Friday Morning with Po-Chu-i

For any number of years, the book The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Literature has sat leisurely at my bedside for me to dip into at fancy and whim.  What this approach to an anthology loses in continuity is made up for with the element of surprise: I pick up the volume and am on occasion taken back by the power and wisdom of much of the work found there.   Edited by Robert Payne and originally published in 1947, it's pocket book size somewhat makes up for its old school approach (I can't tell you how many doctor and dental appointments its accompanied me to, only to find its way back to the pile beside my bed).  Here's a little beauty I ran across a few nights ago:

The Harp

   I lay my harp on the curved table,
   Sitting there idly, filled with emotions.
   Why should I trouble to play?
   A breeze will come and sweep the strings.

                  Po Chu-i
                  translated by Chang Ti

This translation's virtues are many, not the least of which is the ambiguity of the 2nd line.   The ennui here should certainly appeal to most poets and just as assuredly describes the universal human condition.

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This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #164, originally published in July 2008.  By the outstanding UK poet David Lindley, whose work has been featured many times over the years, this little is a reminder about something we who are not bodhisattvas are constantly doomed to repeat.

in imitation of a poem by Ishikawa Jozan

   Cherry blossom scattered
   on the lawn at evening.
   The spring and I
   both feel old.
   I can't say
   you betrayed me.
   When the blossom
   was on the tree
   it was I who
   forgot to look.

David Lindley

cherry blossoms scatter
snap! the buck
twists off his horns

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Under the Greenwood Tree: Issa's Sunday Service, #73

This week's selection for Issa's Sunday Service has a double literary pedigree: it is a song written by William Shakespeare, from Act II, Scene V, of As You Like It and the title of a Thomas Hardy novel after the Shakespeare song. In any case, this is a fine adaptation by Donovan.

Back about two years ago, I had a little something to say about this Hardy novel while blogging at my other job.  Hardy is one of my unabashed favorites.  Shakespeare and Donovan, too, for that matter, though none seem to be in the haiku business.

Hmn.

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Here's an amateur video of Tom Waits performing Lawerence Ferlinghetti's poem "Firemen" from Pictures of the Gone World at the recent Litquake festival in San Francisco.  This is the long version with a typically wonderful Waits intro.

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Lilliput Review #109 featured a parcel of haiku and other short-short pieces.  Here's one that was a little longer, calling an old friend to mind, reminding us of the true value of much literary criticism, and all the moon's light:

Ephemera

Po Chui, we are told, wrote
too many poems on subjects
of no special significance.

Across eleven centuries
we can still see the poet's brush
draw the least leaf to life.

The critic's words, as our breaths
on a winter's night, are
bright in the moon's light.

Robert Chute

Lute

my lute set aside
          on the little table
lazily I meditate
          on cherishing feelings
the reason I don't bother
          to strum and pluck?
there's a breeze over the strings
          and it plays itself

Po Chu-i
translated by James M. Cryer

Children imitating cormorants
are even more wonderful
than cormorants.

Issa
translated by Robert Hass

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 73 songs
Hear all 73 at once on the the LitRock Jukebox