Thursday, February 14, 2013

A Room of My Own: Frog Pond Haiku

 written in response to Robert Aitken’s commentary on Basho's frog haiku


frog pond...
the weight of a shadow
on the lotus leaf



Note: For more information, see
1) Poetic Musings: Generic Analysis of Basho’s Frog Haiku (written from the perspective of kigo) or
2) To the Lighthouse: Cutting through Time and Space (written from the perspective of  kire (cutting))

2 comments:

  1. I once met an avid reader of haiku who could recite at least ten different English versions of Basho's frog haiku, but when I asked him, “what makes Basho's haiku so great that is worthy of more than a hundred different translations published in book form?” How could there be significant meaning in such a simple poem which merely describes a frog jumping into an old pond? If I replace “frog” with any other amphibian creature or any creature that can dive into a pond, is it still considered to be great? ” At the time I received no good answers from him, but a few days later I received a lengthy email, in which he gave me a list of books or websites on Basho’s frog haiku. One of them was an often-quoted website page titled “Matsuo Basho: Frog Haiku: Thirty-one Translations and One Commentary.” The commentary was taken from Robert Aitken’s A Zen Wave: Basho's Haiku and Zen, a collection of essays on Basho’s haiku. I wasn’t satisfied with any of the answers from his sources because of their individualistic, de-contextualized, and Zen-influenced interpretations of Basho’s haiku. More importantly, they didn’t help answer my question. I pondered, “What would Basho say if he were alive today and could read these English language reviews of his frog haiku written by writers or lovers of haiku?”

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  2. Below is the link to the full text of Robert Aitken’s widely-read, Zen-influenced commentary in which there is almost nothing about a contextualized analysis of Basho's use of kigo or kire (cutting)

    http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm

    Note: kigo and kireji (cutting words) are two of three formal requirements for writing classical Japanese haiku


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