On Translating Chiyo-ni: Isabel Winson-Sagan & Miriam Sagan - Small Press Friday

Woodcut of Chiyo-ni by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

A note: the following, a set of two translated poems by the haiku master poet, Chiyo-ni, embeded in a haibun style form, was sent along this way by Miriam Sagan and her daughter, Isabel Winson-Sagan. I have always loved Chiyo-ni; her work doesn't get nearly enough exposure to my taste. So, here's a little something to enjoy.

     Fiesta is over, although it is still hot. The sunflower seeds I planted inappropriately in the half barrels on the front porch almost touch the ceiling of the portal, and have finally bloomed. I think the thrashers might be gone--the stick nest in the cholla bush looks empty.

     My daughter Isabel and I sat down to translate Chiyo-ni, probably the most famous 18th century Japanese woman haiku poet--no easy task, but an exciting one. Autumn poems seemed appropriate.

     Chiyo-no writes:

mikazuki ni
hishihishi to mono to
shizumarinu.

 
     Isabel showed me how the kanji of the first line which reads in part "3 sun moon" means either new moon or crescent moon. Hishihishi is considered untranslatable and onomatopoetic--translator Patricia Donegan says it is a kind of awareness or feeling. 

     Here is our best effort:

at the new moon
bit by bit
everything hushes

   
  Then we tried:

hatsukari ya
iyoiyo nagaki
yo no kawari

 
      Iz was practically acting out the first line, jumping up and pointing--first wild geese! Then we had a tortuous  discussion about the rest which literally just means the nights are growing longer and longer. Where was the poetry? In a figurative turn, it seems.

first wild geese!
growing longer--
migrating night

   
     By then we were so hungry we had to go to the Tune-Up cafe around the corner and drink our favorite Arnold Palmers. I walked Iz half way home and came back through the dry neighborhood, watching the red ants.

---------------------------------------------------- 

after many nights
telling me bedtime stories
the geese have left 

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Photo by Eric Frommer

best,
Don 

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Wednesday Haiku, #17: Miriam Sagan

  

Wednesday Haiku, Week #17

notes of the Haydn score--
small beetle waves antenna
from the kitchen chair

Miriam Sagan

don't sing, insects!
the world will get better
in its own time

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 102 songs

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Call for Submissions: Miriam's Well

One of my favorite small press poets, whose work I've been reading and admiring for well over 20 years, Miriam Sagan, has her own relatively new blog and is looking for submissions of material. Here's some details:

Miriam's Well (http://miriamswell.wordpress.com) is
looking for submissions of poetry and prose and art,
particularly in the categories listed in the blog, such
as Baba Yaga, birds, glass, etc. etc. I'm also looking to
interview published poets, and for guest bloggers,
ideas, text, images, and news!

Come visit.

In addition, Miriam tells me she is "also looking for haiku/tanka and little posts on writer's favorite places to write..."



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Pictured above is the 10th chapbook in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series, entitled The Future Tense of Ash. "Reading Chiyou -Ni ..." is one of 5 longish poems, centering around the poet's mood and feelings after the death of a husband. This remembers one of the finest haiku poets of all time. A nice selection of Chiyou-Ni's work may be found here. Miriam's chapbook is still available via Lilliput at the chapbook page for $3, postpaid.


Reading Chiyo-Ni, 1703-1775, Japanese Women Haikuist
-all night I quarrel with you in my dreams
-Reading Chiyo-Ni, 1703-1775, Japanese Women Haikuist
-all night I quarrel with you in my dreams
-the child who wants to return to the sea
-the mother who wants to keep her
-in Edo Japan, widows, whores and nuns write haiku
-a path through oak trees, or the way of the tao
-day three on the tramp steamer she ran out of things to read
-we went to see the volcano's steam vents despite the rain
-holding up one black umbrella
-a butter-colored cat I had never seen before stalking the
--------perimeter of the field
-nail shell broken on the sidewalk
-my daughter woke and interrupted my handwriting
-statue of the famous woman poet stands facing the New England
--------harbor
-each button cast in bronze
-a notion of impermanence, an actual alteration of the shoreline
-monuments to the dead whose names meant nothing to us
-in the town square, or on marble tombstones obscured by moss
-you could count seventeen syllables your whole life
-you could try to follow the mind
-you could see instead
-a falling down barn and house
-field of Queen Anne's lace
-goldenrod
-orange butterfly
-you could ...

Miriam Sagan

And from master Issa:

gobble up
my dawn dream...
cuckoo!

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Peter Dent - Breaking Shadows

When someone sends a tiny book, especially a tiny poetry book, out into the world, I imagine they have to wonder: will this even make one ripple in the pond and, if so, will that ripple reach the pond's edge? I have many books in my house and, since I've been editing a poetry magazine that specializes in poems ten lines or less for the last 20 years, a lot of those books are small, some very tiny, indeed.

Peter Dent's Breaking Shadows has traveled all over my house, from 1st floor to 2nd, from the second to my working garret, and back down and up again at least a few times. Where this book actually came from I can only guess and my best guess is Ronald Moran. For some reason I associate him with Juniper Press, the publisher of Breaking Shadows. Ronald sent me a couple of batches of very small books a number of years back and, so, I am connecting the dots here. I could be wrong, but there you go.

Wherever this diminutive little book came from, it is a little beauty. It is #12 of a haiku/short poems series entitled "Chickadees," as you may note from the above Juniper Press link. It is approx. 3.75 x 4", handset, and hand-sewn and contains 16 very small poems. The very first poem sends a message: read slowly, very, very slowly.

Breadth

To the possible
Be at home. Home's lights
Its cobwebs nothings
Linking here to there

This is a poem in which pausing at the end of every line is critical. In fact, in a number of instances, I forced myself to pause after each word to find the sense via the rhythm. For me, pausing after "lights", "cobwebs", "nothings", and maybe even"Linking" help me get at the essence of the poem. One could make a case - for instance after "here" - to pausing in different places. In any case that you might make, slowing down is of paramount importance. The next poem is similar:

Move

Still life --More still the word
The cloud puts down its crows
By water waits as if
There's something left to do

Why hasn't the poet provided punctuation? Is punctuation necessary in so short a poem? If not, why not? Is the lack of punctuation part of the point?

I'm in an asking questions not supplying answers mode today. Some cop out, eh? But actually, this is how this book should be read. It is about the interaction of the poem and the reader. The poem doesn't bring the meaning: the reader does.

Still, for me, these poems intrigue, deeply. Here's a real beaut:

Full Moon

By which to write -But nothing
Nothing's great sails filling
Wonder words the book of
Heaven --Steady as she goes

Again the reader makes decisions, reading decisions. The poet is engaging his audience; here, you do some work for a bit. Thanks. Think that one lovely? Try this:

In silt and shadow
Trout
The Autumn
Of an endless stream

The poet is in a giving mood, his line breaks providing all the punctuation you need. Robinson Jeffers might love this poem; no frigging people to muck things up (Heisenberg might disagree, but this is a poetry blog, not a physics paper). This poem slows your ass down. How much more beautiful can something get? Now let's turn to syntax, artfully shaped into revelation:

Empty after
It's emptied out
A day we couldn't
Still can't bear

Here's sacrilege - it doesn't matter what this poem is about. It strikes deep, it strikes hard, and it is incessant. The shifting from past to present in the space of one word - "couldn't" to "Still", to a possible endless future forces the reader to confront the essence of something that cannot be borne. It is one thing to say it, quite another to live it. It doesn't matter if it is a place, a concept, a person that is emptied out, whatever, it is emptied out and it is unbearable.

All in 12 short, plainspoken words. So much power, so much devastation.

I can't end it here, not on this note. I need some solace, albeit it minimum, some guidance, some instruction:

After Ryo-nen

Sixty-six Autumns
Of moonlight I've said enough
Ask no more - Listen
To what the pine and cedar
Say when no wind stirs

Leave it right there, we can't hope for more: there is none. A tiny little booklet, full of revelation. It's time for me to pay better attention, before there is no more attention to pay.


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Click to enlarge

This week's feature broadside is Lilliput issue #130, entitled Fish Ladder: 19 Tanka by Miriam Sagan. Miriam is one of the finest small press poets we have; her work is direct, engaging, and emotional, with the deep clarity of a cool spring stream. I've been reading her work in the "littles" for over 25 years and simply can't get enough. Here is a sample from Fish Ladder:

Through the fish window
we saw the silver salmon
swim up the ladders
of the damn, and thought
suddenly of our lives

How surprising-
that it could still startle me,
blood on the sheets
after I was
forty-five years old

Canada geese
along the canal
their long black necks
writing a calligraphy—
no ink, no brush

She says she once
saw tigers mating, early
in the morning
at the zoo—
why did she tell me this?

Rain forest,
underside of the fern leaf
more spores
than the cities on earth
cells in my palm

The final word(s):





at the gate
a palm-sized rice field too
has greened

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Tanka Twitter: Miriam Sagan

Busy dealing with a computer problem, so check out today's Lilliput Review Twitter poem by Miriam Sagan, from issue #130, a broadside entitled Fish Ladder: 19 Tanka.

A regular post will be back Monday ...

loneliness--
under the fallen leaves
my ancestors

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

The Turning Year, WCW, & a Free 6 Issue Subscription to Lilliput Review

The first batch of new issues for subscibers went out this week and I am hopeful that the rest will follow over the next few weeks. Also announced is the publication of chapbook Number 19 in the Modest Proposal series, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro.

The Turning Year is a companion volume to Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems, both of which are drawn from the classic 100 Poems by 100 Poets (Hyakunin Isshu). Both of these collections take a unique subject approach to a Japanese poetic classic and allow the reader to contemplate both the individual poems and their cultural milieu from distinctly unique perspectives. Those familiar with Dennis's translations of Yosano Akiko and others, both from this blog and as published in Lilliput Review, know that he stays true to the original while bridging the gaps from both classical and modern Japanese to modern English. His smooth, imagistic style is at once lyrical and economic, admirable qualities perfectly suited to the source material. Along with Hide Oshiro, they have put together a fine collection of nature poems that should entice anyone with even a casual interest in Eastern verse. Here are a few examples:

Beyond sight my thoughts
turn to Kasuga temple
near my home
where above Mt. Mikasa
the same moon shines.

Abe-no Nakamaro

At this place along the road,
the known and unknown
come and go,
meet and part again,
passing through the Osaka gate.

Semimaru

On this sudden trip to Takuke shrine
I bring no prayer offering;
God of the mountain path
please accept the brocade
of maple leaves surrounding us.

Kwanke

The Turning Year is a 19 page chapbook and sells for $3.00, postpaid. In a web-only publication launch, I'm offering the two volumes, The Turning Year and Unending Night, for $5.00 postpaid. For further information, email me at "lilliput review at gmail dot com".

In poetry info this week, it is Anne Sexton's birthday. She is a modern American favorite of mine and here she is reading her poem "Her Kind." This week the Best American Poetry Blog featured a posting on another personal favorite, Richard Brautigan. I'm not sure I agree with their contention that his poetry was not successful in his lifetime; I can't think of too many poets at the time who were more read than Brautigan but hey, maybe, all those funny mood altering whatzits beclouded me already fuzzy noggin. In any case, the posting reprints his "Your Catfish Friend," which seems to be hands down one of his most popular poems circa Internet 2008.

In small press news, a place called "The Shop" is featuring Vox Audio for sale, which includes readings by small press giants Todd Moore and Albert Huffstickler. I'm curious about the Huff reading, which is listed as taking place in Austin and Bisbee, Arizona. If anybody knows anything about this one, drop me a line. Another poetic favorite, Miriam Sagan, was recently interviewed by Patricia Prime for Haibun Today. Miriam has published frequently in Lilliput and is the author of The Future Tense of Ash, another Modest Proposal Chapbook. Congratulations are in order for Alan Catlin, whose book Effects of Sunlight in the Fog, is number 20 on the Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller list, eking out the fashionably happening Tao Lin.

Finally in poetic news, William Carlos Williams' granddaughter has put out and appeal for folks to vote for WCW for the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Bruce is in already, so maybe it's time for someone a tad more lyrical. Williams is listed under the general category (Walt Whitman is listed under history - I'm wondering if there isn't going to be some nasty vote splitting there). You don't have to be politically minded or even from Jersey to vote and though they ask for your name, you can always dust off your old nom de plume if need be. Nobody is checking. If you are strategizing, you may want to tone down the Abbott and Costello vote - only two folks get in across all the categories so if you vote for other famous folks ... well, you get the idea.

Art by Bobo

This week's tour of the Lillie archive brings us to issue #67 from April 1995. Ah, that simpler time of the Contract of America, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the seemingly ubiquitous Unabomber. Ya know, come to think of it, the 90's had a kind of 80's feel without all that hair. Here's what was happening in this little world of the short poem.



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old fishing village
-----caught
---------in morning mist

Patrick Sweeney

A Woman

A woman standing
under the pier with her
back to me, staring
out at the ocean.

The water that slides
up the beachface stops
at her feet. I fall
in love every day.

Andy Fogle

One Idea

The music of the night
Calls me to come out
Where insect voices sing
Of universal peace
And annihilation as one idea.

B. Kim Meyer

Rage

The rope that ties
its own knots.

H. Edgar Hix

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Finally, here is Brobdingnag Feature Poem #27 by Mark Sonnenfeld. I'll give a free 6 issue subscription to Lilliput (or a 6 issue extension to your current subscription) to the first person who can tell me what he's talking about:

lawrence, KS

what I think about
sometimes
is old bridgeboards
revving car engines
that drag-race their dust
to the rivers
eerie current
with all the mud + sand
so high as now this river is
nearby
a church
organist plays the daytime
workmen listening
from then her window
in the land ladys
rooming house sometime
the boards pop
at night
a part of her
left alone walking
the old deserted pavilion
she is drawn

Mark Sonnenfeld

For those who are not all that familiar with Lillie, the magazine features short poems, ten lines and under. Very occasionally, I will publish something longer under the heading Brobdingnag Feature poem. Hence, the above.

And, oh yeah, I do know what he's talking about ...

best,
Don

Swimming Up Ladders, All Our Different Ways

Contributor copies for issues #159 & 160 went out in the mail this past weekend, so the full run of Lillies will be following over the coming weeks. My apologies to subscribers as things are even later than usual.

I just finished Tristram Shandy today and I can’t praise it enough. Just a fantastic, hilarious piece of fiction. Sterne is right up there with Swift, Rabelais, Voltarie and Cervantes as an early satiric genius, if not the best of them all. Also, I’ve been working my way through Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen’s first book of poems, recently reissued in a 50th anniversary edition. Sadly, I can’t recommend it. A selected edition of his work might be able to scrape 2 or 3 poems from this volume; even that might be pushing it. I enjoy Cohen immensely, both song and lyric. This is just one book that should have remained obscure.

Also I was working my way through Mary Oliver’s House of Light when I ran across this unexpected (by me anyway) gem.


The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make yourself a light,”
said the Buddha
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal—a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.


Issue #130 of Lilliput is a broadside of the work of the wonderful Miriam Sagan. Entitled Fish Ladder: 19 Tanka, here is a modest selection:


Through the fish window
we saw the silver salmon
swim up the ladders
of the dam, and thought
suddenly of our lives

You don’t dream
of anything—
not the sea
not the past
not those
houses that open

Watching
the silver-backed gorillas
watch us through the glass
you wonder what it means
to be “a person”

Girl-child by the edge
of the sea, you have come down
to crab shell,
rounded
beach stone, tide swell, where
everything changes.

We all give thanks in such different ways … Don