We went with friends to the [Hammond Museum and Japanese Gardens]((https://www.hammondmuseum.org) yesterday…
… we then had lunch at Purdy’s The Farmer and the Fish which was excellent!
We went with friends to the [Hammond Museum and Japanese Gardens]((https://www.hammondmuseum.org) yesterday…
… we then had lunch at Purdy’s The Farmer and the Fish which was excellent!
Five Transcendent Films to Watch by Oscar Nominee Ryusuke Hamaguchi, James Balmont, AnOther
In a 2021 interview with MUBI’s online magazine The Notebook, Hamaguchi spoke of a profound experience he felt while watching director John Cassavetes’ film Husbands in his twenties: “For some reason watching those people on the screen, I felt as if their lives were more real and vivid than my own.” I can scarcely think of a better quote to describe the works of Hamaguchi himself. And that is what makes him the most exciting “new” director to emerge from Japan in years.
… oh man… a three hour must see film, with subtitles… argh!… hard enough for me but with H’s poor eyesight, it’s really tough on her… but how exciting that a foreign language film actually has a chance to win not just Best Foreign Film, but Best Film award at the Academy Awards?…
20220212-02
Photograph by Eikoh Hose
… Guts and Ghosts: The Radical Legacy of Japanese Photographer Eikoh Hose…
… there are so many Japanese photographers I love… Eikoh Hosoe is another one… this book from MACK is on my list if i get a windfall…
Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet’s Perspective. David G. Lanoue
… what matters, that we all die, or that we sing along the way?…
The last example is perhaps the most dramatic and poignant. Issa introduces it with the head note, “Flood” (kôzui 洪水). The insect may be floating to his death, yet he keeps singing. Perhaps Issa sees himself in the insect; perhaps he sees in it the fate of all living creatures, for all are equally, eventually doomed. The important thing isn’t the inevitable death to which the currents of the universe sweep us; what matters, Issa implies, is to embrace the present moment . . . and sing.1
… what one of us isn’t concerned with the inevitable subsidence of our “conscious” being?… we are crafted to survive at all costs… it’s inbuilt that we worry about the integrity of the configuration of atoms and processes that constitute our bodies and consciousness, whatever that may mean… the Buddhist way is to work hard, through meditation and mindfulness of the present moment thinking, to let go of the obsession with dying which is, in any case, inevitable… so, the advice is to sing regardless of the situation you find yourself in…
… another way of looking at the poem referenced is that we are what we are, even in the face of disaster and imminent demise…
still singing the insect
is swept away …
floating branch
… and now i learn that animals of all kinds can be observed to dance… interact while moving in that exhibit structure and repetition… early humans learned to mimic these animal dances and would do so in ceremonial ways to encourage abundance and successful hunting, to become one with the animal being hunted… close identification with animals of all kinds allows behavior prediction… it also focuses mind and body on a successful encounter, whether the objective be to kill, capture or avoid…2
… the interesting question arises, does one need to know they are dancing to be dancing?… “I think, therefor I am.”3… i dance, therefor i dance?… to be the best kind of dancer i am sure a dance training master would suggest that one need’s to forget they are dancing and simply be the dance… i am groping towards something here… conscious, so called “rational thought,” is a hinderance to being in direct communication with one’s environment… it is impossible to hold anything sacred that is only “thought” about… one must be in seamless relationship with the world to hold the idea, the instinct, that it is sacred, worthy of respect and honor, of careful and respectful interaction… by writing poems about nature and animals and the world in general, one is setting themselves on intimate terms with all of that, dissolving the boundaries between self and cosmos…
Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet’s Perspective, David G. Lanoue
Lanoue, David G.. Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet’s Perspective (p. 137). HaikuGuy.com. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
Basho and His Interpreters, Selected Hokku with Commentary, Makoto Ueda
… a book i ordered a couple of weeks ago… i have decided to set The Analysis of Matter aside given that i will be traveling and won’t be able to concentrate as effectively as i would otherwise… i will read this book instead as i think it will be more digestible in short spurts… also, the spiritual dimensions of haiku may be helpful at this moment…
… the haiku as a stand alone poetic form grew out of renga, a form of linked verse composed by a group of poets gathered… the guest of honor initiates the sequence and each poet takes a turn composing subsequent phrases in the sequence… renga have been known to get as long as ten thousand verses but more usually were one hundred or less…
… i find myself a bit tired for concentration even on haiku…
The Essential Haiku, End Notes
… today, the book is finished… the last notes discuss the origins of the haiku form and the difficulties of translating them… i am surprised that Robert Hass is not fluent in Japanese but rather, learned what he needed to learn to translate the poems, initially for his own pleasure/study, later for publication… he says he set himself the task of translating one haiku a day, which involved looking up the characters of both the Japanese and Chinese languages and deciphering what they meant or implied…
… at the very end, there is a list of elements of Haiku that make them difficult to render in English:
… the earlier traditions of haikai and hokku, which birthed the haiku form, are compared to the call and response improvisation of jazz bands of the 1920’s…
The Essential Haiku, End Notes
… today starts the notes on Issa’s poems…
… in today’s notes, i learn that…
… i have finished the notes related to Issa and a section of Basho on how to make poems… it is interesting to me that Hass spends much more note space on Basho than either of the other two poets… because of the stature of his poetry?… or, are Buson and Issa generally a little more accessible to the western mind?…
The Essential Haiku, End Notes
… more notes on Buson…
… i learn that:
… i am finished with the notes on Buson… next is Issa, then i move on to other reading material…
The Essential Haiku, End Notes
… i was telling my brother and sister yesterday that i have found reading this book of Haiku has had a daily centering effect on me… in light of all the family trauma and drama going on right now, this has been useful…
… more notes on the poems of Buson…
… i learn that in Buson’s time, there was an annual doll festival held in the spring… this poem talks about it…
the lights are going out
in the doll shops—
spring rain.
… i wonder about the translation not relying on cultural knowledge of doll festivals happening in the Spring in Buson’s time, and so reiterating that it is spring in the third line… i suppose it is so obscure that western audiences need the help?…
… Bats flitting here and there: Hass relates this poem to The Young Housewife, a poem by William Carlos Williams… i look up the poem, find it slightly confusing, but understand the connection… a poem of longing, less clearly so in the case of Buson…
… i learn about a particular willow tree that has long poetic tradition, visited and written about by Saigyo, Basho, Buson… i am reminded of the catalpa tree in the graveyard… from there, i remember a comment on my photos utility poles and wires at the last Salon, comparing them unfavorably to R. Crumb’s drawings of the same subject… i look them up and find this short video slide show set to the music of Joni Mitchel’s The Big Yellow Taxi… i respect the person who made the comment, but, i don’t think they were right…
… hmm… from the haiku of Buson to the drawings of R. Crumb and music of Joni Mitchel…
The Essential Haiku, End Notes
… i’ve moved on to the notes on Buson’s haiku…
… Buson seems a more down to earth poet as i have observed earlier…
… i learn that erotic themes are not generally pursued in traditional haiku, Basho certainly doesn’t… Buson, perhaps, indirectly…
… i learn that leeks are a winter vegetable… i am growing leeks in my planter tanks… i look up when to harvest them… soon…
The Essential Haiku, Notes
… continuing with my reading of the end notes of the book…
… i learn that the Japanese have a word, tani-watari, for the sound a Bush Warbler makes when flying from one valley to another…
… i learn about a book, The Karma of Words, written by William LeFleur, and order an inexpensive used copy… the subtitle is, Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan…
… this poem is discussed…
still alive
and frozen in one lump—
the sea slugs
… i am reminded that i received my copy of Rise Ye Sea Slugs!, by Robin D. Gill, which turned out to be nothing like what i thought it would be… i wish i could retrace my steps in purchasing the book because it’s a pretty humorous mistake and difference… what i thought i had purchased was a book that offered multiple translations of Japanese haiku, by well known poets, in an effort to get at the difficult to translate subtleties of the poems… what i received was a book of haiku, with large amounts of explanatory text of various kinds, solely on the subject of sea slugs!… oh my… i’ve read snippets and am intrigued… when i am done with TEH, i will start in on the sea slugs… the note that Haas provides on the above poem tells me that the sea slug is usually a humorous reference in Japanese poetry… indeed…
… i learn that Night Herons are associated with the uncanny by the Japanese…
… on the recommendation of Haas, i also purchase a previously owned copy of Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary… i think i am officially diving down a rabbit hole, Japanese haiku… it’s an indirect way to get at Buddhism also… that i am finding it compelling at this moment likely has to do with my dad’s impending death… i have found it helpful…
The Essential Haiku, End Notes
… a sense of the impossibility of translating Japanese haiku is given in these two paragraphs…
Winter Sun: This is Ueda’s translation, from Basho and His Interpreters, p. 170. The alliteration and assonance in this poem are particularly admired: fuyu no hi ya bajo ni koru kageboshi.1
… and…
A Petal Shower: The phrase used to describe the falling petals is onomatopoeic: horohoro. Some connection between that sound and the sound of the river.2
… in the note to the poem How Admirable!, some sound information on enlightenment, which is…
to see nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.3
… the commentary on Hailstones…
Hard things hitting hard things in a hard place. Mountain passes were mysterious places in old Japanese culture, inhabited by boundary gods and placatory shrines, sometimes with the carved figure of a man and a woman coupling.4
The Essential Haiku, Notes
… reading the notes, i learn or confirm that…
The Essential Haiku
… i have finished all the pages that are direct translations from works of, or about, the masters… the last piece excerpts from a record of Basho working with his students… even though Basho tells us earlier that we must write down the first lines to come into our minds… it becomes clear in this final piece that poems are revisited, refined… it is as one would expect… also, that poems were sometimes communal efforts…
… i will next read through the notes of the book as the first one illuminated the general acceptance of homosexual love in Basho’s time… i wonder when, if, that changed?…
… in a few days i have a new book coming… Rise Ye Sea Slugs!… what a title… it is a compilation of translations of well known haiku… multiple translations as, generally speaking, it is impossible to give a perfect representation of a haiku in translation…
Basho On Poetry
… winding down to the end of The Essential Haiku…
The basis of art is change in the universe. What’s still has changeless form. Moving things change, and because we cannot put a stop to time, it continues unarrested. To stop a thing would be to halve a sight or sound in our heart. Cherry blossoms whirl, leaves fall, and the wind flits them both along the ground. We cannot arrest with our eyes or ears what lies in such things. Were we to gain mastery over them, we would find that the life of each thing had vanished without a trace.1
Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.2
… Basho promoting Panpsychism?…
Every form of insentient existence—plants, stones, or utensils—has its individual feelings similar to those of men3
… Learn from the Pine has a lot of wisdom… it comforts me because in general, i follow its proscriptions, not perfectly, not even admirably, but i follow them as best i can…
The Prose of Issa
… excerpts from “A Year of My Life (1819)…
… the interesting part being prose passages after which haiku have been inserted… as if what happened in the prose lead to the poem… or course, it could also be that the poem was written at some time in the past and inserted for it’s relevance to the moment described in the prose… Issa inserted one of his most famous poems after a passage about the death of his daughter…
The world of dew,
is the world of dew,
and yet, and yet—
… the prose in general seems to be a little banal, a little removed emotionally from what it talks about… i wonder if these journal entries seem the same to anyone who reads them?…
The Haiku of Issa
… the last two in the book…
… i have a new book on haiku coming… this one offers multiple translations of each haiku as a singular haiku can’t get at all the nuances and cultural references of the original… it’s a thick book apparently… may take me a long time to get through it…
The Haiku of Issa
… i am nearing the end of The Essential Haiku… a few more poems, a couple of prose pieces at the end of the book, i am finished… yesterday i gathered together a dozen of my micro poems to read at an event in the evening that was postponed until next week due to the rain… a COVID precaution… i read them to H who did not seem that enthusiastic about them… haiku and micro poems are funny things… i suspect you get them, or you don’t and the difference between a passable one and a great one is hard to pin down… they need to be specific enough to call you to the details of a moment, but then use those details to open a window on the infinite…
… today’s haiku summaries and interpretations…
The Haiku of Issa
… each day i read six Haiku from The Essential Haiku, translations by Robert Hass… i do it as a mindfulness practice, to start my day with something centering, something that shows how to be in the moments and see what is present, what is important, what your connection to the earth, sun, moon and stars is…
The Haiku of Issa
Today’s six Haiku summarized with notes on what they mean or suggest to me, or the questions they raise…
The Haiku of Issa
… less progress on actual unraveling of meaning in these haiku today, but, several books on the subject, one of which i have ordered for my library… one thing that i knew, but which is confirmed in my exploration today, no single translation can transmit all the meaning possibilities packed into a great haiku… numerous translations are required…
Haiku of Issa
The Haiku of Issa
… studying and trying to interpret the Haiku of Basho, Buson and Issa, and trying to write my own micro poems has had an interesting effect… it has led me to begin withdrawing from Instagram and Facebook and to reconsider the attitude with which i make art… i have decided that it might be better simply to make and let the universe decide what will come from it…
… on with the Issa haiku…
The Haiku of Issa