From trade at rolomail.com Thu Jan 10 07:33:31 2008 From: trade at rolomail.com (Trading Department) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:03:31 -0430 Subject: [Japanophiles] Sample from Mangajin's "The Essence of Modern Haiku" Message-ID: The Essence of MODERN HAIKU 300 Poems by Seishi Yamaguchi http://www.rolomail.com/cgi-bin/sanadd.pl?104 ??? Ky?k? ya Journeying by sleigh - ?????? komai no ana ni a hole cut for ice fishing ??? umi afuru brimming with the sea. Composed 1927. Recalling Sakhalin. People were fishing through holes in the ice in ?domari, and I, a middle school student, went to watch. When a sleigh went by, the ice buckled, and water brimmed from one of the holes in the ice. Season Word: komai, "fish commonly caught under ice." Winter, animals. Vocabulary: ? ky?k? is written with kanji for "sleigh" (?, by itself read sori) and "go" for a word meaning "going/traveling by sleigh." Though describing an action, it functions as a noun. ? strictly speaking, komai is the name for a kind of cod, but since it's written with kanji meaning "ice" + "under" + "fish," it can be thought of as a generic name for any fish that is fished through holes in the ice. ? afuru is the classical form of modern afureru, "overflow/brim over/flood." The last line is equivalent to umi ga afureru in modern Japanese, "the sea brims over." Published by Mangajin, only a few dozen copies remain in print. Translated by Takashi Kodaira and Alfred H. Marks A book of poetry from Mangajin. Breaking free from centuries of poetry limited to nature themes, the late Seishi Yamaguchi added modern touches while retaining the elegant beauty of the classics. Presented in both the original Japanese and in English translation, this collection has appeal for students of Japanese language and culture as well as haiku lovers everywhere. Yamaguchi Seishi is a poet who broke like a cyclone on the world of the new haiku founded by Shiki and Kyoshi. That fact has been made abundantly clear by the authors of this book. His subjects are fresh. His style is organized and plastic. The feeling of his poetic expression is above all modern. For these reasons, lovers of haiku and lovers of art everywhere would find themselves in tune with Seishi's haiku. n 1988 Fujiwara Noboru published A Selection from the Poems of Seishi, which introduced 88 poems, with the poet's notes, in English translation. We are now given 300 of the poems in English, all selected and annotated by the poet ? valuable aids in the comprehension of the poems, needless to say. Of course, the two distinguishing features of the haiku are its brevity and the tight music of its seventeen sounds. A little longer and it becomes verbose; a little shorter and it loses its rhythm. Consequently, the principal problem of translating haiku comes down to a matter of the paucity of vowels, and thus syllables, in the English word. When one attempts to translate into seventeen English syllables, one is apt to be forced to conflate the meaning of the Japanese R. H. Blyth has suggested a meter of alternating feet in a 2-3-2 rhythm, which seems to satisfy the rhythmic requirements of speakers of English. Poets in Europe and the United States, however, often compose in syllabic patterns close to those of the Japanese, and even the renowned English poet James Kirkup goes on writing poems with the 5-7-5 beat. Let us remember, too, that nowadays musicians in Europe and the United States are being drawn to the subtle rhythms of gagaku and the shakuhachi. With all this in mind, the translation of haiku into English poems of seventeen syllables might be said to have a startlingly new quality. Thus the work of Kodaira Takashi and Alfred H. Marks seems to me to have been very successful. The translation of the poems and of the annotations is faithful, and the rhythmic quality is sensitively reproduced. Thanks to this book, therefore, the poems of Yamaguchi Seishi of which Japanese are so proud can be properly appreciated abroad. I anticipate that this will do much for the understanding of haiku in general. UCHIDA SONO President, Haiku International Association AVAILABLE AT ROLOMAIL.COM http://www.rolomail.com/cgi-bin/sanadd.pl?104 "A wonderful book! For the first time western haiku poets have a chance to read, study, and savor a comprehensive collection of haiku by a major Japanese poet..." ? Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Former Editor, Frogpond "Seishi [is] the foremost elder haiku poet now writing..." ? James Kirkup, President, British Haiku Society "For any serious student of haiku, this is an invaluable text." ? L. A. Davidson, Charter Member, Haiku Society of America "... gives us some of the best poems written in any verse form." ? Makoto Ueda, Dept. of Asian Languages, Stanford University TAKASHI KODAIRA is professor of American Literature at Yokohama City University in Japan. ALFRED H. MARKS is professor emeritus of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: