■ Patience Epps University of Texas at Austin pattieepps@austin.utexas.edu ■ Danilo Paiva Ramos Universidade Federal de Bahia danilo.paiva@ufba.br Enactive Aesthetics: The Poetics of Hup Incantation This paper explores the genre of incantation as it is practiced by the Hup (Mak u) people of the northwest Amazon, and considers the challenges it brings to our conceptions of verbal art and its documentation. Hup incantation is fundamentally multifaceted, bringing to bear multiple performative events, voices, and audiences across ritual and social contexts. It is also both highly artistic and maximally enactive, such that its aesthetic and utilitarian features not only coexist, but also co-engender, each promoting the elaboration of the other. As we argue here, the incantation invites us to reexamine our understanding of poetics, and epitomizes the paradox of commensurability that challenges any documentation of language and cul- ture. [verbal art, shamanic language, incantation, Amazonia, Hup] O ur little group set out in single file along one of the many paths leading out of the village, threading its way through the surrounding manioc plots and overgrown fallows. We were heading to one of the giant inselbergs that thrust themselves out of the forested plain between the Tiqui e and Vaup es Rivers of northwest Brazil, retracing the steps of countless Hup ancestors who visited this sacred landmark. As the forest began to deepen, our group paused for a rest in a small clearing, sprawling on the ground with our rucksacks and baskets, laughing and drinking water mixed with manioc meal from a battered aluminum pot. Ponciano, the leader of our expedition, drew out a clump of strong tobacco rolled in a scrap of notebook paper, lit it, and took a deep pull. Holding the smoke in his mouth, he blew it over his legs and body, then passed the cigarette to the young man beside him, who followed suit and passed it to the next Hup youth. The cigarette passed from hand to hand until everyone present had blown the smoke over themselves, conveying the protection of the Path-Traveling incantation to their bodies. Our first experiences with Hup incantation came in contexts such as these—with no indication of the process required of the shaman or what the text might consist of. Ponciano’s preparation of the protective Path-Traveling incantation had been carried out a day or two earlier, as he sat alone in a quiet corner of his house, head lowered over the roll of tobacco cupped in his hands, whispering the words of the incantation over and into it as his ‘breath-person’ traveled among cosmic planes and engaged with the spirit entities concerned. With the burning of the cigarette on the trail, the shamanic act was complete. It is only at sundown in a Hup community, when the evening calm is punctuated by the rhythmic pounding of coca in wooden mortars and the older men of the community gather in small groups to ingest the powder and converse, that shamanic discourse finds a more public forum, and incantations are discussed and rehearsed in exegetic form. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 0, Issue 0, pp. 1–25, ISSN 1055-1360, EISSN 1548-1395. © 2020 American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/jola.12269. 1