Posts

Showing posts from May, 2020
Image
Today's poem Wisteria, Hydrangea arrived from London with a hearty message last Thursday, 21st May: a pamphlet bulbul calling with edition No. xxx. Bulbul might correspond to ヒヨドリ (brown-eared bulbul) in Japan. Poems on the subject of nature in the pamph have a high affinity with the Japanese sensibility, for following Japanese culture, the origin was rooted mainly in the Indian subcontinent and China before the Meiji era (1868 to 1912). Multi-lingual verses are collected with Pratyusha's eyes to individual places in her life in the small gem, having Urdu, Hindi, Bangla, dialects thereof, etc. Two ghazals fascinate me, making my memory back to the 2012 Fishtrap workshop in the US where I first read a ghazal that a participant Cathy wrote using her middle name 'love'. Please read tercets 'if still forest (winter)' by Pratyusha from an online magazine THE WILLOWHERB REVIEW .     * The poem has an atmosphere of the UK, not India, I suppose. https://www.thewi
Today's poem Hopkins' devotion to Christianity. In the poem, each quatrain represents each sense. Simultaneously, I recall indriya in Buddhism. The first and second quatrains are hearing, the third is eyesight, the fourth is taste, the fifth is smell, and the sixth is touch. The poem attracts me so much, for I feel Christianity by, especially, terms 'ELECTED Silence', 'uncreated light' (Genesis I), and 'the Lord'. In the last quatrain, Hopkins selected one of the three counsels of perfection: 'Poverty'. The fifth (smell) and sixth (touch) quatrains seem to be strange for me. Just in such stanzas, there could be a hidden riddle or called truth. The beginning 'ELECTED Silence' (really great, I think) dominates the world in the poem, a clue to create light from 'the uncreated light'. Silence is the source of the birth of something, back to  tabula rasa . As if feeling before practice in Eiheiji (永平寺). The Habit of Perfection by
Today's poem FIND! Well, how I met the poem - I have no memory. But what I remember is only a huge surprise (「こりゃ、すごい」) around 2012 or 2013 and I thought Hannah Sanghee Park was a gifted poet. It seems for me that, e.g., the poem 'X, O' is a mathematical formula, i.e., an equation (I want to try to make a poem using the latest mathematics or quantum mechanics). Soon I purchased her debut collection '' the same different " with rich experimentality. The first section in the book has a unique arrangement of poems filled with cool lyricism, chasing similar sounds in each stanza. Meanwhile, the second section is a sequence of sonnets full of fine devices. Her writing continuously has stimulated my creativity so much. Moreover, I love a double-Dactyl poem 'Bible Lesson' that is not collected in the book. Hannah Sanghee Park Please click and read her poems: 'X, O' ...   https://www.triquarterly.org/issues/issue-138/xo     (equation) 'X O&
Image
Today's poem BBC radio 4 programme: "Shuntaro Tanikawa: A Poet's Japan" (on-air: 16:30 (GMT) 10th May, 2020) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j12m The contents were sophisticated and conversations and readings were performed in a relaxed atmosphere. It was striking for me that a poet and translator William I. Elliott told that, referring to Tanikawa's poem, the Japanese life was depicted as ' open-ended ' (run-on) using the flow of river water, compared with American and English ones as ' closed-ended '. The mention of the contrast between the West and the East was an excellent metaphor that can never be said by Japanese people, evoking metempsychosis in main features of Buddhist thought that can also be found in Greek one. Different from Christianity as monotheism. Hearing the programme, I feel that the Buddhism thought seems to be a sort of ethics, not a religion. (wood sculptures by Katsura Funakoshi)
Image
Today's poem One poem made me so excited at a workshop in Portugal. A poet Stuart (pseudonym) brought to me, the poem in which light coming through church windows were drawn. Instantly I asked him why he wrote such a brilliant poem and what had inspired him. Then he explained his own experience of a séance at a church or somewhere in Kings Lynn. I decided to attend it there next time and Julian of Norwich came up to my mind at that time. He also told me about Margery Kempe. After coming back to Tokyo, I found a formalist poet Howard Nemerov's (Diane Arbus was his sister!) poem 'A POEM OF MARGERY KEMPE'. In the poem on mysticism, her quote becomes a rhyming couplet as a refrain that seems to be a magic spell  Abracadabra . Other octets are the narrative of her life. Homage to Margery Kempe. The last octet is very strong in the viewpoint of prosody and the last two lines 'I lace my pride in, / Crying out odd and even,' remind me of a Korean poet's verse on
Image
Today's poem Although very unfortunate that I can't introduce here my favorite poems "POLLEN" and "THE NIGHT HERON" as Nichola Deane's works in THE RIALTO magazine (issue No. 82, winter 2015) due to copyright, I've continuously read her poems again and again since I first met them. In particular, in the poem "POLLEN" using bees as the theme, I have been inspired by a stanza 'For The Word is no godhead / but so much pollen:'. "THE NIGHT HERON" seems to be a nocturne with a heron that could be seen or unseen and Mark Rothko's abstract paintings. Her poems are picturesque and often deeply philosophical. Towards Suaineabhal  by  Nichola Deane Please click and read:  And Other Poems https://andotherpoems.com/2013/10/08/nichola-deane/
Today's poem The sonnet sings a sort of meditation in the Christian world with the Genesis creation narrative. The phrase "something understood" in the last line expresses the essentials, e.g., the moment of enlightenment. My understanding is never complete, but my uncertainties make me go on trying to understand. For me, the second line "God's breath in man returning to his birth" is most impressive. If the breath is Buddha's, how can the world be represented? Breathing is crucial beyond religions (yoga and the like). Awakening in the poem might be seen in various Christian verses. Prayer (I)  by George Herbert Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,          God's breath in man returning to his birth,          The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,          Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,          Th
Image
Book covers Authors are Nina Mingya Powles from New Zealand, Mari Nomura (野村麻里) from Japan, Little Thunder (門小雷) from Hong Kong, etc. Please click and see: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_legruF2jX/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link