Daryl Nielsen
Susan Constable
to enlightened eyes
Buddha's bones?
dewdrops in the grass
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
well, well
pale purple, this year's color...
for young bamboo
translated by David G. Lanoue
a long day--
the eel catcher writes pictures
on the water
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
#41
In the folded
Red lips of the rose
Please do not place
Any poem which lacks
The fragrance of spirit
Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
- Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
- Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
"I keep thinking there must be some mighty rhythm with the right words that would penetrate through all consciousness and wake earth up to its terrific non-transcendent living possibility of having a continuing destiny."
"Doesn't everybody have that? ... I did, since I was a kid. ... Or penetrate through the world with some great song, cry, mantra, or poem like Shelley (in Ode to the West Wind)...
Poetry Reading, Santa Cruz
slats of light on Joanne's hair
don't move as she dances
reading her poem
Diane di Prima
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
'Back on Times Square,
Dreaming of Times Square'
Let some sad trumpeter stand
on the empty streets at dawn
and blow a silver chorus to the
the buildings of Times Square
memorial of ten years, at 5 A.M., with
the thin white moon just
visible
above the green & grooking McGraw
Hill offices
a cop walks by, but he's invisible
with his music
The Globe Hotel, Garver lay in
gray beds there and hunched his
back and cleaned his needles―
where I lay many nights on the nod
from his leftover bloody cottons
and dreamed of Blake's voice talking―
I was lonely,
hotel's vanished into a parking lot
And I'm back here―sitting on the streets
again―
The movies took our language, the
great red signs
A DOUBLE BILL OF GASSERS
Teen Age Nightmare
Hooligans of the Moon
But we were never nightmare
hooligans but seekers of
the blond nose for Truth
Some old men are still alive, but
the old Junkies are gone―
We are a legend, invisible but
legendary, as prophesied
Allen Ginsberg
Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo's cry—
I long for Kyoto.
Bashō
translated by Robert Hass
as a child
I wondered
what kept the moon in the sky
now that I know
I am no happier
Peggy Heinrich
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I'd like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Richard Brautigan
I didn't know the names
of the flowers—now
my garden is gone.
two wings per pigeon
and this is where they gather
on a wire
in the city
Ah, what do I know
Shawn Bowman
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
 |
| R. H. Blyth |
So many waka have titles, but haiku have none, because their real subject is unmentionable.
Haiku are self-obliterating; they are the real "Songs without words.
In waka there is still a kind of poetic haze between us and the thing. The music of the words and the cadence of the lines induce in us a certain state of mind which we designate "poetic", but in haiku the melody and rhythm remove the barriers of custom and prejudice between ourselves and the object.
When we say "object", this does not mean that it is necessarily a material thing.
What we gain (with waka) in lyrical sweetness and historical allusions, we lose in scope and freedom of imagination (with haiku). (Waka) is like an illustrated novel ...
Bashō wanted our daily prose turned into poetry, the realization that the commonest events and actions of life may be done significantly, (and) the deeper use of language, both written and spoken. We live, as Lawrence said, like the illustrated covers of magazines. Comforts is our aim, and dissatisfaction is all we achieve. The aim of haiku is to live twenty four hours a day, that is, to put meaning into every moment, a meaning that may be intense or diffuse, but never ceases.
Haiku often turns the weak subjectivity of waka into an objectivity which is a more subtle subjectivity, or rather a regin where "subjective" and "objective" lose their meaning and validity.
When we try to separate waka and haiku, we come across that law mentioned before, the law that the more the mind endeavours to distinguish two things the closer they insensibly become; the more we assert their unity, the more they separate. Both waka and haiku are the activity of the spirit of man, and we must not exaggerate the differences between them.
Waka began as literature, haiku as a kind of sporting with words. Bashō made it literature, and yet something beyond and above literature, a process of discovery rather than of creation, using words as means, not ends, as a chisel that removes the rock hiding the statue beneath.
Sparrows
In the field of rape,
With flower-viewing faces.
Bashō
Cannibal
When you've rent the flesh and sinew
from my supple skeleton and you've
sucked the last sweet drop of marrow
leaving lonely, brittle bones
will you save the jagged splinters
to adorn your chieftain chest
or scatter them like toothpicks
over yesterday's dung.
Sue De Kelver
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
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