tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post6993436560868936401..comments2024-03-28T12:59:41.910-04:00Comments on NeverEnding Story: Poetic Musings: Fallen Flower Haiku by Masaoka ShikiChen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐http://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-54027991047302230392021-12-27T00:38:30.270-05:002021-12-27T00:38:30.270-05:00the falling flower
i saw drift from the branches
w...the falling flower<br />i saw drift from the branches<br />was a butterflymine!https://www.blogger.com/profile/09696673348341338596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-7032957963043008912014-02-07T19:44:59.915-05:002014-02-07T19:44:59.915-05:00Pound's 'metro poem' was influenced by...Pound's 'metro poem' was influenced by the celebrated Arakida Moritake haiku. Below is a relevant excerpt from his 1916 book, titled Gaudier-Brzeska:<br /><br />One is tired of ornamentations, they are all a trick, and any sharp person can learn them.<br /><br />The Japanese have had the sense of exploration. They have understood the beauty of this sort of knowing. A Chinaman said long ago that if a man can’t say what he has to say in twelve lines he had better keep quiet. The Japanese have evolved the still shorter form of the hokku.<br /><br /> "The fallen blossom flies back to its branch:<br /><br /> A butterfly."<br /><br />That is the substance of a very well-known hokku. Victor Plarr tells me that once, when he was walking over snow with a Japanese naval officer, they came to a place where a cat had crossed the path, and the officer said," Stop, I am making a poem." Which poem was, roughly, as follows: --<br /><br /> "The footsteps of the cat upon the snow:<br /><br /> (are like) plum-blossoms."<br /><br />The words "are like" would not occur in the original, but I add them for clarity.<br /><br />The "one image poem" is a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work "of second intensity." Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence: --<br /><br /> "The apparition of these faces in the crowd:<br /><br /> Petals, on a wet, black bough."<br /><br />Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐https://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.com