Atsushi atsushi to
kado kado no koe

"Too hot too hot"
from gate to gate the cry

With these lines from Basho, I think the first task of the translator is to reproduce the poetic devices, of startling simplicity: repetition and alliteration. One translation I have has: "says a voice at every house-gate." (?) Why the redundant "says"?

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Why do I not get detailed two page emails about the current poetry scene that I can then reproduce on my blog? I am quite glad not to be a poetic powerbroker, whether real or perceived. I did get a nice email from Matsuo Basho recently, which I may reproduce here.

I just had to mention my blog on my annual performance review, which I am soon to turn in. Can all this be justified on academic grounds? I certainly reach more people than I would through an academic article. I suggested that it be given the credit I might receive for a pair of book reviews.

/ www.hyepez.blogspot.com
03-05 02:55 PM / stephanieyoung.blogspot.com
03-05 02:43 PM / nickpiombino.blogspot.com
03-05 02:20 PM / nickpiombino.blogspot.com
03-05 02:01 PM /
03-05 02:01 PM / Google search: language poets
03-05 01:40 PM / heathensinheat.blogspot.com
03-05 01:30 PM /2002_12_01_jonathanmayhew_archive.html Google search: Vino, primero, pura
03-05 01:28 PM / [unknown origin]
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03-05 01:20 PM / millionpoems.blogspot.com
03-05 01:09 PM / sainteros.com/weblog
03-05 12:57 PM / [unknown origin]
03-05 12:47 PM / rw.blogspot.com
03-05 12:33 PM / josephmassey.blogspot.com
03-05 12:33 PM / ululate.blogspot.com
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03-05 12:11 PM / heathensinheat.blogspot.com
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03-05 11:52 AM / [unknown origin]
03-05 11:51 AM / limetree.blogspot.com
03-05 11:44 AM /

A quick snapshot of how you have been getting to this blog in the last few hours!

The 10th century Tosa Diary, read in the laundromat. If written by a man, the putative author Tsurayuki, it is marvelous excercise in point of view, since it is narrated by a woman in Tsurayuki's entourage, perhaps his wife. If written by a woman and simply attributed to Tsurayuki, it is no less marvelous. The poems in the book are attributed to various fictional characters, including the female narrator, several children, and poets of varying levels of skill. Should we think of them as real children's poems, (essentially found poems) or as poems written by the author in a deliberately naive style? Then the book becomes a sort of ars poetica. The poems said to be written by incompetent or immature poets are there as negative examples, yet at the same time are highly effective as dramatic outpourings of naive feelings. The narrator, returning with Tsurayuki's party after the latter's term as provincial government has expired, has lost her child, a child born in the capital. Her poems of grief are quite affecting. Why should I weep for a 10th century Japanese child? It's too bad the translator of this work did not collaborate with a poet... The prose parts work well, but the poetry is not translated effectively, although some of the poems are supposed to sound bad.

The cats making love

once they’ve stopped in the bedroom

a faint vernal moon

--Corman

Now cat's done

mewing, bedroom's

touched by moonlight

--Stryk

I think these are versions of the same Basho haiku.

Old old pond
frog re-leaping
past

--Cid Corman, (courtesy of Joe Massey; Corman has other version of the poem as well).

Literal crib:

oldpond [particle meaning the sentence that follows is about the old pond]
frog leaps
water [possessive particle] sound

huruike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

Rexroth:

An old pond--
The sound
Of a diving frog.

Lucien Stryk doesn't do too bad: "Old pond. / leap-splash / a frog."

The linked, collaborative poetry of the Basho school (late 17th century) retains its freshness. "Glad to be alive / my poems have been anthologized!" "Shake the ashes / from the dried sardine." The rules governing composition seem convoluted, designed to preserve the exact degree of continuity and discontunuity, coherence and variety, peaks and valleys of attention. The haiku is really the first stanza of a linked poem, having gained autonomy. The translator has two tasks, in this context. One is not to complicate or overexplain, not to destroy freshness and simplicity. The second is to provide enough information so that the poem still makes sense. These are contradictory. Lenore Mayhew is sometimes too minimalistic.

The utter simplicity of "mizu no oto," literally "water's sound." I have seen it translated as "a splash," or as "A deep resonance" (???).

E-mail conversation this afternoon with Jordan Davis about reading all of O'Hara, Koch, and Ashbery's favorite writers. The merits of David Schubert. Teaching poetry to children. The founding of the International Ron Padgett Society.

***

I'm bringing home Japanese Linked Poetry and Japanese Poetic Diaries, edited by Earl Miner, to read this evening. I haven't looked at these books in at least five years.

For Basho's:

Abura kasurite
yoine suru aki

Miner puts: "In his lamp the oil grows low / and autumn brings him early sleep"

Lenore Mayhew, in Monkey's Raincoat" (Charles Tuttle, 1985) has "Autumn: scrape the oil / go to bed with the dark."

Too bad the scholar and the poet are not combined in one person. Miner's scholarly apparatus is indispensable, but my paternal aunt, who knows even less Japanese than I do, has a more graceful touch--and is often more accurate to boot. There is no "his" or "and" in Basho's original. There's not even a lamp, this is implied.

MLA Newletter arrived. If there is a Margaret Atwood Society why isn't there a Fanny Howe Society or a Ron Padgett Society? At the very least a Raymond Roussel Society. Perhaps it's for the best, though. The WCW usually chooses a dull topic. And "Milton and Popular Culture"?

Reading Kenko's Tsurezuregusa at my in-laws house in San Diego. Japanese aesthetics emphasizes imperfection and perishability. You don't want to have a complete set of anything, says this 14th century Buddhist monk. These "essays in idleness" delineate a good blog aesthetic as well.

I think I'll go all out in my poetry workshop, teaching all five days of my spring break. I know I'm going to do apology poems, the "swan of bees" excercise, perhaps as a class collaboration, and poems based on Herrick's "The Argument of His Book." The problem is the profusion of ideas. I really need more than a week. Of course I've never taught poetry "writing" even to adults. Only poetry reading.

A swan of bees.

Read New Yorker on the airplane to San Diego. Did you see the cartoon about two guys in the bar, the one where the husband and the wife are sitting on the couch and one says something to the other, the defendant before the judge, the prisoners chained to the wall, the man and the woman in the restaurant breaking up? I'd like to see an issue in which none of the cartoons are based on cartoon stereotypes. The equivalent in the New Yorker poems is the poem with too many similes. Similes should be outlawed, unless your name is Homer or John Ashbery or Chris Stroffolino. They are a sign of laziness in most cases.

***

Tomorrow will make six months of blogging.