Comments on: Kobayashi Issa: haiku about shitting

By: Via Negativa » Blog Archive » September wrap-up

Via Negativa » Blog Archive » September wrap-up — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:59:33 +0000

[...] Kobayashi Issa: haiku about shitting [...]

By: SB

SB — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:34:56 +0000

Oh, my very favorite haiku poet!

And you’ve aptly demonstrated why.

By: beeractivist

beeractivist — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:30:49 +0000

I like the skylark one best. A bird song soundtrack for shitting. Sounds like a missing Leonard Nimoy album.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:34:26 +0000

Oh lord no. I mean, if someone else wants to organize it, I'd be happy to participate (after all, I have written a few Bathroom Poems), but I don't want V.N. to become the #1 search engine result for shitty poetry.

By: Fred Garber

Fred Garber — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:19:37 +0000

After the success of the International Rock Flipping Day, why not have Poop Poetry day?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:20:24 +0000

You’re lucky Amida isn’t the smiting kind of deity. You’d be in deep shit.

By: Joel Sax

Joel Sax — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:39:16 +0000

ç§?ã?®ç´”ç²‹ã?ªåœŸåœ°ã?¯ã?”ã?—ã?”ã?—æ´—ã?†å¿…è¦?ã?Œã?‚ã‚‹ã€‚

(My Pure Land needs scrubbing.)

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:26:55 +0000

Actually, he did comment back-channel. Uh, so to speak.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:01:24 +0000

I’m surprised Teju hasn’t weighed in, honestly. I’d think this post would be right up his alley.

Er. So to speak. ;-)

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:45:33 +0000

Hey y’all, thanks for the comments. I wasn’t sure how well these would go over; I guess I shouldn’t have worried!

My main reason for wanting to translate these was what I felt to be the inadequacy of Lanoue’s translation of kuso, etc. as “poop.” In the case of deer and caterpillars, we have specific words for their excrement that should be used. “Frass” might be a little obscure for non-naturalists, but it seems wrong to use the word “shit” for something so hard and dry (human excrement, by contrast, is 80 percent water) – and as Maria says, the word is as dry as the sound the stuff makes when it falls to the forest floor.

robin andrea – Thanks for the fun comment. I didn’t see any Issa haiku that deal explictly with the link between sex and bowel movements for some men, though homosexuality was certainly not a taboo subject in pre-modern Japan (see, for example, haiku master and novelist Saikaku Ihara’s story collection Comrade Loves of the Samurai).