On the Scented Breeze: Yosano Akiko

"Modest Proposal Chapbook" #21 is just out. It is a selection of the work of Japanese poet Yosano Akiko, entitled On the Scented Breeze, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. For those unfamiliar with this marvelous poet, here is info from Dennis:

Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) is admired as the greatest woman poet and tanka poet of modern Japan. Akiko infused her poems with an erotic and imaginative passion at a time when traditional poetry had grown lifeless and conventional.

In addition to Midaregami or Tangled Hair, from which this selection of poems is taken, Akiko published over 75 books including over 20 of original poetry, as well as novels, essays, fairy tales, children’s stories, an autobiography, and translations. She was a leader and strong supporter of the women’s rights movement in Japan.

Yosano Akiko transformed tanka poetry, instilling life in what had become a relatively stilted, tired form. Many well known translators have rendered her work, including Kenneth Rexroth, Sanford Goldstein, and Sam Hamill. On the Scented Breeze is a modest selection of 29 of some of her most moving, powerful tanka, translated in a clear precise lyrical manner that heightens this power. Here is a selection of 5 poems from this excellent collection:




Did we part
yesterday
or a thousand years ago?
Even now I feel
Your hand on my shoulder.

Goodbye my love
For a night at Fuzan spring
I was your wife.
Now until the end of the world
I demand that you forget me.

Spring so short,
In what can we
Find immortality?
I let his hands fondle
My vigorous breasts.

Poet, sing of this night
Alive with lights and
The wine served.
Our beauty pales
next to the peony.

God of fate, echo of my life.
This last world of mine
Please listen to
The notes of my koto
Played with an ax.

As with all "Modest Proposal Chapbooks," On a Scented Breeze is a $3.00, including shipping. If you'd like a copy, details to send along payment may be found here.


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


This week's Lilliput archive poems, a pair, come from issue #141, January 2005, and are seemingly two sides of that same old coin:

bright red tulips
almost touch his name
spring rain

Joyce Austin Gilbert

May morning ...
sunlight fitting itself
around each blade of grass

Dorothy McLaughlin

blades of grass--
swallows start arriving
so pretty

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Gary Hotham and Yosano Akiko (& more)

Cover art by Wayne Hogan

This morning I've received notice that one of Gary Hotham's poems from Missed Appointment, #17 in the "Modest Proposal Chapbook" series, has been reprinted in the Mainichi Daily News of Tokyo. If you click on the Mainichi link, not only will you see Gary's insightful poem but also 14 other fine haikus, including Francis Masat's excellent "dusk --" and a gem by this site's patron, Issa, translated by Isamu Hashimoto. Congrats, Gary.

This week also saw the anniversary of the birth of Yosano Akiko. Yosano almost singlehandedly revitalized the tanka form for modern readers. She is one of the premiere poets of that form and to this day remains my personal favorite. I'm happy to say it has been one of my greatest thrills as an editor to be publishing Dennis Maloney's new translations of Yosano Akiko in recent Lillies, with more to come in forthcoming issues. Here are a few examples from recent numbers:


#26

Unable to touch
The hot tide of blood
Beneath my tender skin.
Do you feel lonely
Teacher of the way?
(from Lilliput Review #153)



#14

You came from Saga, near water
Love god of a single night.
The poem you composed
Within the silk bed,
Please keep it secret.
(from Lilliput Review #155)



#372

Listen lord!
Love is the voice of admiration
For violets
in the purple evening.
(from Lilliput Review #157)



Dennis, by the way, is the editor and publisher of one of the finest American small presses in business today, White Pine Press. White Pine has published and continues to publish some of the very best classic and modern Eastern and contemporary world poetry, including recent reissues of work by Sonia Sanchez and James Wright.

On the reading shelf right now are Mary Oliver's House of Light, Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors, and an advanced reading copy of Manil Suri's new novel, The Age of Shiva. Doyle will be appearing here in Pittsburgh at the Drue Heinz Lectures series next month, which many folks are looking forward to. Reading these two novels at once, I've been struck not only by the obvious differences compared to America, but by the similarities, particularly on how all three cultures treat women. The rituals and rites of passage may differ; the results are the same, all adding up to tragic inequality that one could never have dreamt dragging on into the 21st century. On my daily walk to work, I am reminded of this by a piece of incisive graffiti: "No War But Class War."

So it goes, as the much missed sage would say.

After much resistance, I've been reading Mary Oliver's work on and off over the last year. She is much maligned; one particularly unjust criticism is that she writes the same poem over and over again. It is hard to believe that this criticism was actually leveled by a fellow "poet." It seems to completely misunderstand the vocation that is poetry. I wonder what Dickinson, Willie Dixon, Issa, or Picasso might say to this, all of whom might have the same criticism leveled at them.

This week's sample of Lilliput poems comes from issue #133. Enjoy.


endless
the arrival

you are
going from

~ John Phillips



October Leaves

bleed veined beauty
pure enough
to suffocate art

while we look on
with loosened hair.

~ Larsen Bowker




Shiki wrote eighteen
thousand Haiku: How many leaves
has a willow tree?

~ Robert Chute



Everybody knows that
autumn is a ghost,
haunting us with memories
of things that never happened.

~ Albert Huffstickler




My flesh heart needs teeth
and all of Buddha's koans
will not jar them loose.

~ Mary Rooney

Finally, in particular for those new to Lillie, there are samples from three past issues up in the new archive page on the (also new) website. Check it out.

Best until next time, Don.

Dickinson, Yosano Akiko, and Basho

Cover art by Harland Ristau

I'm currently working on a couple of projects concerning Emily Dickinson which I'll probably be discussing in future postings. For the moment, for those who didn't see/hear it, I'd like to refer you to The Writer's Almanac for yesterday's rendition of "I shall keep singing!", which, like much of the best of her work, seems so simplistic on the surface but resonates like all get-out.

Over the past year and into the foreseeable future, I have and will be continuing to publish Dennis Maloney's translations of the work of my favorite tanka poet, Yosano Akiko. At least four new poems are forthcoming in the next two issues of Lilliput. In the meantime, here are a couple of older translations by Glenn Hughes and Yozan T. Iwasaki:

There are numberless steps
Up to my heart.
He climbed perhaps two or three.

Like my heart,
Which is waiting for you,
This bouquet of flowers will wither
Before tonight has passed.

The white iris
And the purple iris
Grow side by side in the pond,
Yet never open their hearts
To each other.

I've been perusing Basho and His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda, one of the Near Perfect Books of Poems list; the list has now grown to 28 items, with lots of folks taking advantage of the two free issues offer. In addition to being an all new translation of Basho's work, the poems are accompanied by extensive notes and commentaries which are very helpful in bridging the historical and cultural gaps for Westerners. Here are a few:

night . . . silently
in the moonlight, a worm
digs into a chestnut



in the seasonal rain
the crane's legs
have become shorter



with morning glories
a man eats breakfast
- that is what I am

Finally, before getting to this week's archive issue of Lillie, I'd like to mention that their is an excellent article/interview on/with Mary Oliver, in the Block Island Times. When asked to name her favorite poets, she said "Whitman, Whitman, Whitman!" I knew there was a reason I liked her: Whitman was my choice on the Near Perfect Books of Poems list.

This week's archive issue is #90, from July 1997, with a great cover by the late, very much missed Harland Ristau. Here's a couple of little gems that opened that issue:

The Wrong Path

One more mile again
another dew thunders falling
from the leaf's edge

Laura Bast-Russo

the way
is not
the map

John Viera

from Reroutings III

ID ____ RID ____ RIDE

Richard Kostelanetz

And, to close out, by the queen of the small press:

I Don't Want To Move

pillow that smells like skin
your fingers ----- light on
water in a Monet ----- that
will change before the
paint drys

Lyn Lifshin

best,
Don


Note: If you would like to receive the two current issues of Lilliput Review free, just make a suggestion at the Near Perfect Books page.

Basho and the Lightness of Death

This past week, I've completed reading The Essential Basho, translated by Sam Hamill. The four travel journals were interesting, as mentioned in the section quoted in last week's post. I was happy to move on to the selection of haiku, which takes up approximately half the book, three haiku per page.

I've begun to warm up to Basho's poems which focus on a poetic principle he called "lightness." Here is David Landis Barnhill, whose Basho's Haiku I'm currently reading, on the concept of "lightness":

The concept of sabi can be intertwined with many aspects of the Japanese, Buddhism, and poetry. There is a principle of lightness that can be found within these aspects. Lightness can be described as the beauty of things plain and ordinary against the bright and glorified beauty. It is seeing the beauty in the simplicity of things, rather than the elaborate. Ueda describes the principle of lightness as, “a dialectic transcendence of sabi” (Matsuo Basho 34), then goes on to relate lightness to sabi by saying, “Sabi urges man to detach himself from worldly involvements; “lightness” makes it possible for him, after attaining that detachment, to return to the mundane world” (Matsuo Basho 34). He makes a great point in showing how the two ideas work off of each other. It is sabi that the person is trying to sense, what they are clearing there mind for. It takes mental concentration to detach oneself from the everyday reality of the layperson. Once that detachment is achieved, there must be a point when it is allowed to dissipate so that one can return to the ordinary world. And it is this principle of lightness that brings the person back, by having them focus on the plain, simple, and ordinary for all of its beauty.

Here are a selection of the 28 haiku I marked for further review:



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

Like the buck's antler's,
we point in slightly different
directions, my friend

You weren't home when I came-
even the plum blossoms were
in another yard

In windblown spring rain,
budding, like a straw raincoat,
a river willow

Grass for a pillow,
the traveler knows best
how to see cherry blossoms

Father and mother,
long gone, suddenly return
in the pheasant's cry.

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggest they
are about to die

Wrapping dumplings in
bamboo leaves, with one finger,
she tidies her hair.

The morning glories
ignore our drinking party
and burst into bloom

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


I'm not sure that the poems that appeal to me are the ones for which Basho is most appreciated, though his most famous haiku ("At the ancient pond") is included in this selection, primarily because I thought it was one of the best versions I've read. One of the comments at the first Basho post noted that Hamill wasn't a favorite translator and he does seem to have taken some liberties, ironically ones that I feel make Basho more accessible to someone like me who is certainly no expert. In the "buck's antler's" haiku I particularly like that, though pointed in slightly different directions, these friends ultimately will always end up in the same place. "plum blossoms" somehow seems to be ironic, funny and heartbreaking all at once: try doing that with 14 words sometime! "strawcoat" is quite literal because Basho was always on the road and, one would imagine, frequently taking advantage of all available "strawcoats." There also seems to be a joy here at the return of his "strawcoat" in spring which he no doubt sorely missed in winter. Of course the traveler "knows best" how to see cherry blossoms: lying under the tree. Beside the principle of lightness, Basho seems to leave much room in each haiku for the individual reader to participate in its writing, in a sense. "Father and mother" is a pure Proustian moment and I love it because it has the emotion so characteristic of Issa and not often on such overt display with Basho. "cicadas" may seem obvious, though the point can never be emphasized enough. Still, it called to mind for me a review I was reading this week of a book about human psychology and how our species is the only one which understands its coming death. Perhaps that review tainted my reading but one can't help feeling that he is not only saying that cicadas don't know death and he is commenting on the human condition. How simply beautiful is "Wrapping dumplings ...", pure essence. If one of the Imagist school had written this, they would be immortal. Finally, morning glories are my favorite flower and I've been known to quaff a pint or two, so I personally can attest to the truism of this little gem.

Cover art by Wayne Hogan

This week's featured back issue of Lilliput Review is #159, from November 2007. Enjoy.



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

#64
You are dreaming
of the bush warbler
I said to him defiantly
But just in case I lifted
The green curtain and peeked out.

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

Translation
Wearing down like a rock
in the years of a river
a poem

Donny Smith

#12
Poet, sing of this night
Alive with lights and
The wine we served.
Our beauty pales
Compared with the peony.

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

Mown Hay
Just to the southwest they're
cutting hay in the closing light.
I wonder how my life could come to this.

Jeffrey Skeate

It was like stardust in an old hand undertook me
coming through from where my soul began.

Janet Baker

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


There are now over 60 issues in the Back Issue Archive and 138 suggestions in the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list.

I've got to stop all this friggin' counting.

till next time,
Don

R. H. Blyth on Shiki: Part 1

R. H. Blyth is the author, commentator, and translator of two separate sets of seminal publications on haiku: the 4 volume Haiku (V. 1 Eastern Culture, V. 2 Spring, V. 3 Summer and Autumn, V. 4 Autumn and Winter) and the 2 volume A History of Haiku. Blyth was one of the first to bring haiku to the West and is fairly conservative and traditional in his approach. His translations are sparse, the way I like them. Sometimes he elicits the hidden gem within: the principle of less is more comes to mind. At other times the results are flat, as if the very essence of the piece was simply untranslatable. His views betray a distinct bias (whose don't, eh?). His affinity for Zen has been cited as part of that bias but, in my estimation, we could do worse for a guide to both Japanese culture in general and haiku in particular.

The sets themselves are both lessons in all things haiku and a pleasure to peruse.

I have a soft spot for Blyth's great affection for western writers such as Wordsworth, Whitman, and Lawrence and his uncanny ability to slip them into the discussion in just the right spots. In some ways its hard to imagine comparing these relatively long-winded (in a good way) writers to the miniaturist art of haiku, though Lawrence's affinity early on with the Imagists certainly is a direct connection. But this is where Blyth excels. It is the essence he is after and the essence of these writers has a direct transcendent, almost transcendental, connection to the spirit of the East. Emerson, also, is never far from Blyth's ruminations. Typically, he may be translating a particular poem such as the following:

---A sliding door,
In the distance,
---At midnight.

Hōsai

And then throw in the offhand remark for the Western reader: "Emily Dickinson also felt the meaning of the shutting of a door, Stevenson too." That's it, just enough to make sure you are paying attention to the full resonant import of the tiny little gems he selects.

When it comes to Shiki, Blyth makes neither apologies or excuses. In A History of Haiku, Vol. 2, Blyth has three full chapters on Shiki: "Shiki: The Critic," "Shiki: On Furu-ike Ya," and "Shiki: The Haiku Poet." The second chapter is Shiki's critical appraisal of Basho's frog poem, which I'll be taking a look at sometime in the future. Today, I'd like to consider Blyth's take on Shiki the poet and present some of his translations. Here is his opening salvo:

Shiki, like all Japanese perhaps, is far better at creation than criticism. The Japanese have never produced a Coleridge, Hazlitt, or Lamb, but Wordsworth and Keats and Clare and Tennyson have their counterparts in Japan. Shiki has variety, if not depth. Though he is not emotional, he is not sentimental. There may be an excessive objectivity, but this means no pretense, no hypocrisy. As with Buson, whom he admired very much, he gives us pure poetry, which never fails to satisfy us and though it may not gain in depth with re-reading, we do not tire of him.

There is a razor sharp precision here, coupled with subtlies of distinction that I just marvel at. To put it succinctly, he nails it, big-time. He at once manages to show that Shiki's strength is simultaneously his weakness and who among us can deny that thought when applied to our own life's work? No depth a strength: you betcha! And let me tell you why, says Blyth.

This is beautiful, incisive criticism, reflecting a deep engagement with the work. I love the fact that he anchors this for the Western reader in artists more familiar to her/him. Blyth has such love of the romantics and their relation to Eastern ways reveals itself to his readers, complementing each tradition in a way that lifts them both up.

And, yes, I also love the fact that he mentions John Clare.

Before getting to some of the translations, here's a bit of insight, along with important background information on Shiki from his chapter on Shiki the critic:

Shiki, 1867-1902, is considered to be the restorer of haiku, which had been falling off since the time of Buson. Bashō walked his Way of Haiku; Buson his Way of Art; Issa, though he did not speak of it, his Way of Humanity. What had Shiki? He had no Way of any kind unless perhaps a Way of Beauty, like Keats, but ill-health and beauty do not go well together, and by the end of his short life he had got some humanity, but no religion, no pantheism, mysticism, or Zen.

One final critical note from Blyth is ironic in that he has already stated Shiki's importance in restoring haiku as an artistic medium in Japanese culture:

The effect of Shiki was to stimulate, but in over-praising Buson and under-praising Bashō he helped the continuous and never-ceasing tendency of haiku to become more artifical, rootless and, trivial.

Ouch. This may be a blow to Shiki, but notice the back hand is even more devastating: haiku, the medium on which Blyth wrote 6 groundbreaking books, is not immune to his intensely critical eye, as it should be.

All of this has helped me out immensely with my feelings toward all the Shiki poems I've been reading and remarking on over the last few weeks. In his chapter on Shiki the poet, Blyth translates 71 haiku, casually remarking that these are different than the 390 haiku he translated in his 4 volume masterwork. I've been reading those, but am having a hard time tracking them all down as the index to the paperback editions don't seem to correlate with the hardcovers (I have a mix of both) and so I have to go through page by page. Eventually, I'll sort it all out, but for now I've gone through these 71 and have marked 12 as grabbing me immediately. Here they are:

---A snow landscape
still hanging up in spring -
---the dust on it!

---The plan to steal melons
Forgotten too -
---Cooling in the evening.

Blyth's comment on this I love: " This is good because of its truthfulness, and consequently its truth to life; morality, like love, as Sydney Smith said, depends on the temperature."

---Oh, ears defiled
By sermons
---The hototogisu! (cuckoo)



--

---A boat finished,
The Rose of Sharon blooming,
---A fishing village.

---All the hawker's cries
Became silent,
---Noon cicadas crying.

---Fluttering and dancing,
They are drawn into the vortex,
---The dancing leaves.

---Water birds,
And reeds withering,
---In the setting sun.

And Blyth's critical comment on this: "Such verses as these may be called almost too objective, too lacking in humanity. They are nature devoid of what even nature itself looks forward to, and appears in mankind."

---The beginning of autumn
The shell of the cicada
---Patters down.

---The evening bell tolls:
The sound of ripe persimmons
---Thudding in the temple garden.

Again, with Blyth's comment: "The sound of the bell is large, and that of all falling fruits slight, but Shiki's love of religion was small and his love of persmimmons great. They are therefore equal as spiritual sounds, representing as they do the transcendental and the material, the ideal and the real in human life."

---Passing autumn:
He comes to collect the money
---For tolling the bell.

---I going,
You remaining,-
---Two autumns.

---When the snail
Raises its face too,
---It looks like me.



Some of these haiku I've featured before but Blyth's translations make me see them in a new light, sometimes because of a particular word, or perhaps a better distillation of the ones chosen. I've read many translations of the first ("A snow landscape") but this is the first time it grabbed me beyond the image itself. Particular words that make these poems for me are "defiled," "vortex," "patters," and "thudding." The condensation of the famed haiku (and one of my favs) on two friends parting ("I going") to a mere 6 words is a marvel of condensation and poetry; those six words positively explode off the page for me with the pure power of deep-felt sorrow.

I would single out also two other poems for special attention, two I hadn't encountered before in all those other collections. I'm not sure if it's intentional, either by Shiki or Blyth, but the fact that autumn might be seen as a personification in "Passing autumn" I find incredibly resonant. It raises the level of an everyday human experience to that of the cyclical struggle of life and death, making it like a 3 line allegory or 3 line morality play. Even if this is not intentional (for Blyth at least I can't see how it couldn't be), the echoes of autumn as a symbol in Eastern work cannot be denied. For whom is the bell tolling, indeed?

Finally, the last poem ("When the snail") is truly transcendent for me and if you had handed it to me blind and said pick one of the 4 master haikuists as composer, I would not have hesitated to pick Issa. This work is sublime, yet it found its way into none of the other collections I've reported on in previous posts.

I'm looking forward, indeed, to those other 390 translations of Shiki in the 4 volume Blyth. Despite the pointed criticism, he has won me over to this master poet, not simply intellectually, but in a heartfelt, emotional way. Shiki was notoriously difficult to get to know, by all counts irascible and nasty at times. His illness certainly goes a long way to explaining why he was so hard to know, literally as well as via his work.

Thanks to Blyth, I feel I know him now and like him, indeed, very much. Not only that, but I know why.


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


Normally, on Thursday I append some Lilliput poems from the archive for your perusal. I have to skip that this week as I've expended a great deal of energy on Shiki and, unfortunately, my paying gig beckons. Well, something to look forward to next week, eh?

So as not close on a negative note, here's a poem from one of the two brand new issues of Lilliput, #165, Dennis Maloney's fine translation of my favorite tanka poet, Yosano Akiko:

#244

I won't transform
My feeling into words
Or a poem but pour them
From heart to heart
This day, this moment.

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

All the best,
Don

Japanese Love Poems & New Issues

The contributor copies of the new issues of Lilliput Review went out in the mail this past Monday and regular subscriber copies will begin hitting the mails over the next two weeks. It usually takes about a full month to get out the entire run, what with letters to be written, poems to be read and all the attendant details in getting scores of envelopes out each week.





#161 is graced with the photographs of Keddy Ann Outlaw, dedicated to the memory of her brother, Wade Stanton Outlaw. Among others, poems appear by John Martone, W. T. Ranney, Peggy Heinrich, Donny Smith, Charlie Mehrhoff, George Swede and translations of the Japanese tanka great, Yosano Akiko, by Dennis Maloney, 25 poems in all. 25 poems for a buck: you do the math.






#162 is a broadside issue by David Chorlton, who has been appearing in Lillie since its inception, way back in 1989. David is a consummate artist; this issue, entitled Venetian Sequence, showcases his beautifully lyrical poetry and his own artwork, as seen above. Here's a poetic taste:


Paganini

His audience applauds,
convinced he is the devil
who never sleeps.
After the performance
he sails to the dead.
Their breath steams out of frozen marble
when he plays. They whisper
each one to the next, that the time has come
to grow back their flesh
and complete abandoned vices.




Cover by Edward O'Durr Supranowicz

Spotlighted this week is LR #148, published in February 2006. The issue opens with 5 poems by a variety of poets with the common thread of our place in nature: they are deceptively simple. It is a fine coming together of work by 5 grounded poets; it was a privilege to publish. Issa would be proud.



Stopping as a crow
alights in a snowed pine copse
-the poem composed

Rebecca Lily

yesterday's snow---
the place it melts
to

Gary Hotham

this spring
the birds are nesting
where his garden was

Joyce Austin Gilbert

Monet
in his private garden
and vice versa

Pete Lee

Suddenly

spring
like

and
so

are
we

Bob Arnold

Besides these 5, there are 24 more poems in #148, many like-minded, all worth a look. As with regular issues, back issues from #1 through #160 are available for a buck apiece or a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). If the price is still too dear (and who's to say) more free samples may be found in the past posts of this blog or in the back issue archive at the Lilliput homepage.

Finally, there is that matter of Unending Night, as pictured at the top of this post. Unending Night is a selection of Japanese love poems drawn from the classic Japanese tanka anthology, The Hyakunin Isshu or 100 Poems by 100 Poets. The Hyakunin Isshu was compiled in the thirteenth century by Fujiwara no Teika and is the most popular of the classic poetry anthologies of Japan.

This selection from 100 Poems ... is translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro and is #18 in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series published by Lilliput Review. The chapbook features the poetry of 18 different classic Japanese poets and provides a unique lens through which to view this much loved anthology. The finishing touches are being put on Unending Night even as I type (i.e. it's being printed) and will be available by the end of the week. Price, as always for chapbooks, is $3.00, postpaid.

best till next week,
Don

Ryokan, translated by Dennis Maloney

Bob and Susan Arnold of Longhouse Publishers have been issuing a delightful series of accordion-style fold out mini-booklets for quite sometime now, some of which I've taken a look at here at The Hut. Dennis Maloney, of White Pine Press fame, is a longtime Lilliput contributor, whose 4th chapbook in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series, a volume of Yosano Akiko translations, will be coming out sometime in June (along with 4 delayed issues of Lilliput Review). Previous chapbooks were Dusk Lingers: Haiku of Issa, The Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems, and The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, the later two of which come from the famed 100 Poems by 100 Poets classic volume of Japanese poetry.

So it is with some delight that Dennis's volume of Ryōkan poems has arrived from Longhouse. And who was Ryōkan you might ask? According to the "New World Encyclopedia" site:

Ryōkan (良寛) (1758-1831) was a Zen Buddhist monk of the Edo period (Tokugawa shogunate 1603-1864), who lived in Niigata, Japan. He was renowned as a poet and calligrapher. He soon left the monastery, where the practice of Buddhism was frequently lax, and lived as a hermit until he was very old and had to move into the house of one of his supporters. His poetry is often very simple and inspired by nature. He was a lover of children, and sometimes forgot to go on his alms rounds to get food because he was playing with the children of the nearby village. Ryōkan was extremely humble and refused to accept any official position as a priest or even as a "poet." In the tradition of Zen, his quotes and poems show that he had a good sense of humor and didn't take himself too seriously. His poetry gives illuminating insights into the practice of Zen. He is one of the most popular Zen Buddhists today.

Over at Wikipedia, there is a bit of a dust up over the Buddhist monk part, but no doubt it isn't anything the poet himself would be much concerned about. There are, after all, poems to write, sake to drink, and life to be lived.

The Longhouse booklet, consisting of 2 minutely folded sheets contains an astounding 47 tankas, is divided into the four seasons. Ryōkan's simple message shines through poem after poem in translations with a direct clarity that mirror that basic philosophy. Here is a couple of samples to tempt you over to the Longhouse site for this tasty little booklet and lots more besides:

In the garden – just us
a plum tree
in full blossom
and this old man
long in years.

I'm sure there is more but what I think of first is how the old man's years seem so very like the plum tree's blossoms.

What shall remain
as my legacy?
The spring flowers,
the cuckoo in summer
the autumn leaves.

At once in this beautiful tanka, there is the Buddhist sense of oneness and perhaps a touch of the fact that we are all reincarnated a bit in what's is all about us. At least that's what I'm hoping when some of my ashes end up in the garden, some more in the river, and most of the last bit in the bay back home.

Ryōkan too
will fade like
the morning glories.
But his heart
will remain behind.

See previous comment ...

Deep snow outside
bundled up
in my solitary hut
I even feel my soul
slip away as dusk gathers.

The quiet beauty of these verses pervades one's spirit as the experiencing nature does. Not much exegesis, though perhaps there could be some, but let it rest: let me take in the rose rather than pluck its petals.

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

This week's feature Lilliput Review broadside is #80, from June 1996, entitled spectacles of poverty by scarecrow.

what is meant to be seen and heard
will be seen and heard
the blue of the sky
through a fly's wing
walking on my window
into a cloud.
in the shape of constant sorrow

how much the poem cannot carry
when you're the only one
there
to witness the pine cone falling.

the camera composed of metal taken from the ore
taken from the stone
beneath the grass
in the meadow
where the lion once slept
in the picture.

scarecrow

now begins
the Future Buddha's reign...
spring pines

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Ed Baker has tipped us to an interview with Dennis Maloney which is a delight so I'll append it after the fact. All thanks to the bard of Takoma Park.

Talking, Writing, Teaching, Spewing, Loving: Another Week of Poetry

Cover art by Wayne Hogan

Though off from "work" this week, I've been busy with things Lilliput related, which include getting issues #'s 163 and 164 out in the mail to subscribers. Also on my plate, has been wrapping up an interview for Poet Hound, which covers a wide range of questions about the history of the mag, its focus, and how I go about doing what I do. Since Lillie will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2009, it was a good thing for me to sit, think about the journey, and what's ahead. The interview should be appearing at PH sometime around the end of the month. I'll keep you posted.

Dovetailing nicely with that project, I was also asked to write an article for Café Review, for their 20th anniversary issue, about how I select poems for Lillie. I'm working against a deadline, so that has kept me considerably occupied. The article is scheduled for January, but the deadline looms large. More on that in the future.

Two other fall projects that are gobbling up time like twin black holes are two sessions concerning poetry I'm working on. The first is an Osher lifelong learning one-shot class on poetry appreciation and this is the second year I've been asked to conduct it. The second is a new poetry discussion group I've put together with a fellow staffer at the library entitled "3 Poems By ... ." The idea is to have a poetry discussion group similar to typical book discussion groups, only focusing on 3 select poems by a given poet for an hour long session instead of an entire book of poems. The first session will be on Emily Dickinson, with future sessions on e. e. cummings, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, and others. We also will be doing one session entitled "3 Poems About," the subject being time, handled by 3 different poets. Both of these projects will be in the first two weeks of October and the clock is ticking.

When the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list hit the 100 milestone, Ron Silliman picked it up for his blog and this page got mighty busy, mighty fast.

As noted in previous posts, Acres of Books has lost its battle against closing (though gallantly championed by Ray Bradbury) to the Long Beach, CA, city fathers. Now, unbelievably, they have turned a jaundiced eye to the Long Beach Main Library and once again Mr. Bradbury has risen to the occasion. Maybe the mayor of Long Beach, the honorable Bob Foster, needs to hear from you.

Since I'm expelling angst, I might as well make a confession: I hate baseball poetry. Let me be clear: I love baseball, it's baseball poetry I hate. I've tried. I can't help it. It's just one of those things. But Jonathan Holden's poem, How To Play Night Baseball, from a recent posting at The Writer's Almanac, has put the lie to any type of definitive statement I was reaching for. This one's a beaut.

One final note before turning to this week's featured work from the Lillie archives; Jill Dybka at the Poetry Hut Blog has pointed to a nifty list, put together by Amy King, of Movies with Poetry. Check it out and if you can think of any that were missed, just add it in the comments section. I did.

Over the last couple of week's, I've been skipping around a bit in the archive and this week is no exception. The following selection is from issue #157, from August 2007, a year ago this month.

gentle,
the wish of not to wish

Sean Perkins

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

just squeeze into
----hollow sycamore
---------& close my eyes

John Martone

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

#374
Lying with my lover,
From the bed I see
Through the curtain
Across the Milky Way the parting
Of the Weaver and the Oxherder stars!

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

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

Be Still
This shall be the unspeakable:
Long after you've grown old
You will be the breath
Of a lion,
A basket of blue tears,
Landscape of dry reeds.
Your life shall float
Past the warm,
Slow river, skirting banks
Of black mud and straw

Jeffrey Gerhardstein

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

"nowhere & nothing" from the tao of pooh

time
patience
drift

one
flower/poem
after
another

Marcia Arrieta

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


Till next time,
Don

PS The Wayne Hogan cover above is supposed to be grey. Every now and then the scanner craps out. It is now.

James Wright: A Prayer To The Lord Ramakrishna (II)

A Prayer To The Lord Ramakrishna

I.
The anguish of a naked body is more terrible
To bear than God.
And the rain goes on falling.

2.
When I stand up to cry out,
She laughs.
On the window sill, I lean
My bare elbows.
One blue wing, torn whole out of heaven,
Soaks in the black rain.

3.
Blind, mouth sealed, a face blazes
On my pillow of cold ashes.

4.
No!
I kneel down naked and ask forgiveness.
A cold drizzle blows into the room,
And my shoulders flinch to the bone.
You have nothing to do with us.
Sleep on.

James Wright

I spent the last few days working on this poem and had an entire post ready to go and trashed it. Here's how it started out:

As many of you know, James Wright is one of my favorite poets, as is his son, Franz. One shared element in the work of both is the ambiance of mystery, the element of the unexplainable; this is, for me, the essence of poetic experience, exploring beyond the known. I've read many of James Wright's poems multiple times, but ran across this one recently in one of my periodic revisits to his work. Since one volume or the another (or the complete poems) is always by my bedside, these visitations are quite frequent (yes, I have all the individual volumes as well as the complete work - if I have to explain this to you, chances are you'd never understand).

I really didn't remember reading this piece previously, which is odd since I've an interest in Eastern culture including Hindi religion. Sometimes a creative work "comes to you" only when you are ready for it, and in that sense it seems I've never read this poem before.

Where to start? It is something of a perfect little jewel, no pun intended. It is enigmatic; it dazzles in its depth and brilliance. It is for me nearly inexplicable and yet positively alluring.

What followed was the issue. I began to pry the poem apart as if with a crowbar and I made the kind of mess one would expect to make with a crowbar and a poem. I talked of the poems three characters, of the significance of the "blue" wing, of a profound existential experience, and wondered why the poem was excluded from the Robert Bly and Annie Wright edited Selected Poems. The conundrum presented by the last two lines is positively gripping. Pronouns, and their reference, play a big part. I compared it in tone to one of Edward Hopper's portrayals of solitude and that it provokes a forlorn feeling almost too much to bear. Then I began to puzzle over Krishna versus Lord Ramakrishna and watched as my exegesis just came undone and I realized that there was more thinking to do, indeed.

So, rather than heave the whole overboard, I thought I would send it your way virtually unsmudged. The poem is too good not to share, too good to let go by the boards. Rather than bludgeon it senseless to everyone's profound distress, I thought I'd just let it be.




*************************************************


This week's feature issue is of Lilliput Review is #161 from March 2008, which may also be viewed in its entirety here. Enjoy.



all along
----these pines
--------showing you how

John Martone

beside the snow bank
wind ruffles the feathers
of the dead sparrow

Jack Watson

#2

Asking poems which among
The wildflowers
Denies its red color?
So why in spring do I feel
Like a sinful girl?

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

And, of course, last word to the master:







cuckoo--
is this rain falling
only on me?

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

René Daumal: Memorables

Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers has been putting out some of the finest publications of poetry, particularly in the short form, for many years. Their little accordion booklet series (4¼ x 11, folded 3 times) has always been a source of wonder and great delight for me. One of their latest publications is a new translation by Louise Landes Levi of René Daumal's 1939 work Memorables.

Memorables is, as translated, a prose poem of 18 individual verses of intermittent length. Each of the individual verses stand on their own, yet the entire work is very much a piece, with a powerful cumulative effect. Each verse opens with the injunction to remember:

Remember your first insult ...

Remember the evenings of terror ...

Remember your accomplices and deceits ...

Remember the day when you split open the web ...

Remember the beautiful mirage of concepts ...

Remember you have to pay for everything ...

At first, it can almost seem as though the speaker is gently reminding her/himself to remember certain incidents, certain pivotal moments. As the poem builds, however, it feels to me that the speaker is using direct address and that the tone is not so gentle.

Of course, perhaps, it is both simultaneously.

Sometimes the instances remembered seem literal, at others metaphoric to the point of being surreal. In any case, each seems to a be a piece of a larger whole, resulting in a fragmented yet lyrical of the collective unconscious.

Remember: your mother and your father, and your first lie, the
indiscrete odor of which crawls in your memory.

Remember magics, fish and tenacious dreams - you wanted to
see, you stopped up your two eyes in order to see, without knowing
how to open the other.

Ultimately the poem is the mystery of existence; the details are real, with the aforementioned cumulative effect just beyond understanding, no matter how focused one's awareness. It is a beautiful, at times frightening piece, finely translated and beautifully produced. I suspect each reader will be moved by different particular verses. These two touch something deep within, a remembrance of a shared dream, true for all, just as ephemeral, yet as real as the setting sun, as the rising moon.

Remember that you have to pay for everything, remember your
happiness but when your heart was run over, it was too late to
pay in advance.

But remember that love is of no one, that in your heart of
flesh is no one, that the sun is no one, blush seeing the
swamp in your heart.

In a recent post at the excellent Longhouse Birdhouse blog, here is the booklet in its entirety. They describe the Daumal booklet thus:

Three color foldout booklet of one long poem Memorables translated by Louise Landes Levi tucked into sky blue papers with signed and unsigned wrap around band. Unsigned $8.95 / signed $12.95.

The signature, of course, is that of the translator as Daumal died back in 1944. Why buy the booklet when you can read it in its entirety at the website? Why, indeed. Well, it seems to me the Arnolds know the answer to that question and the answer is the reason they published it electronically. Holding it now in my hands, I know the answer.

Hold it in your own and you will, too.



***************************************


For those who might be interested, I recently posted "Why Anne Sexton Matters" over at the Eleventh Stack blog. I've spent the better part of this summer rereading the complete poems of Anne Sexton for the first time in 20 years and am even more moved, amazed, and saddened than I was first time round.

Finally, here's a selection from an issue so recent it hasn't made it into the Back Issue Archive. Issue #167 was published in March 2009. Enjoy.

#134

I recall myself
As I was in the spring
Of my twentieth year
A peony-pale outside
But crimson inside.

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

this
stream
bed's

my
spine
too

John Martone

Mountain River

In the mountains run
--the hieroglyphics of trout
Read them if you will; they will
--nonetheless draw you down into their water.

Jeffrey Skeate

Chrysanthemums slow
to bloom I find
no joy in autumn.
The west wind heartless
Blowing my gray hair.

Dennis Maloney

the emaciated chrysanthemum
totters
into bloom

Issa
translated by David G. 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.



************************************************

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

************************************************



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