Yes - it really helps. What a superb reply! Thanks, Dick. I always appreciate your (dare I say) humanistic devotion to literary knowledge and its propagation and this is no exception. In truth, I would like to restack this answer so that everyone can benefit from it, but there doesn’t seem to be a restack function here in the comments. Anyway, thank you!!
Cheers Thomas - am glad! Haha - yeah I can see how it has a humanistic edge :-) ha - well, I guess I will just have to write a proper article about all this stuff at some point. it is definitely on my radar. Nice to be able to work some of it out in comments and discussion - it's all quite fluid y'know. Thanks heaps for being interested! I really appreciate it. :-)
Love Dick Whyte’s tanka. Love the originals too - I’m struck by the theme of transience in all of them. I read somewhere that this is a feature - I’m going to look out for it in your future posts to test the theory . 🙂
Cheers Thomas :-) Yeah - wabi-sabi as an aesthetic is really important in classical Japanese arts, which is basically an acknowledgement of the transient-ness or impermanence, and imperfection of things. Wabi means "simplicity" but also "lonely" and "run-down", while sabi refers to "patina", "rustiness", and again, "loneliness". Hence, cherry blossoms are a significant symbol of beauty in Japan - because they bloom, are incredibly beautiful, and then pass very quickly, taken by the breeze. However, this kind of transience is also cyclical - so they will one day bloom again, being reborn. As an aesthetic it is applied to things that in the West would not be considered "beautiful" at all (by classical standards) - a rusted fence may have "wabi sabi" - its age and rustic-ness being considered an aesthetic pleasure.
This is very different from the Western conception of "beauty" which was based on "permanence" and being a "universal" (i.e. unchanging over time), and is generally linear rather than cyclical (i.e. "beauty" is said to almost universally lessen with age, etc.). We can see this in the styles of poetry that dominate historical discourses. For instance, in the West it is the Epic which is held up as the pinnacle of poetry from around 1200 to around the 1800s - the Epic being long, permanent, monumental, sensible (i.e. narrative and plot based), and so on. In Japan it was the tanka which became the pinnacle of poetry from around 700 through to around 1500, and then the haikai from around 1600s through to the 1800s - these are short, transient, fragmented, suggestive, ephemeral, not based in "narrative", etc. This is not specific to poetry though, but rather, the way I see it, poetry simply echoing the general metaphysic which underpinned particular cultural paradigms and eras (none of which are "essential", or innate, but which emerged over time). Hence, Western philosophy was dominantly focussed on permanence and universality prior to the 1900s, while Japanese philosophy was typically more concerned with impermanence. Not as opposites, or binaries, but within their own cultural logics. Anyway - to properly flesh this out would take a lot longer than a comment allows haha - but I hope this helps with your future looking. :-)
I really love these, Yozoru Tsurumi's tanka and yours as well. The journal I edit is publishing an essay about a film Ripples of Physis about a Japanese family who manufacture Kyoto “karakami” (decorative paper). Here's a link to the preview. I thought of it when I read your poems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpYUTjk3FXc
Cheers LeeAnn :-) Oh wow - so cool. Thanks for introducing me to this - gonna have to watch the film now. Let me know when the essay comes out, sounds like it will be an interesting read.
"Incandescent arrangements of time" - so gorgeous!
Aw cheers Lisa! So glad it resonated :-)
Yes - it really helps. What a superb reply! Thanks, Dick. I always appreciate your (dare I say) humanistic devotion to literary knowledge and its propagation and this is no exception. In truth, I would like to restack this answer so that everyone can benefit from it, but there doesn’t seem to be a restack function here in the comments. Anyway, thank you!!
Cheers Thomas - am glad! Haha - yeah I can see how it has a humanistic edge :-) ha - well, I guess I will just have to write a proper article about all this stuff at some point. it is definitely on my radar. Nice to be able to work some of it out in comments and discussion - it's all quite fluid y'know. Thanks heaps for being interested! I really appreciate it. :-)
Excellent. Please let me know when that article comes out so that I can read it. 🙂
Love Dick Whyte’s tanka. Love the originals too - I’m struck by the theme of transience in all of them. I read somewhere that this is a feature - I’m going to look out for it in your future posts to test the theory . 🙂
Cheers Thomas :-) Yeah - wabi-sabi as an aesthetic is really important in classical Japanese arts, which is basically an acknowledgement of the transient-ness or impermanence, and imperfection of things. Wabi means "simplicity" but also "lonely" and "run-down", while sabi refers to "patina", "rustiness", and again, "loneliness". Hence, cherry blossoms are a significant symbol of beauty in Japan - because they bloom, are incredibly beautiful, and then pass very quickly, taken by the breeze. However, this kind of transience is also cyclical - so they will one day bloom again, being reborn. As an aesthetic it is applied to things that in the West would not be considered "beautiful" at all (by classical standards) - a rusted fence may have "wabi sabi" - its age and rustic-ness being considered an aesthetic pleasure.
This is very different from the Western conception of "beauty" which was based on "permanence" and being a "universal" (i.e. unchanging over time), and is generally linear rather than cyclical (i.e. "beauty" is said to almost universally lessen with age, etc.). We can see this in the styles of poetry that dominate historical discourses. For instance, in the West it is the Epic which is held up as the pinnacle of poetry from around 1200 to around the 1800s - the Epic being long, permanent, monumental, sensible (i.e. narrative and plot based), and so on. In Japan it was the tanka which became the pinnacle of poetry from around 700 through to around 1500, and then the haikai from around 1600s through to the 1800s - these are short, transient, fragmented, suggestive, ephemeral, not based in "narrative", etc. This is not specific to poetry though, but rather, the way I see it, poetry simply echoing the general metaphysic which underpinned particular cultural paradigms and eras (none of which are "essential", or innate, but which emerged over time). Hence, Western philosophy was dominantly focussed on permanence and universality prior to the 1900s, while Japanese philosophy was typically more concerned with impermanence. Not as opposites, or binaries, but within their own cultural logics. Anyway - to properly flesh this out would take a lot longer than a comment allows haha - but I hope this helps with your future looking. :-)
I really love these, Yozoru Tsurumi's tanka and yours as well. The journal I edit is publishing an essay about a film Ripples of Physis about a Japanese family who manufacture Kyoto “karakami” (decorative paper). Here's a link to the preview. I thought of it when I read your poems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpYUTjk3FXc
Cheers LeeAnn :-) Oh wow - so cool. Thanks for introducing me to this - gonna have to watch the film now. Let me know when the essay comes out, sounds like it will be an interesting read.
beautiful collection!
Cheers Aaron, so glad you enjoyed it! :-)
Really enjoyed these (and your contributions, too). Thanks so much for sharing them!
Cheers James! Much appreciated. And you’re very welcome :-)