inuit
• Indigenous poetry of the American Southwest
• Indigenous poetry of the Plains Indians
• Indigenous poetries of Mesoamerica

• Ghinnawa of the Bedouin

Writer Jerome Rothenberg is known for his anthology Technicians of the Scared (1968). Other writers and poets who have made significant or representative contributions to the field include Henry Munn, Antonin Artaud, Tristan Tzara, Carlos Castaneda and also William Bright.

• Hymes, Dell H. (1981). "In vain I tried to tell you": Essays in Native American ethnopoetics. Studies in Native American literature (No. 1); University of Pennsylvania publications in conduct and communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-7806-2 (hbk); ISBN 0-8122-1117-0 (pbk); ISBN 0-585-17266-8 (electronic bk.).
• Hymes, Dell H. (2003). Now I know only so far: Essays in ethnopoetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-2407-9 (hbk); ISBN 0-8032-7335-5 (pbk).
• Tedlock, Dennis. (1972). Finding the center: Narrative poetry of the Zuñi Indians. New York, Dial Press.
• Tedlock, Dennis. (1983). The spoken word and the work of interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-7880-1 (hbk.); ISBN 0-8122-1143-X (pbk.).
• Tedlock, Dennis. (1999). Finding the center: The art of the Zuni storyteller (2nd. ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4439-8 (hbk.); ISBN 0-8032-9440-9 (pbk.)