Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Hotham

This week, while doing collection maintenance at my day job as a librarian, I ran across a small volume of poems by Kenneth Rexroth, which I had not seen before. I was intrigued by the at once old school and small press looks of the book, which is entitled The Silver Swan: Poems Written in Kyoto, 1974-75. A very early publication of the mainstream “small press” Copper Canyon, it is comprised of 16 short poems with facing characters in the Japanese style, fairly primitive in execution. Though uncredited, they may possibly be by Rexroth himself.

I enjoyed the volume; three poems in particular seize the day, as it were. Here they are:



For Ruth Stephen

Twilit snow,
The last time I saw it
Was with you.
Now you are dead
By your own hand
After great pain.
Twilit snow.



Asagumori

On the forest path
The leaves fall. In the withered
Grass the crickets sing
Their last songs.
Through dew and dusk
I walk the paths you once walked,
My sleeves wet with memory.




Late Spring.
Before he goes, the uguisu
Says over and over again
The simple lesson no man
Knows, because
No man can ever learn.




Rexroth is widely known for his help in the continued popularization of Eastern forms in the West via his many collections of translations (100 Poems from the Japanese, 100 Poems from the Chinese etc.), which followed in the footsteps of such greats as Waley, Blyth, and others. The poems in this volume demonstrate the Eastern influence and his own mastery of the short form in English. Long out of print, Silver Swan can, of course, be found in the recent Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth and also in the more affordable Flower Wreath Hill: Later Poems. Both these later editions include 12 additional poems, including one long one among the short, which can be read in its entirety here.

Ah, yes, less is more, indeed.

Gary Hotham’s Modest Proposal Chapbook, Missed Appointment, has received another positive review, this time in the current Frogpond: check it out here (if blurry, zoom in).







Cover by Wayne Hogan


This week's sampling of poems from past issues comes from October 2005: Lilliput #147. It begins with a couple of my favorite kind of short poems, ones that might be characterized as presenting a cosmos in a teacup:



Stranger

I first saw her in the mirror of the burnt hall
Her white hair spreading across Europe ....

Daniele Pantano

History of the Moon

Nights go, sitting up
to tend this flame:

not the center,
where it burns fat and yellow

-the edge,
thin, blue and infinite.

James Owens

And here's a couple of more little beauties:


The people of my native village
have changed after many years,
but at the gate
the fragrance
of plum blossoms remains.

Ki-no Tsurayuki
translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

The Library of Why

The shelves are empty.

Noelle Kocot

fable

I've had
no luck
finding
the forest
I was supposed
to have been
lost in
forever
and ever

Mark DeCarteret

Hopefully, by next week's posting I'll have an announcement about the next volume in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series and some more info about when to expect #'s 161 and #162 to hit the mails. Until then ...

best,
Don

Helen Vendler, Peter Pauper, and the Meaning of Everything

Best to get the important stuff out of the way first: the Meaning of Everything. This should clear up everything nicely. If, perchance, there are any further questions, try here. Or here. Not quite: how about here? Surely here (which may be continually refreshed). How about a little old school? Perhaps a tad older? No? Yes?

Let this be the last word on that ... And now for something completely different ...

Every once in awhile, something will just leap up from behind a rock to scare or surprise the bejezus out of us. As I may have mentioned previously, in my paying job I spend a great deal of time reading literature reviews, most of which are functional at best and run of the mill most of the time. Word limitations are the culprit in many cases, so it is sometimes a pleasure to read lengthier work when time allows. This week I stumbled across a Helen Vendler review of a new book by Charles Wright in the New York Review of Books (March 6, 2008). Always insightful, Vendler manages to at once balance particular detail with the larger picture of Wright's career to make for pleasurable reading in and of itself. In the midst of her precise, lyrical explication the following arrested me in mid-work mode:


"Like Yeats, he (Wright) thinks that each of us, poet and non-poet, must invent the unfolding choreography of his own life. The choreography that non-poets trace is a virtual poem---the same, although silent, as the spoken poem of the writer."


And the review continues from there. It felt like one of those emergency early warning system tests one still hears occasionally on the radio (on the what?), only this one came in the middle of a book review. Followed by the new Tommy James and the Shondells song. This has only been a test. Ms. Vendler now returns you to your regular work mode. And somehow that Tommy James song just never sounds the same.

In the midst of a rather busy week and a 12 hour work day Monday, shuffling between two jobs, I managed to pick up a little something to read in the off free moments while grabbing a bite etc. I was looking for something light (weight-wise; I had a two mile walk ahead) yet filling. And I ran across one of the old Hallmark editions of haiku on the library shelf, as pictured above, so gave it a go. It reminded me of how, for so many people, the first introduction to Asian poetry came in the form of these Hallmark/Peter Pauper editions, many of which were charmingly illustrated:




What is most impressive about this particular volume, Silent Flowers: a New Collection of Japanese Haiku Poems, is the fact that the translations are by the master haiku sensei, R. H. Blyth, whose 4 volume magnum opus on the haiku is still the standard that translation should be measured against. Here are a few examples from the patron of this site, Issa:



Just simply alive,
Both of us, I
And the poppy

A world of grief and pain:
Flowers bloom;
Even then ...

"The peony was as big as this"
Says the little girl,
Opening her arms.

Reflected
in the eye of the dragon-fly
The distant hills

Spring begins again;
Upon folly,
Folly returns.

Cover by Cornpuff

This week we arrive at Lilliput #146, from October 2005. Hope something from these samples grabs you. As always, copies of this and any other back issues are available for one buck each, less than a pocketful of change.

the tall trees remind me

how much less I could say

than I do

Constance Campbell

field of sunflowers

far as the eye can see

farther

Anne LB Davidson

Silence spreading
across the ridge
after the hawk

Carl Mayfield

To Rise

Lily buds
curve,
hum
secrets.
Again,
o wet pale loop of swan's logic.

James Owens

Autumn wind -
sidewalk leaves whirling
a perfect enso.

Greg Watson

Finally, a bit of news. The contributor copies of the new issues, #161 and #162, will begin going out in the next two weeks, with the full subscriber run hitting the mails during the month of March. FYI, it takes about a full month to send the entire run out to subscribers, what with notes to be written, apologies to be proffered, and praise to be lavishly distributed.


best till next week,

Don