Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Always a story
beneath the cold and quiet—
Always a nest being refurbished
under the springhouse eaves—
Always the smell of mud at the edges,
the window finally come unstuck—
Always a gnarl in the fabric
where the fibers knotted—
Always a smooth new trail
tracked around the village of scars
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 20 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Perhaps you’ve read about how foreigners (gaijin) get treated in Japan: with a mix of deference, admiration, condescension, and occasional outright hostility, depending on the circumstance. During the year I lived there, I experienced all four, and I must admit that at times my drunken, loutish behavior warranted far more hostility than I actually encountered. I sometimes resented the stereotyping of gaijin in general and Americans in particular, but I also liked the way it let me coast on my imperfect language skills, since everybody tended to ask the same questions and make the same observations at first meeting, and it didn’t take long to figure out what kinds of responses would satisfy them. And such was my desire to be liked, it never once occurred to me to try to rock the boat a little by taking exception to some of the standard, polite generalizations about our two countries. (“Yes, America might look more spacious [hiroi] than Japan, but are spaciousness and narrowness [semai] really a function of physical geography alone, do you think?”)
Only country people and children ever broke the mold much, and I didn’t have too much interaction with either. One exception: a week-long stint as language tutor and counselor at a summer-camp type thing for primary school students in the Japan Alps. Until then, my main experience with that age group had been the endless hellos shouted at me across the street by exuberant kids on outings with their teachers. That always made me feel like the most popular beast at the zoo: thanks for the attention, but please go away.
When I met the summer-camp kids and their teachers at the bullet train platform, they were initially more respectful, no doubt having been told in advance to behave. But after about five minutes, their high spirits prevailed and they began horsing around and jumping all over me, boys and girls alike. The beast was out of its cage, and it wasn’t too scary! This was going to be O.K., I thought. I can play fun-loving American for a week. I remember teaching them how to make a piercing whistle with a blade of grass and how to make music by turning one’s mouth and cheeks into drums. We sang songs, told stories, rode ski lifts — the usual summer camp stuff.
One thing that’s kind of hard to express is how odd it did feel to see other foreigners in Japan. After a while I kind of understood the strong reactions to gaijin, I thought, because I began to feel them myself. When a Western face appeared suddenly in a Japanese crowd, after hours or days of seeing nothing but Japanese, it could be shocking, even a little embarrassing — not because of the obvious physical differences, but because of their unguardedness, the naked emotions stamped on their features as plain as day. And the primary thing I saw on Western faces — you’d see it in any face so unguarded, I suppose — was self-absorption.
As I said, I wanted to be liked. It wasn’t a fully conscious thing, but I must’ve worked hard to develop the kind of face that wouldn’t produce an auto-xenophobic reaction when I looked in the mirror. At the very end of my stay, when I met my parents at the Osaka airport for a brief joint vacation, my mother walked right by me twice without recognizing me. I finally mustered the courage to say hello.
*
Japan Alps, 1986
In the thick of it—
primary school kids on furlough
storming my back, pulling
at my arms & whirling
me around—
a pair of brown eyes in
a grave ten year-old face
makes me lose my balance,
land under a laughing pile.
Like someone bent against a gale
toppled by a sudden calm.
Her face full
of my outlandishness
finds me again every time
I catch sight of a mirror—
you know that look.
Like the glance we give
a stranger when umbrellas
come down, the rain
just past & already
a clearing wind.
From Spoil: Selected Older Poems, one of ten poems there about my time in Japan.
*
This post was written for the >Language >Place blog carnival (deadline: March 20), this time at Parmanu.
“…When you lose something,
it’s so you can learn how to search.”
—Dean Young
No sign of the spoon— and the fork and the knife
on a string— that he lost as a child
No sign of the furry brown bear— with the real
glass eyes— that I took to bed at night
No sign of the phoebes— they came to dip
for water— that were here yesterday
No sign of the robin— it rang and rang— that embroidered
its banner with song then fell strangely silent
No sign of the little stone buddha— and his necklace
of rosy children— that cracked on the pavement
when it fell from my pocket
No sign— but blue scales on the kitchen floor—
of the fish that jumped from the bowl by the open
window, startled by the barking of the dog next door
No sign of the moon— though I know it’s about to poke
over the horizon— big like a woman with child
No sign of the cordillera— though I glimpsed mountain-
and-valley pleats tattooed under the poet’s collar
No sign of the fog and its blue signature— I cannot see
my own breath— curled beneath noon’s yellow shawl
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 19 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
In case you missed the announcement earlier in the week, Moving Poems is sponsoring a videopoem contest.
In order to showcase and celebrate diverse approaches to making videopoems and poetry-films, I thought it would be fun to have a contest where everyone would use the same poem in its entirety, either in the soundtrack or as text (or both). Please join us! Post the results to YouTube or Vimeo and either email me the link (bontasaurus[at]yahoo[dot]com) or put it in a comment below, no later than April 15. I’ll post the winners to the main site.
Stop by and check out the poem we’re using —“Fable,” by Howie Good — read the rest of the guidelines, and explore a new page of helpful links for videopoetry makers, including sources for free and Creative Commons-licensed film and video, spoken word, sounds and music. So even if you don’t own a video camera, you can still made videopoems (though they do have to be actual films/videos, not successions of still images with a soundtrack).
The good news is there’s no entry fee. The bad news is there’s no prize. But Also, Howie has volunteered to help judge the contest and give copies of his chapbooks to the winners. (See comments.) It’s probably worth noting that his scholarly books include include several studies of film and culture. I’ve revised the last paragraph of the announcement accordingly. It now reads:
You can enter as many times as you like. From all the entries, we’ll select an indeterminate number of finalists to feature on the main site. Howie has offered to give copies of his books Rumble Strip, Anomalies, and Disaster Mode to his top three favorites, with the first place winner getting all three, second place the first two, and third place getting the last. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Do consider taking part. The deadline is April 15.
Matsushima is a group of islands in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. There are some 260 tiny islands (shima) covered in pines (matsu) — hence the name — and is ranked as one of the Three Views of Japan. Matsushima was very seriously damaged by the Tsunami following the Sendai earthquake in March 2011, with more than 600 people killed.
—Wikipedia, “Matsushima”
hundreds of tiny islands, each
with its own pine tree
like a flag planted by Mother Earth
—Jason Crane, “Matsushima”
* * *
matushima no
iso ni murewiru
ashitadu no
ono ga samazama
mieshi chiyo kana
A thousand years
in the eye of each
& every crane
flocking on the rocky shore
of Matsushima.
—Kiyowara no Motosuke (908-990)
tachi kaeri
mata mo kite min
matsushima ya
ojima no tomaya
nami ni arasu na
Returning
once more to gaze
on Matsushima,
the waves at Ojima lashing
my rush-walled hut.
—Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204)
shimajima ya
chiji ni kudakete
natsu no umi
Islands upon islands—
thousands of shards smashed
by the summer sea.
asayosa o
taga matsushima zo
katagokoro
Morning & evening
like someone at Matsushima—
unrequited love.
—Matsuo Bashô (1644-1694)
The town was protected by a stunningly beautiful maze of coves and islands, topped with bonsai-shaped Japanese pines, which kept the worst of the tsunami at bay.
The water rose three metres and the town was relatively lightly affected, as the local emergency services chief told a group of stranded tourists earlier this week.
But everything is relative. Tetsuo lived, against the odds, but said some of his neighbours died. He is now staying at a friend’s house.
* * *
matsushima ya
tsuru ni mi o kare
hototogisu
Matsushima.
Borrow the body of a crane,
oh cuckoo.
—Kawai Sora (1649-1710)
matsushima ya
hito kobushi-zutsu
aki no kure
Autumn dusk—
each island like a fist
at Matsushima.
matsushima ya
kosumi wa kurete
naku hibari
As the light fades
on an islet at Matsushima,
a skylark’s song.
—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
matsushima ya
aa matsushima ya
matsushima ya
Matsushima,
ah, Matushima!
Matsushima.
—Anon. (attr. to Bashô)
My parents owned an inexpensive set of china
showing a world glazed in blue and white: a few
three-tiered pagodas, thumbnails of gardens
planted to peach or willow trees. Villagers
crossed footbridges presumably to the next
town beyond the rim of the dinner plate,
and fishermen dipped their nets in placid
water. A woman sat at an upstairs window
reading a book, or doing sums, or writing
in a journal. A man cooled his bare feet in
the shallows, not doing anything much.
It was always dawn or dusk, and small birds
flew toward a miniature sun above the trees.
They could not have gone too far
from the periphery, nor pierced the convex
glass of the dome that rested on the plate—
so then what is that smudge on the sill,
what has become of the woman who once
sat there with her inks and scrolls?
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 17 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Today a poet read these words transcribed
from a different language: “Mi destino intermitente”
—and a door opened into a garden where the weather
was overcast and damp, but things were growing:
for instance, new leaves of lamb’s-ears looking delicately
furred, alive, alert. We passed through and touched
the dark veins of flowers pulsing on the vine, caught
our spindle-shaped reflections— fusiforme—
in puddles of water. Sometimes the world bends to
your position. The wasp returns to its nest and
finds it in tatters. Sometimes it is enough to live
in the complicated arc between losing and finding,
enough to gather what sweetness remains.
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 16 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
It started with a brief, almost cryptic email from naturalist and photographer Jennifer Schlick on January 3rd, with the subject heading “New Year Dreaming”:
So what if Dave wrote poems for these and then Deb made the whole thing into a handmade book?
I clicked on the link and found myself looking at macro photos of 16 native spring wildflowers, almost all of them old friends. Count me in, I said. I’m always looking for good poetry prompts to feed the blog, and these photos were stunners. Somewhere along the line, Jennifer filled in another vital piece of information: that her work was to be featured in a gallery show in Jamestown, New York in May, with frames handmade by a local woodworker. This was a dream whose real-world foundation was already half-laid.
But who wouldn’t jump at the chance to dream of wildflowers in the middle of a long winter? The resulting series, now 24 28 in length with the addition of some photos from Jennifer’s files, includes some of the strongest work I’ve written, which I think speaks to the power of her images. I know from my own dabbling with cameras that photographing woodland wildflowers at all can be a challenge; doing it in such a way as to avoid the easy and the obvious, and draw our attention to the true strangeness of nature, is a feat. These photos compelled me take another look at what had previously been mere fixtures in the landscape, albeit well-loved ones, and to start seeing them as complete beings.
This of course led to research in books and online. For some flowers, it’s the folklore that fascinates, while others’ unique habits or appearances call out for poetic treatment. In my mother’s large library of nature books, I found two old volumes with the same title: How to Know the Wildflowers. Unfortunately, neither book taught what the title promised — since when does mere identification constitute knowledge? But I liked the suggestion that one must learn a method of inquiry specific to flowers. Jennifer herself once wrote:
I can lose hours making my images; an entire day can disappear when I’m in the field shooting. Another day — gone in processing the pictures.
The results surprise me. Where do these images come from? And what do they want me to know?
Unanswerable questions, really, though it’s the job of poetry to try anyway. It would be hard to find a richer subject. Flowering plants are key to most terrestrial ecological communities, and flowers are potent symbols in nearly every human culture. There are more than 300,000 species of flowering plants on earth. Though we speak dismissively of “flowery speech,” as if flowers were mere ornaments, the fact is that without them, we would starve.
The basic fact of flowers’ existence — that they are sex organs — wasn’t understood until the 17th century, and the exact mechanics of flower sex weren’t documented until the 19th century, so for most of human history, poets, along with everyone else, had basically no idea how to know the wildflowers. But now we owe it to ourselves to learn all we can of these most sophisticated and essential of our fellow citizens. Pablo Neruda, an accomplished naturalist, has wowed millions of readers with his line: “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” To know flowers in any real sense is to understand something of our place in the cosmos.
*
Note: If you are a publisher and would be interested in bringing this series out in full color, let us know. We’re planning to do something through Lulu, but will entertain other offers.
Evening of the first day, the man who owned a truck yard
next door laid out plywood sheets on hard ground and said
Come— And all the neighbors came, bringing blankets,
sheets, canvas tarp, burlap— The very young and the trembling
old slept in vehicles, windows cracked open for air—
And the night air was notched with metallic smells but also
something almost sweet, like flowers— I did not want
to think what kind– And the following day it rained,
and then again the next, so between aftershocks we collected
water in pails and tin drums— Someone had a kerosene stove
and lit it in the shadow of the broken shed where the honeysuckle
vines were a vivid green interspersed with orange— And still
we refused to go indoors, though gradually we crept
back to those parts of our homes still standing— Porches
were good for sleeping— When the sun glimmered
through thin clouds we heard news of a few places
where we could walk to line up for bread, rice,
canned goods— And someone had busted a water pipe
near the park (just a little they said) and people went
with cans and plastic tubs for water— And the men
came back weeping, having dug out bodies from collapsed
buildings, from vehicles overtaken by landslides
on the mountain road— And strangers offered
rides, and helicopters hovered in the sky— And we heard
lamentations and questions on the lips of everyone— Faces
streaked often and easily, eyes filling with tears and blinking
not from the sunlight but from what they could barely endure—
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 15 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Panax trifolius
Because the root is round
& no bigger than a nut
it is not worth its weight in gold,
though still prized as medicine.
Had it limbs like a man
we might sing out its name—
little brother ‘sang! Instead,
we step over its perfect clouds,
oblivious to the mystery
of its androdioeciousness,
why some umbels should be all male
& others hermaphroditic,
how that little knot of a root
unties itself from year to year:
the flower fading to pink
shrinks & shrivels with the rest
of the above-ground parts, & when
it re-sprouts the following spring,
it’s no longer the same sex—
how it got that way
& why it persists, dwarf,
mountain-dweller,
unmaker of aches.