<divclass="verse">Rob MacWolf, [29 Jan 2022 14:18:28]
yeah, it’s a nice touch like showing the strength of an emotion by showing, not the emotion, but the struggle to control it
Rob MacWolf, [2 Feb 2022 20:27:01]
i think i can see a sort of hidden theme in what you’re doing here. there’s an attempt to use Dwale’s poetry to see something–in this case, each season–from its perspective. and then tease out, through anecdote, metaphor, and attempts at applying that perspective to other poetry, the depth and implications of that perspective.
Rob MacWolf, [2 Feb 2022 20:28:14]
sort of a “ok, it says summer is such-and-such. how does that apply summers i remember? to the summer i had most recently? to what this translation of a haiku says about summer?”
Rob MacWolf, [2 Feb 2022 20:28:37]
it’s comparing poetic perspectives against eachother as if they were paint swatches
Madison Scott-Clary, [2 Feb 2022 20:33:25]
Yeah. like a way of trying to better understand someone you can’t ask anymore.
Rob MacWolf, [2 Feb 2022 20:35:24]
indeed
Rob MacWolf, [2 Feb 2022 20:38:54]
i really like where you’re going with this. i like the way that summer constituted a step up in the complexity of the introspection, which is going to be a good build to the much increased supply of applicable material for autumn. then if you can manage to simplify back in winter, and leave winter mostly for conclusions and summing up, give winter a kind of “cried it all out” catharsis? well, that’ll be a hell of an emotional arc, which it’s rare for an essay to have</div>
Poetry vol.71 no.1 - October 1947 - pg.23 - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=24836
How hard the year dies: no frost yet
On drifts of yellow sand Midas reclines
Fearless of moaning reed or sullen wave
Firm and fragrant still the brambleberries
On ivy-bloom butterflies wag
Spare him a little longer, Crone
For his clean hands and love-submissive heart</div>
<p>Haiku by Issa - https://archive.org/details/autumnwindselect0000koba/page/10/mode/2up</p>
<divclass="verse">Heedless that the dews
mark the passing of our day —
we bind ourselves to others
(Mi no ue no tsuyu to mo shirade hodashikeri - p.11 - spring)
O winds of autumn!
Nearer we draw to the Buddha
As the years advance
(Akikaze yo hotoke ni chikaki toshi no hodo - p.11 - autumn)
Floating weeds,
as blow the winds of the floating world —
drifting and drifting
(Ukigusa ya ukiyo no kaze no iu mama ni - p.18 - spring)
A blessing indeed —
This snow on the bed-quilt,
This, too, is from the pure land
(Arigata ya fusama no yuki mo Jodo yori - p.46 - winter)
Is this it, then,
My last resting place —
Five feet of snow!
(Kore ga maa tsui no sumika ka yuki goshaku - p.37 - winter)
On the hill of summer
Stands the slender maiden flower
In a solitary humor
(Natsuyama ya / Hitori kigen no / Ominaeshi - p.65 - summer)
Red dragon-fly —
He’s the one that likes the evening,
Or so it seems.
(Akatombo / Kare mo yubo ga / Suki ja yara - p.65 - autumn)
Heedless that the tolling bell
Marks our own closing day —
We take this evening’s cool
(Mi no ue no kane tomo shirade yusuzumi - p.39 - summer)</div>
<p>Some underlines in <em>19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei</em> by Eliot Weinberger, 2016, New Directions Publishing Corporation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Great poetry lives in a state of perpetual transformation, perpetual translation: the poem dies when it has no place to go.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>p.3</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In its way a spiritual exercise, translation is dependent on the dissolution of the translator’s ego: an absolute humility toward the text.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>p.20</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As such, every reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader’s intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different — not merely another — reading. The same poem cannot be read twice.</p>
<p>[…] the poem continues in a state of restless change.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“To Autumn” verse 1 by Keats</p>
<divclass="verse">Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.</div>
