F.S. Flint - Cones (1916)
Forgotten Poems #18
—: Cones :—
The blue mist of after-rain fills all the trees; the sunlight gilds the tops of the poplar spires, far off, behind the houses. Here a branch sways and there a sparrow twitters. The curtains's hem, rose-embroidered, flutters, and half reveals a burnt-red chimney pot. The quiet in the room bears patiently a footfall on the street.
F.S. Flint (1885-1960)
P: The New Freewoman (1913), Poetry & Drama (1913), The Egoist (1915); A: Des Imagistes (1914), Some Imagist Poets (1915-17), The New Poetry (1917), New Paths: Verse, Prose, Pictures (1917-18), An Anthology of New English Verse (1921); C: In the Net of Stars (1909), Cadences (1915), Otherworld: Cadences (1916); translations, reviews, articles, etc.
One of the founders of the London based ‘School of Images’, with Edward Storer, T.E. Hulme, Florence Farr (et al.); “I think that what brought the real nucleus of this group together was a dissatisfaction with English poetry as it was then (and is still, alas!) being written. We proposed at various times to replace it by pure vers libre; by the Japanese tanka and haikai; we all wrote dozens of the latter as an amusement; by poems in a sacred Hebrew form... by rhymeless poems.” (The History of Imagism, 1915) Later a member of both Ezra Pound's 'Imagistes' and Amy Lowell's “new” Imagist group, along with H.D., Richard Aldington, John Gould Fletcher, and D.H. Lawrence.
Flint, on tanka and haiku: “To the poet who can catch and render, like [tanka & haiku]... the brief fragments of their soul’s music, the future lies open... in snatches of song. The day of the lengthy poem is over—at least, for this troubled age.” (Recent Verse, 1908) As with many of Flint’s poems, the influence of tanka and haiku is obvious. The opening stanzas are clearly written using tanka techniques;
The blue mist of after-rain
fills all the trees;
the sunlight gilds the tops
of the poplar spires, far off,
behind the houses.
And the other stanzas all have shades of haiku;
The quiet in the room
bears patiently
a footfall on the street.
While none of the tanka or haikai written by the ‘School of Images’ has survived, a few of Flint’s translations of haiku have, including this one by Yosa Buson (1716-1784), translated in 1908;
Alone in a room Deserted— A peony.
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