The Haiku Foundation Forums

I admit it: the NFL playoffs, during which my beloved home team, the New Orleans Saints, were so tragically dispatched and sent home by the underdog Seattle Seahawks, inspired me to organize a 21st Century Haiku Tournament. Last year, when Periplum was a blog, I showcased the works of twelve haiku poets from around the world who are pushing the genre in exciting, new directions. My idea is to take twelve haiku from these poets and conduct a 21st century "Seashell Game."

You might or might not know that Basho once supervised a similar Seashell Game, back in Old Japan. The Seashell Game originally was a child's pastime that involved a beauty contest of two shells, viewed side-by-side. Basho extended this format to haiku, placing two haiku side-by-side and determining the winner. The important thing wasn't so much who won or lost, but rather the comments of the judge (Basho), who revealed his concepts about what constitutes a fine haiku.

In this Seashell Game, YOU will be the judge. I will present two haiku side by side and ask you to: (1) vote for the winner and (2) explain your reasons. Just as in Basho's day, the important thing will be the reasons that you give, making explicit to the world your ideas about contemporary haiku.

Ready? Set? Let's go!

Our first head-to-head match pits two cutting-edge, contemporary Japanese haiku against each other: Ami Tanaka's "Atom Heart Mother . . ." vs. Keiji Minato's "In my luggage . . .":

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

   VS.

手荷物は劣化ウランと夏の海
teimotsu wa rekka uran to natsu no umi

In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea

Ami Tanaka was born in Tokyo on October 8, 1970, the same day that Pink Floyd's fourth studio album, Atom Heart Mother, was released. Its title derived from the headline of a news story that appeared in The Evening Standard on July 16, 1970. The headline read, "ATOM HEART MOTHER NAMED," referring to a woman who had received a nuclear-powered pacemaker. Band member Ron Geesen saw the article and suggested that they name the album's title track, 23 minutes and 44 seconds of instrumental rock, Atom Heart Mother. The track took up all of side one of an album that was originally sold in a cover that showed a picture of a cow in a field, with no text. Storm Thorgeson, the designer of the cow cover, said this about the title song and his cover: "When I asked them what it was about, they said they didn't know themselves. It's a conglomeration of pieces that weren't related, or didn't seem to be at the time. The picture isn't related either; in fact, it was an attempt to do a picture that was unrelated, consciously unrelated" (Guitar World, Feb. 1998; quoted in "Atom Heart Mother," Wikipedia). One of the song's writers, band member Roger Waters, said in a 1985 radio interview, "Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again! . . . It was pretty kind of pompous, it wasn't really about anything" ("Atom Heart Mother," Wikipedia).

A unitto basu or "unit bath" is a prefabricated bathroom module that includes ceiling, floor and tub made of the same continuous material. Found in hotels and apartments throughout Japan, unit baths have the advantage of being completely water-tight. They can be easily cleaned by showering the whole room. This is the type of bathroom that our Atom Heart Mother finds herself in, in Tanaka's poem.

The poet and the album were "born" together. The image of Mother in the haiku can thus suggest, on one level, Tanaka's own mother. The blood flowing into the prefabricated bathroom can suggest the act of birth. The "unit bath" can suggest modern Japan. And the "Atom" of "Heart Mother" can imply the atomic age from the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki up to the present moment. Blood pouring into the antiseptic, leak-proof bath unit can suggest the poet's life force. The fact that she came into this world on the same day that a disconnected musical suite was released with an unconnected cow cover says volumes about the absurdity into which she and all of us who are her contemporaries in this atomic world, have been thrown.

Keiji Minato's haiku, "In my luggage . . ." seems, at first glance, to be a joke: the kind that will get you arrested at an airport security checkpoint. "Depleted uranium" is isotope uranium-238, a byproduct of an enrichment process that creates U-235 used in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. "Depleted uranium" evokes, in my mind, images of steel cylinders bleeding a deadly sludge where children play--but then I see that the poet's "hand luggage" (teimotsu) contains also, along with radioactive isotope U-238, "the summer sea." How are we to feel about this juxtaposition? We picture a voyager, home from a long trip with two improbable souvenirs stuffed in his carry-on bag: depleted uranium and an entire ocean, a summer ocean: warm, heavy, undulating and salty. But at a level above or below that level, the joke isn't a joke, is it? Keiji's haiku collects in its verbal suitcase the artifacts of a trip--an actual trip or perhaps the trip of life itself, life in our time.

These are my perceptions of these competing haiku. I'm wondering what you perceive, and which of the two you would like to send to the semifinals.

Vote! And be sure to include (the important part!) your reasons. Voting will be open for the next two weeks, up to January 23rd.


WORKS CITED

Minato Keiji. "In my luggage . . ." English translation by the author. Cordite 29.1 (2009). Online journal.

Tanaka Ami. 田中亜美。"Atom Heart Mother..." English translation by David G. Lanoue. The Japanese original appears in 『新選２１』(Shinsen 21).邑書林, 2009. 216.

I decided not to read the notes first.

I'm voting for Keiji Minato's


In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea


Both haiku are run on sentences in their English-language versions but I got an instant "in" with this haiku and the syntax feels smoother.  I can't explain why I feel connected with this haiku except on the non-surreal level we know there is an ongoing trade with materials to make a nuclear device.  

With diplomatic cover anyone could literally be travelling with you on a Summer holiday with the stuff.  But obviously there's other humour and other deeper levels of meaning.

I just feel it has more vertical axis, but interesting that both haiku candidates are takes on 'nuclear power'.

Alan

手荷物は劣化ウランと夏の海
teimotsu wa rekka uran to natsu no umi

In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea

I also vote for Keiji Minato's haiku. I don't pretend to read Japanese, so I go by the English versions only.

'Atom Heart Mother' seems more personal and theoretical, to me, focusing on a personal association with an album (far from their best) of a popular band of my youth. The title of that album has as much to do with the news story as the name Procal Harem (another band) has to do with the prize-winning Persian cat that that band's name was derived from. Whilst I can relate to the drama of the coldness and seamlessness of the prefab bathroom (white, in my mind) and the spurting blood of a heart operation gone wrong, there is a distance here, to me, which any personal association (eg. the date of the author's birth) can't quite dispel. The connection feels dramatically neurotic to me.

'in my luggage' gives me an immediate physical chill. I feel that I know the place this traveler has come from like the back of my hand. Unhesitatingly, I admit that I immediately associate the 'depleted uranium' and the summer sea with the country I was born in and live in, though I understand there are other places that would also fit. It hits home. We have a uranium mining industry here, and the 'yellowcake' has leaked into the rivers even of one of the world's special national parks, Kakadu. There was a proposal for a second uranium mine in the area...I don't know if it has gone ahead, despite protests from the indigenous people of the area and others, or not. I certainly feel uneasy about it.

One lovely part of Australia is its beach and sea culture. Many Japanese people have their honeymoons here...the sea and cheap golf courses, for a start. Yet there is a dark side to the mining industry, for the thinking person, and the Japanese are also big investors in the mining industry here. One wouldn't wonder at all if a thinking person of Japanese origin felt quite equivocal about it. I liked the way Keiji Minato has balanced, disturbingly yet without coming to conclusion, what was taken away (from here or wherever) .

In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea

This is a real human dilemma. This is what a thinking someone has taken away...luggage, baggage, burden.. something sunlit & open & lovely, like the Pacific ocean, but also something quite dark which seeps into the pristine river and from there, of course, into 'the summer sea'.

How does one assess what one takes away from where one's been? What are our priorities?

This is a most contemporary poem! But as Basho emphasized, there is the unchanging and the ever-changing. If we feel an uneasiness in the complexities of this changing world, this is human, and the human perception of the moment is what is unchanging, as far as we're concerned, and is what makes poetry.

- Lorin

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

David, I also remember discussions on this poem in Little Rock, at HSA regional last year.

I picked the first poem now as my choice for two essoteric reasons:

First, it's first on the list... sounds silly, but, this is sometimes an edge in being first on a list; and

Second, it's first line, (at not knowing any explanation of the words, initially) the words coalesce in an emotional-visual sequence "Atom"/"Heart"/"Mother" expressing centricity.  L2 and L3 grow further depth of meaning in a juxtaposition way "prefab" - "spurts" - "blood".  Even without explanation this type of connectivity is mysterious, imaginative, and intriquing; and, I feel, provides synergism for the first lines.  A niggling idea also from the initial reading was the fact that the first line instantly gave to me an association with WWII atom bombs used on Japan. The last two lines seemed possible to further support this niggle.

Of course, the explanation adds the temper of reality which re-aligns my original read.

Also, if I may add... the second poem uses "and" (romaji - "to") which was a point against it, in my feeling.  This seemed to demonstrate a flaw in what I understand should be the principle that the "best" Japanese haiku does not present more than one "moment".  The use of "to" in the Japanese risked this, I feel.  The poem risks a form-flaw.  I relate a story/lesson from Akegarasu sensei's (my first haiku teacher) whereby there was a criticism of a poem in an alcove at a tea ceremony, the poem choice was between a beautiful scene represented in one poem; and, a rather mundane and mediocre scene in another.  The tea master chose the second almost soley due to the correct form and not the content.  I suppose this story/lesson stuck with me.  If there is one aspect of Japanese art that marks it from other art, it is attention to detail.  I suppose I relate poetic form a key part of such art.

PS... the first poem may lack "kigo", although, a case may be made for "prefab bathrooms" associated with summer beaches.  The second poem may use "travel luggage" as in "golden week" as kigo.  The letter counts on the first poem, also, are beyond the Japanese rule.  Then, it might all be in my imagination that these are tied to traditional rule.  Both poems are rule benders and form busters, in that case.

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

What is it that spurts blood, here? That is a problem, in my reading. Note that it is not the Atom Heart Mother or an Atom Heart Mother, nor Atom-Heart Mother, nor is it the Pink Floyd album, which would be rendered, in the English version of a haiku, as a title: Atom Heart Mother. If one didn't have access to the explanatory notes the first line might read as three separate words, Atom, Heart and Mother, despite that they begin with capitals.

L1, if we weren't relying on the background notes or authorial explanation, could be read as a free association of words that have something in common. It might be (just a conjecture) that a contemplation of associated words is interrupted by the person designated by 'Mother', one's actual, living Mother who is in a moment of crisis. This way it would read 'Atom/ Heart/ Mother in the prefab bathroom spurts blood', with the 'hinge' word being Mother.

There is not "more than one moment" in:

In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea

There is one moment, the moment of the "I" of the poem realizing/declaring (perhaps at customs at an airport) what is in his luggage on return from a journey/ holiday. The shift from a common, ordinary experience/activity hinges on 'luggage' (literally, what one has to lug around, a personal burden). That there are two things in the luggage does not make "more than one moment" any more than a fern frond and a cluster of wattle blossoms together in a vase make more than one flower arrangement.

It's interesting that both haiku have no caesura/ cut/ kire, no kireji/ cut marker. Not in the English versions, anyway, and that is what I'm reading. One has a kigo, 'summer sea', but it is used in an unusual way.

- Lorin

My vote:

In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea

The contrast of thoughts between those of depleted unranium to the dream of a summer sea ...  A vivid pondering between war and peace ... and the burden of those thoughts.  Would it take nuclear answers to create peace or is he pondering the delicate balance of them and wondering which way it will go ... the luggage – the baggage or the burden of thought, alone?

yes, and the poet's conflict could be inward, and his language a borrowing of the outward, so extreme and plural it becomes conceptual--how to wrap the mind around summer sea, the destructive power of uranium? Brings to mind Don's almost use of uncranium.

So, I'll choose Keiji Minato's shell.

Atom Heart Mother must, along with probable other meanings, be a reference to the Pink Floyd album/track, and so far the reverb the poet's channeling hasn't reached me (still listening though).

[inserting an edit here to add: that last sentence was a clumsy way of saying that despite David's interesting speculations about Ami Tanaka's personal connections to Atom Heart Mother, as Lorin put it, "there is a distance here, to me, which any personal association (eg. the date of the author's birth) can't quite dispel."]

When David first introduced Keiji Minato's haiku on the blog, my thoughts turned to the information below. I offer it not because it pleases me for you to read it, but because it might give insight into the poet's use of the words "depleted uranium". Reading it again, I'm unpleasantly reminded of the fire-bombing of Tokyo near the close of WWII, and can imagine why a young Japanese person might become preoccupied by similar thoughts...the highlights are mine, not the authors':

"In the early 1970s, the US Army began researching the use of depleted uranium metal in kinetic energy penetrators and tank armor. High-density materials such as tungsten (density 19.3 g/cm3) and DU (density 19 g/cm3) were considered. DU was ultimately selected due to its availability, price and pyrophoricity (Danesi, 1990; Anderson et al., 1997). Tungsten has a much higher melting point (3410°C) than uranium (1132 °C) and lacks pyrophoricity. Therefore, a tungsten projectile becomes blunt on impact and is less effective in piercing armor (Peterson, 1999). During processing DU penetrators are hardened by reducing the carbon content and by alloying with 0.75% by weight of titanium (Bukowski et al., 1993). The surface of a DU penetrator ignites on impact (especially with steel), due to the high temperature generated by the impact and the relatively low melting point of uranium (1132 °C). In addition, the projectile sharpens as it melts and pierces heavy armor (Rostker, 1998). DU projectile impacts are often characterized by a small, round entry hole (US-ACS, 1995). The 30-mm DU rounds, which were used by the US air force in the Gulf War and in Kosovo, can pierce steel armor up to a thickness of 9 cm....

...When the penetrator hits a hard object, e.g. an armored vehicle, the penetrator pierces the metal sheet, generally leaving the jacket behind. The DU dust which may be formed during impact can be dispersed and contaminate the environment. It is estimated that normally 10–35% (and a maximum of 70%) of the DU penetrator becomes an aerosol on impact or when the DU catches fire (Harley et al., 1999). Most of the dust particles have been reported to be smaller than 5 µm in size which keeps them airborne for an extended time, and will spread according to wind direction. DU dust is black and a target that has been hit by DU ammunition can be often recognized by the black dust cover in and around the target (US AEPI, 1995)." ---"Properties, use and health effects of depleted uranium (DU): a general overview", by A. Bleise, P.R. Danesi, W. Burkart, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 64 (2003) 93–112

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

My vote is for "Atom Heart Mother," which generated much discussion at the Haiku Society of America South Region Conference in Hot Springs last November.  Being a long-time Pink Floyd fan, I was familiar with the allusion in the first line, but was also intrigued by the various interpretations of the poem from the conference-goers.  For all those who would want to cut this poem from the competition, I will just caution, "Be Careful With That Axe, Eugene."

"Atom Heart Mother" became a catch phrase throughout the conference.  One of the poems generated was this one of mine, which actually was a community effort.  I can't ever remember if I came up with the punch line, or if someone else did.

"Atom Heart
Mother" coffee
decalf


Carlos Colon
Shreveport, Louisiana

Carlos, I think you might have misspelled that 3rd line. Are you sure you didn't mean
Atomic Heart Mother decal?     

            . .     ..
           :     .     :
            .    X   .
              .     .
                 .

now that I got that out of my system...

Carlos, I'm interested to hear more about the discussion Ami Tanaka's haiku inspired at the conference. Will you share some of it with us?

Quote from: Mark Harris on January 10, 2011, 10:29:05 PM
now that I got that out of my system...

Carlos, I'm interested to hear more about the discussion Ami Tanaka's haiku inspired at the conference. Will you share some of it with us?

Hi Mark,...yes, that'd be interesting. I've reread David's comments in the intro now, and I'm wondering whether this might be a clue to Ami Tanaka's haiku?

"Band member Ron Geesen saw the article and suggested that they name the album's title track, 23 minutes and 44 seconds of instrumental rock, Atom Heart Mother. The track took up all of side one of an album that was originally sold in a cover that showed a picture of a cow in a field, with no text. Storm Thorgeson, the designer of the cow cover, said this about the title song and his cover: "When I asked them what it was about, they said they didn't know themselves. It's a conglomeration of pieces that weren't related, or didn't seem to be at the time. The picture isn't related either; in fact, it was an attempt to do a picture that was unrelated, consciously unrelated" (Guitar World, Feb. 1998; quoted in "Atom Heart Mother," Wikipedia). One of the song's writers, band member Roger Waters, said in a 1985 radio interview, "Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again! . . . It was pretty kind of pompous, it wasn't really about anything" ("Atom Heart Mother," Wikipedia)."

Could it be simply that Ami Tanaka's haiku is what, in the 60s to early 70s, was called a 'found poem', even then a late flowering, in the West, of what was left of the European Dada movement? Why is the author's date of birth being the same day as the album's release so important, as well as the information about the  track and cover?

Could it be that this haiku, like the album, "isn't really about anything", has no further meaning than, "I am the child of the post-war 'baby boom' generation, the daughter of the 'me generation'. There is nothing left for me but to rearrange old things that might've had a meaning for my parents, to 'sample' and 'mix' in my haiku, as others of my generation do with music." ??? (and only then if we are heavily prompted by being given the author's birth date and the date of the album's release) This was, after all, the notable whinge of that generation in the West, until they all became computer wizards in their mid 20s to early 30s.

Otherwise, why all the extraneous information to support the poem?

(later... because this haiku seems like a puzzle, and the information like clues:

"ATOM HEART MOTHER NAMED," - news headline, evidence of a real woman prior to headline

Atom Heart Mother  - album title, a 'found' phrase, divorced from context, twice removed from the original, real woman,

Atom Heart Mother    - L1 'found' phrase repeated, twice removed from headline, thrice from real woman
in the prefab bathroom       - like the first line of the haiku, a prefabricated thing, 'found' as is
spurts blood                      - ? bleeding a sign of life, though 'wounded life'

Nope, still can't put it together. Something abstract about it, like a demonstration of a mathematical formula, keeps me locked out, if there is anything to be locked out of.

- Lorin

What beautiful seashells, David.  Their contours are exquisite and the different sounds they make as the ocean washes through them create a lovely dialogue between them.

I have remembered Minato's poem (in David's translation) since I first read it; it is an absoloute favorite of mine.  However, I would like to share my reading experience of
the first poem here:

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

I first approach this poem through the power of its words and the searing image created by them. (For me the Pink Floyd album/cover is the backstory, not my entry point.)  I see  a birth in all its messiness, and a violent one at that.  In stark white and red, I see the colors of the Japanese flag with its circle of red on a white background, or more appropriately, the "rising sun" military flag flown by the Imperial Navy until the end of WWII —with its radiating, "spurting" design.  The U.S. Atomic bombs that defeated Japan also birthed contemporary Japan (and the American occupation/intervention which changed its culture irrevocably), and as happens with the technological advancements made through military research, eventually the science filters into other uses, more constructive than destructive—the nuclear pacemaker of "Atom Heart Mother" and the age of chemistry that brought us modern plastics and prefab bathrooms. The "unit bath" is used for cleaning the body and bathing (toilets are separate), so there is a sense of renewal and refreshment from this reference as well as the suggestion of industrial mass production.  However this birth is imaged not with the mother's water breaking, but with spurting blood, as if an artery has been severed.  I read into this poem the birth of contemporary haiku in relation to Tanaka's generation, and the often vitriolic debates that accompany most experimentation and change, especially in a form as old as haiku.  And here again, war and birth collide --the blood here is pulsing with the life force of the heart; must there be an amputation, or can we save the limb?
So for me, Atom Heart Mother is just that, a mother. 
The heart of the atom is its nucleus and there is an extraordinary power to be found there,
invisible to most of us, the power of creativity is as strong as the power of destruction.

As for the reference to the Pink Floyd album and the chance relationship of the titling and image....yes! Chance!  On Aug. 9th the heavy cloud cover over Kokura saved that city from the atomic bomb and planes were redirected to Nagasaki.  We all know how much
chance can change our lives.  and then of course, it's connection to the poet.

One more comment:  so many people describe Tanaka's poems as puzzling and intellectual.  I have only been able to read a few translations by David and Fay Aoyagi
but in all of these, the power of the image is so incredibly strong that I feel immediate entry and then I'm rewarded with an unfolding over time that gives me more and more.  Maybe people are puzzled because of they are not used to reading these types of images--—she certainly doesn't give us Disney or Hallmark pictures-- or an impatience to let their own insights come to surface in the face of something new.

Eve, thanks! I admit that 'Atom Heart Mother' has become an intriguing puzzle for me, so to find your explication here is a delight. I find your association of a white unit bathroom and 'blood spurt' with the Japanese Imperial Navy flag image quite compelling. This, of course, was the flag of the Kamikaze.

I'm not quite as clear on how we get from 'spurts blood' to birth through the power of the words and images in the poem alone, though I can understand that association when the supporting information about Ami Tanaka's birthday and the origin/ backstory of the Pink Floyd album title are taken into account. (A unit bathroom, even in Japan, contains the whole works though; a spa module is different)

http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/817/Unit+Bathroom/

For me, a general dilemma about context, one I haven't yet resolved, comes up in relation to this haiku. Like many of us in Enghlish-speaking countries, I started from the viewpoint we are taught as we approach haiku in the West, that haiku, like the hokku of renga/renku, is a 'stand-alone' verse, one which can stand scrutiny as 'a poem in itself'. Next, I understood the idea of the '4th line', the author's name and perhaps country of residence, where clues as to nationality and gender (and much more, if the author happens to be well known) may supply a bit of background information, and fair enough for most purposes; after all, back in old Basho's day there was no question of nationality or where the author lived in the wide world.  But I still haven't come to terms with the idea that a poem which comes with too much extraneous information, and perhaps relies on that information, is actually a haiku, a 'stand-alone' poem to be experienced, interpreted and assessed on its perceived merits. Yet I have read Richard Gilbert's Poems of Consciousness, so I understand that the author's biography and even intent is taken to account in Japan.

This is quite different to the (perhaps now dated?) Western idea, expressed succinctly by D.H. Lawrence: "Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it."

('The critic' can be replaced by 'the critical reader'.)

I'd be really happy to hear from anyone, here or privately by email, who has any insights which might help me with this dilemma. Some, and by no means all, gendai haiku, given the amount of extra information, strike me more as potential haibun than 'haiku-as-I-understand-it'.

From adulation of the author in the C19, through 'death of the author' in the C20, it seems that the author has been resurrected and has now entered through the back door whilst I was looking the other way!

- Lorin  ( 8) not a fan of Disneyland or Hallmark, or even of sentimentality )

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

is her subject nothing, or nothing and everything. I keep thinking of the mythmaking (against all odds) of Pablo Neruda, and wish I could read this haiku in the company of others by the same author. To Lorin: would this one stand alone after knowing the others? Can we ever go home again? No, says the wolf. So what? asks Virginia.

if we take this poem apart, as I suspect the author has, and doubt her use of the word prefab was arbitrary, even if chance is her subject, as if we weren't all here be chance, supernatural or otherwise, as if our personal mythologies matter or if we can make them matter in the face of the modern, the modular, the postmodular, uses and reuses of Pink Floyd songs, hokku by basho, john cage compositions, the theories of Democritus and Einstein...

Eve's comments got me thinking about something I find compelling in this poem, movement contrasted with stasis:

the first line combines 3 words that imply warmth and movement, at least as long as there is life. An atom always moves, a heart beats, a mother, well, along with other behaviors, she mothers.

the second line describes the stasis of a prefab bathroom, not hard for most people, at least in the contemporary "developed" world, to visualize, which says something.

in the third line, spurting blood, movement that implies at least the possibility of life quickly draining away, back to stasis again

Lorin brings a point about ELH that is relatively rare, but, more common in haiku from Japan, that being, historical/cultural references.  Considering the newness of the literature and cultural events associated with the USA's 200+years, as compared to Japan's older literature (if we start with just the Manyoshu) 1700+years, the USA has less to draw from.  Japanese poetry was for over a thousand years the realm of the royalist and warrior class.  The royalist especially in the manyoshu model was steeped in historical literary reference taking the lead from Chinese/Korean poetry.

In the Atom Heart Mother poem, this is done through referencing directly a title of the Pink Floyd band album.  I think that the use of historical reference in ELH will become less rare in time as more awareness of world events (naturally) increase.

An rather recent example of this was as Carlos mentioned at the HSA Regional Conference, Hot Springs.  A few poets were composing their poems using "Atom Heart Mother".  Of course, only those that had read discussion at David Lanoue's site as well had attended the conference knew of the reference without an explanation.

I look forward to such historical infusions in future short poetry.  I think it good form to use such techniques.  I venture to guess those that have barely began to explore the world of haiku and haikuish poetry would not need note for referencing Bashou's old pond phrases used in any short poem. 

What is the sound
of one frog jumping?
.... [haiku]

-- chibi (contemporary, original on the header page for "happyhaiku")

Perhaps, there would be no need of note to explain the reference to "koan" and Basho in the above?

Lorin, you are one of the most thoughtful readers I know, and I hope you did not take
my response as glib in regards to your puzzlement. 

I agree with you that Tanaka embraces a kind of abstraction.  For me Tanaka uses images in a very associative way, they are not illustrative or literal, but suggestive...and so my leap, via a kind of Shiva like dance of destruction/creation, to the idea of birth in relation to the development of contemporary haiku and the "new" post-war japan.  Mark, your comments about movement and stasis are quite interesting in this regard.

In regards to the issue of needing to know extraneous information and biographical or personal
information about gendai poets in order to understand a poem, I guess I don't feel that it has become any more important than with past poets.  Many of us have read lots of biographical info about Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki; we study what life was like in another country at another time; we learn about the literary and cultural context within which the work entered as well as the history that laid the road for it. This information changes how we might later understand a work that we first read without the additional information.

Critics and scholars have commonly used biographical information about modernist Western authors and artists in analyses of their work--even while at the same time they said that the work was self-sufficient on its own. Perhaps poets/artists themselves approach a work with less of an inclination to learn about its author and context; perhaps especially when we think we share the same language, and generational and cultural context.  I do believe that many contemporary poets/artists do expect that there might be additional info outside of the work itself that can add to the reading of it--maybe though this is not felt very strongly within the origins of American ELH and its pioneers.  Though Postmodernists declared the death of the author, capitalism has had to keep the author alive. Dada never succeeded in destroying the art object; it simply paved the way for conceptualism to be traded in the marketplace. 

My reading of Tanaka's poem is my own personal read without the background info. Once I learn about the Pink Floyd album, its title's relation to the imagery on its cover, and its relationship to her birth year, all that adds to how I continue to think about the poem and enriches the engagement.  My relationship to the poem
is not predicated by it. 

I remember you wondering if a poem you wrote recently was too obscure because many people had limited knowledge of some of the references you were making.  I say, No.   The observations were quite acute; and, just because some people had difficulty gaining entry and were not curious enough to explore the references further, does not mean the poem is too obscure.  It means the poem has a smaller audience; it makes meaning for a more specific group of people. 

Sorry this got longer than I had hoped and I don't think that I can fully address your expressed concern here adequately, so maybe in another forum.

Back to the seashells.

First of all, before I too go off tangent <grin>

I didn't choose Atom Heart Mother because I wasn't comfortable with its syntax in the English-language version, and that unfortunately was what I was judging.  It's my bad that I don't read Japanese, I envy Dhugal and others. ;-)

Off tangent. ;-)

Eve wrote: "I remember you wondering if a poem you wrote recently was too obscure because many people had limited knowledge of some of the references you were making.  I say, No.   The observations were quite acute; and, just because some people had difficulty gaining entry and were not curious enough to explore the references further, does not mean the poem is too obscure.  It means the poem has a smaller audience; it makes meaning for a more specific group of people."

I'm not sure what this is referring to?  It's grabbed my interest though. ;-)  Is this one within the THF forums?  Could you give the URL if it's here, or even if you mean somewhere else?  Or better still create a new topic? 

It's definitely a fascinating topic and deserves to be discussed outside the Seashell Game. <grin>

Alan

Hi Eve (and Alan)

Eve wrote: "I remember you wondering if a poem you wrote recently was too obscure because many people had limited knowledge of some of the references you were making.  I say, No.   The observations were quite acute; and, just because some people had difficulty gaining entry and were not curious enough to explore the references further, does not mean the poem is too obscure.  It means the poem has a smaller audience; it makes meaning for a more specific group of people."

"Could you give the URL if it's here, or even if you mean somewhere else?  Or better still create a new topic?" ~ Alan

A great topic to add here:  http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/in-depth-haiku-free-discussion/

:)

Don

" I agree with you that Tanaka embraces a kind of abstraction.  For me Tanaka uses images in a very associative way, they are not illustrative or literal, but suggestive." - Eve

Hi Eve,
           I'm somewhat used to associative ways in contemporary longer poems, both in the reading and the writing of (I've had such poems published, before I began to focus on haiku), but in longer poems there is 'time' to build a context within the poem itself. I know that these techniques/ 'mind-states' are used in gendai haiku, too, but they don't always work for me without a lot of extra-textual prompting. A good example is Hoshinaga Fumio's:

烏賊・薄荷・アカ・刑事・放火・きんせんか

    ika     hakka      aka-deka     hôka     kinsenka

    squid peppermint
    Red-detective  arson
    marigold

-  Hoshinaga Fumio, Poems of Consciousness, p177

Undoubtedly, the rhythms here are strong, a chanting rhythm, even in the English version and here they reverberate in the repetition and do create 'a world'. But, as in 'Atom Heart Mother', I feel locked out or at least distanced. There is a sense in which these two poems are, for me as a reader, 'poems of unconsciousness', no matter how conscious and deliberate the authors were in the making of them. They resist access.

Sure, without the author leaning over my shoulder and telling me how to read them, I can make my own 'free associations' out of the template of words and rhythm, but I can do that myself by highlighting words in a magazine, more or less at random, and then arranging them. I've done this, some years ago, and it's an interesting exercise. There's nothing contemporary or new about it, though. The European Dada poets were doing this sort of thing before WW2, and these days it's been incorporated into general 'mainstream' poetry and the teaching of 'creative writing'.

Perhaps I'm playing 'devil's advocate'  8)

- Lorin

I'd second what Lorin has to say, although Hosinaga's other well-known haiku does let me in totally as a reader:


ni-ju oku kônen no gishyô omae no B-gata

twenty billion light-years of perjury: your blood type is "B"


There is a Modern Haiku (U.S.) weblink for both these haiku:
http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/HoshinagaFumio.html (http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/HoshinagaFumio.html)

Alan



One of a few haiku that really hit the button, and had the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 

O.K.
back to Atom Heart Mother:

I've been thinking more about my jet-lagged flight of fancy in reading Tanaka's poem.

Lorin's correction that a unit bath does have a toilet made me think A LOT and reminded me of the fact that earlier, when I had googled "genshi shinbo" (Atom Heart Mother), I had found an interesting link talking about a hip bar by that name in a in Tokyo (Shinjuku, I think). http://no-sword.jp/blog/2010/04/kyokii.html I didn't think too much of it at the time, but that unitto basu was stuck in my mind...
Tokyo being a place where we might find plenty of unit baths.

( pre-fab/ unitto basu)  An interesting case where I was thinking "prefab" from reading the translation and then looking back at the romaji and using the term "unit bath" as I wrote.  As Lorin's link provides, and a little more google searching confirmed, "unit bath" has a more specific meaning than the typical pre-fab/ plastic formed bath/shower area of larger bathrooms found in many middle class homes outside of the density of urban downtowns.

So maybe this poem is more descriptive and illustrative than I thought!! and my lack of knowledge sent me associating.   (That's the way my mind works.)

The spurting blood during/after a night of hipster partying brings a whole different set of associations now for me.  And WWII is not exactly a direct reference for many folks from Tanaka's generation, beyond its pop culture associations, so may be I was stretching tooooooo far....but those associations were my honest entry into the poem.  Tanaka would probably have a good laugh at my interpretation.

about Atom Heart Mother, the bar,
Here's one blog entry from http://archive.metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/469/bars.asp

"Soon we were perched at Gen-shi-shin-bo's—the name in Japanese—seven-seat counter, typical of Golden Gai's plethora of lumber shanties. The bar, whose name is Japanese for Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother album, is owned and operated by Masami-san, an avid music and manga devotee with a penchant for all things "Atomic." Amid CDs, Astro Boy figurines, Akira originals and aged V.I.P. passes and posters all splayed out in an organized mess, Tokyo's artistic elite come to talk art, politics and philosophy in this dimly lit cubbyhole of a sanctuary away from the Pachinko parlor-infested, J-pop-blaring streets of Shinjuku. And we soon found out that regulars like Quentin Tarantino made it easier for us to fit in."

I can imagine Tanaka as one of the young "artistic elite" in this bar.

The discussion here has been invaluable.

As Alan and Don have both implied, I think a poem strikes us when we can feel its references somehow.  An intellectual understanding gained by research can allow us to appreciate a poem, but possibly still not be moved by it.  The experience of a poem is a really personal thing--why does one well crafted poem knock our socks off and another simply feels like a good poem.   I don't know why, but the phrase Atom Heart Mother is strong enough to make me feel something, however vague, especially in contrast to the sterility of a pre-fab bathroom and in relation to spurting blood--it's just visceral for me.

I'm not sure I like the poem as much as I learn more; however, I feel the journey has been more than worthwhile, even as my understanding of the poem is changing radically.

I'm still jet-lagged, so who knows what will wake me up thinking in the next couple days.

Eve, thanks for those tidbits.

Tarantino, a hip nightclub, a unit bathroom and activities that might ensue there. Believe it or not, when reading Atom Heart Mother, one image keeps intruding on my thoughts, probably inspired by the spurts blood line: the scene in Pulp Fiction when John Travolta jabs Uma Thurman in the area of the heart with an adrenaline-filled syringe. A spurious association, I thought, but here we are.

wow Mark, that image hadn't entered my mind...
not so spurious I think...especially compared to my first read!

I don't know when Ami Tanaka's 'Atom Heart Mother' was written, but Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, with it's extensive use of pastiche, definitely feels right on-scent to me, Mark, and Ami's 1970 birthday puts her (?) or him right smack in the generation that formed a pop cult around the film.

So I've skimmed the wikipedia entry for Pulp Fiction, now. Among much else: 'The adrenalin shot to Mia Wallace's heart is on Premiere's list of "100 Greatest Movie Moments". '

One certain thing about a unit bathroom (prefab, modular bathroom) is that, along with 'Atom Heart Mother' in the poem, it references something...well, pre-fabricated, given, done, 'found'. Also it shows a 'time leap' from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Using Hoshinaga Fumio's way of associating for 'squid peppermint', based on a traditional Japanese song, "Goodbye Triangle (which everyone knows)..." -Hoshinaga Fumio, Poems of Consciousness p178

Atom - has a nucleus: Heart - is inside the body structure, is a kind of nucleus: Mother - has a womb, another kind of nucleus: prefab bathroom - is a womb-like space (claustrophobics beware)

Atom Heart Mother   
in the prefab bathroom       
spurts blood

So there is an implied 'cut'/ kire between the things in the first two lines and 'spurts blood'. Perhaps that's why 'spurts blood' appears to have no subject? If it were all three of 'atom, heart, mother' we'd have been given the correct form of the verb for the plural items, 'spurt', or we'd have 'spurts of blood' or 'blood-spurts'. If the first line were 'Atom-Heart-Mother' (one thing), 'spurts' would be the correct form of the verb.

... further, ( ::) ...one never knows where curiosity will lead once one begins googling )

' Warning -This "In popular culture" section may contain minor or trivial references' - wikipedia

'In Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, bad things happen to John Travolta's character, Vincent, every time he uses the toilet. To wit: Mia Wallace snorts and overdoses on heroin while he is in the bathroom; Butch returns to his apartment to retrieve his father's watch, and shoots Vincent (who was waiting for him) when he emerges from the bathroom; Pumpkin and Honey Bunny begin their robbery of the diner while Vincent is in the restroom.'

' ... Uesugi Kenshin, a warlord in Japan, died on April 19, 1578 with some reports stating that he was assassinated on the toilet.[citation needed]'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet-related_injuries_and_deaths

'Other sources hold that he was assassinated by a ninja who had been waiting in the cess pool beneath the latrine at Kenshin's camp with a short spear. '

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uesugi_Kenshin

So Eve's bathroom-associated birth was a good intuitive stab at things. . . birth & death are inextricably linked, after all.

It's a clever poem, a pastiche about pastiche. It could also very well, with the partcular assocaitive technique and the 'blood' (red in colour), be alluding to Hoshinaga Fumio's 'squid peppermint' poem.

...recursion...I sensed it had something to do with maths and computers, being a mathsophobic.

http://lolympics.com/files/images/infinite_recursion.jpg

:) ... and that's enough from this little red-detective. It's been great fun, thanks all!

My vote is still with the Keiji Minato haiku, though.

- Lorin

"So there is an implied 'cut'/ kire between the things in the first two lines and 'spurts blood'. Perhaps that's why 'spurts blood' appears to have no subject? If it were all three of 'atom, heart, mother' we'd have been given the correct form of the verb for the plural items, 'spurt', or we'd have 'spurts of blood' or 'blood-spurts'. If the first line were 'Atom-Heart-Mother' (one thing), 'spurts' would be the correct form of the verb." --Lil' Red Detective

even with cuts, Tanaka goes all the way, doesn't she? and yes, however I read her poem, I end up understanding Atom Heart Mother as singular, more that than plural anyway. and Lil' (may I call you Red?) you make a good point about unseen centers moving in concentric circles outward from micro to macro--perhaps that's Atom Heart Mother's superpower?

me too, it's been fun, thanks

Quote from: Mark Harris on January 13, 2011, 05:51:16 PM

(may I call you Red?)

You may, Mr. Woodcutter, since you're the character who split the wolf-atom and released Grandma.  :)

- Lorin

Quote from: ccolon on January 10, 2011, 09:50:47 PM


                           "Be Careful With That Axe, Eugene."

Quote from: Mark Harris on January 13, 2011, 07:26:08 PM

Quote from: ccolon on January 10, 2011, 09:50:47 PM


                           "Be Careful With That Axe, Eugene."

... especially in the unitto basu ?

" The stars are screaming "

Quote from: Lorin on January 13, 2011, 03:12:04 PM
So there is an implied 'cut'/ kire between the things in the first two lines and 'spurts blood'. Perhaps that's why 'spurts blood' appears to have no subject? If it were all three of 'atom, heart, mother' we'd have been given the correct form of the verb for the plural items, 'spurt', or we'd have 'spurts of blood' or 'blood-spurts'. If the first line were 'Atom-Heart-Mother' (one thing), 'spurts' would be the correct form of the verb.
- Lorin

Funny, driving home tonight I too was thinking about the structure of the poem in relation to this new reading, and the idea that there may be a cut, where I had felt none before.  

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood


My understanding of Japanese grammar is very, very poor, but the way the first two nouns bump up against each other without other particles??  

If there is an implied cut, I was wondering if it was possibly after genshi shinbo (Atom Heart Mother).  

For me it's either reading

1.  without a cut, "Atom Heart Mother" becoming the subject,  a character (as in Astro Boy, i.e. a kind of chic, post-war, urban "Shiva/Brahma"--destoyer/creator--/ Tarantino's Uma Thurman resurrected), while retaining all its other allusions and associative meanings: the album, a specific bar,  and a whole cultural mise-en-scène/state of mind/aesthetic.
or
2. reading genshi shinbo as setting the scene ( the album is playing) or as a specific place (the bar), and with a cut occurring after it, suggesting we have gone home, or to someone's place after the bar ( it's that unitto basu issue again--why would a bar have full unitto basu and not just a toilet?)  Then the context would "fill in" the unspecified subject -- the one who spurts blood ( a Pink Floyd groupie, a bar regular, etc.).  

Perhaps the poem holds all these versions simultaneously-- the reader can decide where they feel a cut and read it different ways.  Certainly this is a device I and others have used in ELH, especially in the one line format.  I tend to think so: the poem is playing with ambiguity, or perhaps more accurately, a type of abstraction, in a similar way to how pastiche uses recognizable but generalized references.

DAVID  ????  any insights on the syntax/structure ?

well, I'm going by the English version, as given in David's translation. I don't have any Japanese at all.

I did notice, though, that Atom Heart Mother has been translated from English to the Japanese as only two words, not three. How much does this change things? Would it read, in Japanese, more like 'Atom-heart Mother' or 'Atom Heart-mother'? If it did, then there wouldn't be the problem of subject/verb agreement as there is with 'Atom Heart Mother...spurts'. 

Unless, as you indicate, Eve, we are to take the three words, Atom Heart Mother, as someone's name, three proper nouns, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow or Mickey Graham Mouse. (I think this is unlikely)

Unless it's to read 'Atom Heart Mother [the title of the PF album] spurts', which would be surrealistic, but at the level of syntax, quite normal and not difficult.

If there was a cut after genshi shinbo, the following lines wouldn't make grammatical sense in English:

in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

It'd need to be 'blood spurts' or 'spurts of blood'.

I don't envy David his translator's job! Even though I don't have the language, I can get a feel for how damn difficult it must be to translate from Japanese to English, and vice versa!

- Lorin

I feel David's translation points to a singular subject/situation and the poem not having a strong internal cut.

Lorin, did I understand you correctly in an earlier post?  weren't you saying you read an implied cut after the second line in the English version—I don't understand that.  I don't think I understand what you think the ATOM HEART MOTHER of the first line is.  The original newspaper headline ("ATOM HEART MOTHER NAMED"-- about the woman with the nuclear pace-maker) created a subject as a person, and she then became a thing (an album, a bar), and then for me, a symbolic character in this poem while at the same time the whole thing is a situation.

I bring up the idea of a cut after genshi shenbo ( I'm limited to the romaji and its translation of the sounds of the Japanese) after discovering the possible reference to a specific place, the Shinjuku bar.  I don't begin to understand all the different uses of "wo", and I don't see a typical subject particle anywhere.  I was wondering if, in the original Japanese, the poem could read in multiple ways grammatically, though it would not make sense in the English translation. Like you imply, I don't think a poem's translation can possibly hold all of the grammatical play that is possible in its original language.  

Are there others with a command of Japanese who might offer their thoughts on the structure of the poem?

And it would be great to hear if there are different interpretations of the poem than have
been suggested so far.

Quote from: eluckring on January 14, 2011, 11:40:21 AM


Lorin, did I understand you correctly in an earlier post?  weren't you saying you read an implied cut after the second line in the English version—I don't understand that.  I don't think I understand what you think the ATOM HEART MOTHER of the first line is.  The original newspaper headline ("ATOM HEART MOTHER NAMED"-- about the woman with the nuclear pace-maker) created a subject as a person, and she then became a thing (an album, a bar), and then for me, a symbolic character in this poem while at the same time the whole thing is a situation.

Hi Eve,
         I've speculated on the possibilities I found as I tried to find my way into this poem. The proposition was that if we applied Hoshinaga Fumio's particular template for association (based on the apparently well-known song and followed for 'squid peppermint') to Ami Tanaka's 'Atom Heart Mother', then we get an associative sequence something like this:

Atom - has a nucleus: Heart - is inside the body structure, is a kind of nucleus: Mother - has a womb, another kind of nucleus: prefab bathroom - is a womb-like space


'spurts blood' , then, breaks this string of association, doesn't belong in the set. I speculated whether this break could be one kind of cut, kire.

"I don't think I understand what you think the ATOM HEART MOTHER of the first line is." - Eve

I think of 'Atom Heart Mother' of L1, as given in the English version, as mainly the title of the Pink Floyd album plus any association that brings, but along the way I found that the three words of L1 plus 'prefab bathroom/unitto basu' followed Hoshinaga Fumio's associative pattern (atom: heart: mother: unit bathroom: - see earlier post) which he tells us is traditional. So I speculated that these four things could be an associative sequence/set as well as being the album title. L1 isn't rendered in all caps (ATOM HEART MOTHER) in the poem, so L1 is distinguished from the album title, whilst of course alluding to it.

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

Unless we are to take 'Atom Heart Mother' primarily as three proper nouns (and the cap at the beginning of each certainly allows for this possibility), the names of one person, place or thing (eg. 'George Walker Bush') which I feel is unlikely, there is a difficulty with verb agreement which wouldn't be there if L1 was clearly only the album title (ATOM HEART MOTHER) or the allusion to it (Atom Heart Mother) So, one of my earlier questions was,  'What is it that spurts blood?' 'What is the subject of the verb?'

All of my speculations only apply to the poem in English, of course, as given. We have to read it as given. For all I know, David might've had to choose between the above and the more passive:

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts of blood

Then there would be no obvious cut/ kire (apart from the kind of cut/ kire after the associative set that I speculated on), since 'Atom Heart Mother' is/are in the bathroom, but so are 'spurts of blood' The middle line then would work something like 'the doors of Kannon', opening to both L1 and L3.

But this would lose the personified 'Atom Heart Mother' that you mention and that's an interesting line of speculation in itself, another sequence or set:

1. the woman, unnamed in the headline
2. the ATOM HEART MOTHER of the headline
3. ATOM HEART MOTHER, the album title, divorced from the context of the headline & woman
4. Atom Heart Mother, a named person/ persona, who, in the poem, spurts blood.

Then there is a kind of return. We have, not the original woman, but an entity with the name, Atom Heart Mother, who 'spurts blood'. This is a kind of 'reincarnation' of the woman who underwent a two-step 'disappearing' process via the headline and the album title.  Perhaps this is the way this haiku should be primarily read, after all? Though I thought it unlikely, earlier, I can see now that it's a valid one, and the one that makes the most grammatical sense of the poem as it's rendered in English, as well as bringing in the element of animism which is at the foundations of Japanese culture. (Shinto)


- Lorin

A couple of thoughts:

atom heart mother bleeding in the prefab bathroom  or  atom heart mother in the prefab bathroom bleeding

I don't see any strong kire or in particular, a kireji, in the Japanese or English versions.  The poem seems to read as one continuous line with little to indicate much of a pause.  Is it possible that "spurts blood" may be a little large for the poem?  Is "bleeding" a possible translation?  

atom heart mother seems to be one section while bleeding in the prefab bathroom is a second section. But there is no true indicator of an official "break" that is apparent, at least to me.

Just thinking too much tonight and thought I'd share it's randomness... :)

all my best,

Don  

Thanks for re-explaining, Lorin.  It is clearer to me now.
and, Don, thanks for your comments on the structure.

.

unit bathroom
the sounds of water
drown The Scream

(that's me, having a Munch moment)

- Lorin

Quote from: Don Baird on January 14, 2011, 08:03:41 PM
A couple of thoughts:

atom heart mother bleeding in the prefab bathroom  or  atom heart mother in the prefab bathroom bleeding

I don't see any strong kire or in particular, a kireji, in the Japanese or English versions.  The poem seems to read as one continuous line with little to indicate much of a pause.  Is it possible that "spurts blood" may be a little large for the poem?  Is "bleeding" a possible translation?  

atom heart mother seems to be one section while bleeding in the prefab bathroom is a second section. But there is no true indicator of an official "break" that is apparent, at least to me.

Just thinking too much tonight and thought I'd share it's randomness... :)

all my best,

Don  

Hi Don,
         It's true that 'spurts blood' is strong in the poem. I don't know whether 'bleeding' is a possible translation (but someone will, I hope)

Not sure I should mention it because this is an American site and I know that certain goods for women are not forthrightly advertised in America and there seems to be some sort of taboo, but if it were just 'bleeding', there might be an ordinary explanation. Might it not be a fairly regular occurrence for a woman who was 'bleeding' heavily to go to the bathroom?

Mind you, this interpretation isn't out of the question with the poem as it is, with 'spurts blood', now that it occurs to me. If I was younger, it would've occurred to me immediately, I'm sure, as would've the further possibility of a miscarriage taking place.

There are many interpretations possible for this poem, it seems!

OMG... I think that's it, though: the traditional associative sequence, as explained by Hoshinaga Fumio in relation to his 'squid peppermint' haiku is not interrupted/ cut after all!

Atom - has a nucleus: Heart - is inside the body structure, is a kind of nucleus: Mother - has a womb, another kind of nucleus: prefab bathroom - is a womb-like space: where the nucleus of a mother's womb, the foetus, is being expelled.

I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but it seems to me not to be at all radical, but to follow the kinds of association links of which renku/ renga are made, as well as the traditional Japanese song that Hoshinaga Fumio mentions. So, do we have, in this haiku, what could be seen to be a condensed renku? (a modern one, since though Basho revitalized the renga to haikai-no-renga, I doubt that 'female' subjects such as miscarriage are traditional) but the particular techniques of association used for renku are something that Japanese people are so used to, are familiar with even through children's songs, that they come naturally.

I now have a lot more interest in and respect for this haiku! Excuse me whilst I recover.

O, dear...I think now that Carlos's 'decalf' was not a typo.


- Lorin

Yes, Lorin.  This is what I'm hinting at.  I'm glad you caught it and went ahead and posted it!  It seems there is an indication that it is "she is bleeding in the prefab bathroom"...... I think it is referencing something along that line.  Spurt bloods does seem out of character for the poem ... imho.

I'm leaning toward miscarriage.

Thanks for reading my mind and being brave enough to post it!   ;)

Don

according to my Random House Webster's dictionary

nagasu ( 流す)
1. drain, pour, flush
2. shed (tears)
3. wash away

yes, certainly seems to me something is being expelled....( why David went to "spurt")

yes, yes, yes..... an early miscarriage ( could even be an abortion)
and perhaps the pregnancy having some association to that bar as well as the word associations  themselves??

or
it is at least a heavy period
such a private moment that can be quite unsettling especially when it comes on suddenly, a type of hemorrhaging really, humbling

nagasu--sounds like the perfect word in Japanese--one that suggests, but does not nail down a specific meaning

and yeah, that birth/death thing that has been there since the beginning for me is still there .

I'm liking the poem much better again!

There's a lot of layers, apparently, with the word nagasu.  And, it fits the bill perfectly if we look at miscarriage or some female problem.  As you've pointed out, drain, pour, flush, shed (like tears) and to wash away.  That's an immense amount of resonance from this one word.  It sure opens the piece up for further discussion, however.

again:

atom heart mother bleeding in the prefab bathroom

or

atom heart mother in the prefab bathroom bleeding

... miscarriage ... ?

Don

It has to be a miscarriage (whether spontaneous or induced)

All of the clues are in the association sequence:

Atom - has a nucleus: Heart - is inside the body structure, is a kind of nucleus: Mother - has a womb, another kind of nucleus: prefab bathroom - is a womb-like space-[what is inside this space?]: Mother, who has a womb is inside the womb-like space of the prefab bathroom, Mother is now a kind of nucleus [What is inside Mother's womb?]: and here the sequence project is aborted at an image of 'Mother spurting blood'.

Returning to an earlier speculation about cuts/kire:

Atom; Heart; Mother -cut- [Mother] in the prefab bathroom spurts blood

. . .but now with better understanding.

Don, I think something as literally descriptive as 'Mother ...spurts blood' is needed to distinguish what's happening from the regular monthly 'bleeding' or any other sort of bleeding. Also, it gives a more immediate sense of being an eye-witness to a shocking event, 'Mother spurting blood'. (and/or flushing it, given the location... there was a film I recall this image from, or was it a dream? never mind, I'm not sure)

What's still amazing me is the formality of the structure of this verse, the familiar game of a traditional Japanese association sequence hidden within the title of a Pink Floyd album (familiar to the Japanese, if we take Hoshinaga Fumio's word for it, and I think we should) which contrasts so sharply (and to me, oddly) with the subject. It is as if the miscarriage (which Ami Tanaka, conceivably, walked in on and witnessed as a child or young teenager, and if so, might've well experienced as traumatic) is contained in the formality of the verse structure.

I think that the context of the formal association game does hint at a childhood experience, in a way which is quite filmic. How often in the lead-up to a chilling moment in in a 'suspense' film there has been a superimposed soundtrack of children's voices chanting some innocent traditional rhyme.

Is the more important 'cut' here that of one between the structure and the content, I wonder? The 'containing' structure (based on association) verges on dissociation (psychological) in relation to the shockingly vivid image of 'Mother spurting blood' and I'd imagine this is not an accident, but part of the author's craft. Or, at the very least , there is dissonance between structure and context. (I'm not sure how to put this more precisely)

- Lorin

This is fun!

Yes, I translated nagasu as "spurt" because there's a sense of violent flowing. All that blood in the bathroom could, indeed, suggest a miscarriage--something I hadn't thought about. Ami (a female poet, I should mention, since someone was wondering about this) alludes to an album that was released on the day of her birth. So, my first thought was that the "Mother" in the haiku is her own mother, giving birth to her. Her "own mother" could also be Mother Japan--which I associate with the sterile, ultra-modern and trendy "unit bath" or, as I translate it here, "pre-fab bathroom."

If the blood spurting is a miscarriage, the poet might be saying something contradictory and disturbing about her own birth.

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

As for the sytax (since Eve asked), the Genshi Shinbo (Atom Heart-Mother) is the subject, as I read it. This subject, located in the prefab bathroom, is spurting or gushing blood. At least that's my understanding of it. Maybe a Japanese person would see all kinds of different nuances and levels. But my question is: Does the poem work in English? Does it bring us somewhere? Is the journey worthwhile? And which haiku, "Atom Heart Mother" or "in my luggage" packs the bigger punch?

I won't vote since I'm the moderator. Let's see if anyone else weighs in between now and the deadline (Jan. 23rd).

Quote from: David Lanoue on January 15, 2011, 06:00:05 PM
...

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

As for the sy[n]tax (since Eve asked), the Genshi Shinbo (Atom Heart-Mother) is the subject, as I read it. This subject, located in the prefab bathroom, is spurting or gushing blood. At least that's my understanding of it. Maybe a Japanese person would see all kinds of different nuances and levels. But my question is: Does the poem work in English? Does it bring us somewhere? Is the journey worthwhile? And which haiku, "Atom Heart Mother" or "in my luggage" packs the bigger punch?

I won't vote since I'm the moderator. Let's see if anyone else weighs in between now and the deadline (Jan. 23rd).

David, as to Japanese structure in the poem, 血を流す, is it not "blood spurts" を being the particle identifying  血 as the subject?  Of course, your answer will be my lesson in using particles... hee hee.

I think you've proposed more than one question:

Does the poem work in English?  I believe so if you mean by work that the poem can be "paraversed" from Japanese to English.

Does it bring us somewhere?  Yes.  I feel it brings us to many somewheres at several layers.

Is the journey worthwhile?  The worth of a journey is in the journey and sometimes may be yet determined by the other journeys it starts.

Which has the bigger punch (I paraphrase)?  The first is a MOTHER of a poem!  ;D

Thanx again David sensei.  I am having fun.

QuoteNot sure I should mention it because this is an American site and I know that certain goods for women are not forthrightly advertised in America and there seems to be some sort of taboo, but if it were just 'bleeding', there might be an ordinary explanation. Might it not be a fairly regular occurrence for a woman who was 'bleeding' heavily to go to the bathroom?

Mind you, this interpretation isn't out of the question with the poem as it is, with 'spurts blood', now that it occurs to me. If I was younger, it would've occurred to me immediately, I'm sure, as would've the further possibility of a miscarriage taking place. --Lorin

Quotesuch a private moment that can be quite unsettling especially when it comes on suddenly, a type of hemorrhaging really, humbling --Eve

QuoteThe headline read, "ATOM HEART MOTHER NAMED," referring to a woman who had received a nuclear-powered pacemaker. --David

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood


this haiku has the power to turn us inward, doesn't it? Lorin's and Eve's perspectives on female experience, Don's comments on structure, and David's insights into his translation, are illuminating, and reminders that my personal entry into the poem was, at least in part, through something I have in common with the woman named in that long-ago newspaper headline. Should she be a part of our reading? The headline makes her sound futuristic, almost powerful, and yet weak from her illness at the same time. Sort of like postwar Japan.

Quote from: Mark Harris on January 16, 2011, 11:17:56 AM

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood


this haiku has the power to turn us inward, doesn't it? Lorin's and Eve's perspectives on female experience, Don's comments on structure, and David's insights into his translation, are illuminating, and reminders that my personal entry into the poem was, at least in part, through something I have in common with the woman named in that long-ago newspaper headline. Should she be a part of our reading? The headline makes her sound futuristic, almost powerful, and yet weak from her illness at the same time. Sort of like postwar Japan.

You have a pacemaker, Mark? Surely not a nuclear-powered one, though? (Yes, this poem even drove me to read up about nuclear-powered pacemakers! In 2007, there were still 9 people in the USA who had them, and the pacemakers were still going strong)

Yes, in an effort to enter into and make sense of this haiku we apply all sorts of means. I even wonder what date the poem was written! It can get quite exhausting! In the end I keep returning to the random nature of the Pink Floyd album title, the random fact that Ami was born on the same day as the album release and that photograph of Lulubelle III on the (untitled) original cover.

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=656366

. . .and admit that I have as much of a clue as to what this poem is about (if, as I speculated earlier, it is about anything) as Lulubelle III would have. Maybe in the end it's a post-modern poem, music is about music and language is about language and that's all there is. Random words can be placed together and seem to be significant, can generate many paths of speculation and association.

http://cgi.ebay.com/PINK-FLOYD-ATOM-HEART-MOTHER-JAPAN-CD-CP32-W-Obi-RARE_W0QQitemZ120450924224QQcategoryZ307QQcmdZViewItem

"If Japan did not exist, Barthes would have had to invent it -- not that Japan does exist in Empire of Signs, for Barthes is careful to point out that he is not analyzing the real Japan but rather one of his own devising. In this fictive Japan, there is no terrible innerness as in the West, no soul, no God, no fate, no ego, no grandeur, no metaphysics, no 'promotional fever' and finally no meaning. . . . For Barthes Japan is a test, a challenge to think the unthinkable, a place where meaning is finally banished."

- Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review (quoted here from the back cover blurb of Roland Barthes' Empire of Signs

"So what?", says Lulubelle III


- Lorin

It seems that "spurts" was the right choice David, but possibly for different reasons as Dhugal suggests in email correspondence with me.  Permission is given to reproduce these comments.

Dhugal's first email:

"Dear Alan,

Atom Heart Mother refers to the Pink Floyd album which must have been playing at the time.

Someone is spurting blood as they sit in the bath of a pre-fabricated bathroom. One would assume it to be the poet but it could also be the Mother with the Atom Heart - and since it is a haiku it then therefore is the poet or perhaps the poet's mother while also lamenting on the breakdown of the nuclear family.

Will be happy to answer any other questions for you if it helps.

Best,

Dhugal"

Dhugal's second email after looking at the THF topic:

"I realise I didn't write it in the comment but this is an attempted suicide. I don't know why. It is not because they cut their leg unintentionally with a razor or are giving birth. They tried to slit their wrist. I feel it in my haiku bones. At least that is what the original Japanese presents to me within the framework of the Japanese culture. I guess that after that initial "knowing" one could rethink if that could really be true and come to other conclusions but the first image is definitely of a suicide.

Best,

Dhugal"

---------------------------------------------------------
Dhugal Lindsay

Dhugal is a Research Scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

He is also an award-winning haiku writer who thinks in Japanese as his first language when composing haiku. Dhugal won the 7th NakaNiida Haiku Award in 2001 for best haiku collection by a developing poet (first time a non-Japanese has ever won a haiku award competing with other haiku poets composing in Japanese.

You can hear Dhugal read his haiku in the original Japanese, followed by his later English version:
http://www.haijinx.com/I-2/lindsay/h3.html (http://www.haijinx.com/I-2/lindsay/h3.html)
---------------------------------------------------------

Hi all, what an interesting discussion. Rather a lot seems to hinge on whether Atom Heart Mother is unequivocally the subject of the later verb.

Personally I experience something of a soft pivot at the end the first 'line' as not only is this a discrete semantic and metrical boundary but the system of orthography changes too. I suspect there's a deliberate irony in the fact that the first phrase is written in kanji though it refers to what was at the time a very 'external' cultural influence, whilst the second phrase is written in Katakana – the alphabet reserved for words held at arm's length – and which is a transliteration of a supposedly English phrase that is in fact a term used only in Japan to describe a feature (the all-in bathroom module) that is quintessentially 'modern Japan'.

Dhugal's suicide reading is reinforced greatly by the translation of 流す as 'spurts' rather than 'flows strongly', 'is shed, 'drains away', or similar. I wonder in truth if this overly directive. I notice for instance that in running a search for 血を流す the most commonly associated image is that of a figure weeping blood.

David tells us that the poet refers to an album released on the day of her birth. Which suggests to me a circular identification with the atom heart mother of the first line and the fact of the blood loss. It occurs to me therefore tht this is menstrual blood which is flowing.

So, to cultural identity angst add gender role identity angst.

Happy days! John

Quoteabout Atom Heart Mother, the bar,
Here's one blog entry from http://archive.metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/469/bars.asp

"Soon we were perched at Gen-shi-shin-bo's—the name in Japanese—seven-seat counter, typical of Golden Gai's plethora of lumber shanties. The bar, whose name is Japanese for Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother album, is owned and operated by Masami-san, an avid music and manga devotee with a penchant for all things "Atomic." Amid CDs, Astro Boy figurines, Akira originals and aged V.I.P. passes and posters all splayed out in an organized mess, Tokyo's artistic elite come to talk art, politics and philosophy in this dimly lit cubbyhole of a sanctuary away from the Pachinko parlor-infested, J-pop-blaring streets of Shinjuku. And we soon found out that regulars like Quentin Tarantino made it easier for us to fit in."

I can imagine Tanaka as one of the young "artistic elite" in this bar. --Eve

Quotewithout a cut, "Atom Heart Mother" becoming the subject,  a character (as in Astro Boy, i.e. a kind of chic, post-war, urban "Shiva/Brahma"--destoyer/creator--/ Tarantino's Uma Thurman resurrected), while retaining all its other allusions and associative meanings: the album, a specific bar,  and a whole cultural mise-en-scène/state of mind/aesthetic. --Eve

QuoteThen there is a kind of return. We have, not the original woman, but an entity with the name, Atom Heart Mother, who 'spurts blood'. This is a kind of 'reincarnation' of the woman who underwent a two-step 'disappearing' process via the headline and the album title.  Perhaps this is the way this haiku should be primarily read, after all? Though I thought it unlikely, earlier, I can see now that it's a valid one, and the one that makes the most grammatical sense of the poem as it's rendered in English, as well as bringing in the element of animism which is at the foundations of Japanese culture. (Shinto) --Lorin

QuoteSo, my first thought was that the "Mother" in the haiku is her own mother, giving birth to her. Her "own mother" could also be Mother Japan--which I associate with the sterile, ultra-modern and trendy "unit bath" or, as I translate it here, "pre-fab bathroom." --David

QuoteSo, to cultural identity angst add gender role identity angst.

Happy days! John

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

     Ami Tanaka


summer festival—
my Astro Boy mask
has lost its power

     Fay Aoyagi



Astro Boy, star of Japanese manga and, later, anime, was a robot. His success inspired a genre that branched into stories about cyborgs (part human and part robot) who possess superpowers along with human characteristics. These branched into cyberpunk ala William Gibson. Then came Ghost in the Shell, a police thriller starring a female covert operations cyborg operating in a world in which it is possible to acquire bionic upgrades. Ghost in the Shell resulted in two anime movies. The first came out in 1995 and greatly influenced american hollywood movies with similar themes, such as The Matrix. James Cameron called Ghost in the Shell, "The first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence."

this from Wikipedia:

Cyborg feminism
In her updated essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century",[3] in her book Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991), [Donna J.] Haraway uses the cyborg metaphor to explain how fundamental contradictions in feminist theory and identity should be conjoined, rather than resolved, similar to the fusion of machine and organism in cyborgs. "A Cyborg Manifesto" is also an important feminist critique of capitalism.
The idea of the cyborg deconstructs binaries of control and lack of control over the body, object and subject, nature and culture, in ways that are useful in postmodern feminist thought. Haraway uses the metaphor of cyborg identity to expose ways that things considered natural, like human bodies, are not, but are constructed by our ideas about them. This has particular relevance to feminism, since Haraway believes women are often discussed or treated in ways that reduce them to bodies.[citation needed] Balsamo and Haraway's ideas are also an important component of critiques of essentialist feminism and essentialism, as they subvert the idea of naturalness and of artificiality; the cyborg is a hybrid being...Haraway was referred to indirectly in Mamoru Oshii's film, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, when a cyborg version of Haraway appeared as a forensic scientist in a police station. While inspecting the body of a "dead" gynoid, she speaks of humanity's desire to recreate themselves as robots being similar to the desire to procreate biologically.

an aside: yes, Lorin, two years ago I incorporated into my body machinery potentially needed to correct Brugada Syndrome, an electrical problem caused by a rare gene mutation that runs in my family. a further aside, and way off topic: the syndrome is more common, and has long been explained by superstition, in southeast asia. I blame it on the haiku  :)

Quote from: David Lanoue on January 15, 2011, 06:00:05 PM


If the blood spurting is a miscarriage, the poet might be saying something contradictory and disturbing about her own birth.

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

- David

Quote
David tells us that the poet refers to an album released on the day of her birth. Which suggests to me a circular identification with the atom heart mother of the first line and the fact of the blood loss. It occurs to me therefore that this is menstrual blood which is flowing.

So, to cultural identity angst add gender role identity angst.

Happy days! John

Quote


Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

     Ami Tanaka


summer festival—
my Astro Boy mask
has lost its power

     Fay Aoyagi


Astro Boy, ... Ghost in the Shell, ( 'Ghost in the Machine'- Arthur Koestler an interesting but misogynous writer- Lorin) ,Cyborg feminism...Haraway uses the cyborg metaphor to explain how fundamental contradictions in feminist theory and identity should be conjoined, rather than resolved, similar to the fusion of machine and organism in cyborgs. ...The idea of the cyborg deconstructs binaries of control and lack of control over the body, object and subject, nature and culture, in ways that are useful in postmodern feminist thought. Haraway uses the metaphor of cyborg identity to expose ways that things considered natural, like human bodies, are not, but are constructed by our ideas about them. This has particular relevance to feminism, since Haraway believes women are often discussed or treated in ways that reduce them to bodies. (enter Lulubelle III, the cow on the album cover - Lorin) ... While inspecting the body of a "dead" gynoid, she speaks of humanity's desire to recreate themselves as robots being similar to the desire to procreate biologically.

"If the blood spurting is a miscarriage, the poet might be saying something contradictory and disturbing about her own birth." - David

Or about her (or her mother's or another woman's) decision not to give birth, to terminate a pregnacy?

What about an individual woman's angst about the prospect of becoming a mother? Which after all, doesn't end with the birth of a baby, but entails a very long time of commitment including financial commitment in a modern world where there is little, if any, community or extended family assistance. Let alone the very real negative change of social status that a woman endures once she becomes a 'single mother'? (No problems for Lulubelle, there) Or, if married, what if she has had as many children already as she and her husband are willing to raise? Add to this very highly populated cities and therefore the kind of cramped living space problems which make the claustrophobic unitto basu a logical solution.

"The Japanese population is rapidly aging, the effect of a post-war baby boom followed by a decrease in births in the latter part of the 20th century."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan

"Oral contraceptives have limited availability, but the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan announced that oral contraceptives will be approved by the end of year 2010.[1]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Japan

...'spurts blood' or 'gushes blood' isn't associated with natural birth but it certainly is with miscarriage. An induced miscarriage (abortion) is looking quite likely, I'd say. Birth control doesn't always work. Angst indeed.

(David and John, do you think 'gushes' might be a viable alternative to 'spurts'? )


- Lorin

Lorin,

I agree.  I'd say "gushes" and/or "heavy bleeding" would be more in line with the character of the poem.  I'm leaning toward those thoughts ...

best,

Don

I have been following the discussion here with a great deal of interest - and have learned much, so thank you to all contributors.

When the suggestion was made by Dhugal that this woman was committing suicide that seemed to be instinctively right (that is without any knowledge of the Japanese language on my part and having previously found this poem beyond my ken).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku:
In time, carrying out seppuku came to involve a detailed ritual. This was usually performed in front of spectators if it was a planned seppuku, not one performed on a battlefield. A samurai was bathed, dressed in white robes, and fed his favorite meal. When he was finished, his instrument was placed on his plate. Dressed ceremonially, with his sword placed in front of him and sometimes seated on special cloths, the warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem.

By performing her seppuku in a poem, the author is performing it in front of spectators; she is in a bathroom so we may infer that she has just bathed; and somehow I was seeing the scene all in white anyway with red blood as an exclamation. This warrior, this Atom Heart Mother (whether all mothers or specifically a mother with this type of pacemaker) is now presenting us with her death poem.

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

I think there is a case to argue that AHM of L1 *may* be all mothers - once you become a mother everything changes, your priorities, you discover hitherto unknown fears and courage, and it's a lifelong commitment. A mother is a warrior for her children, born and unborn.

The Wikipedia article states that seppuku was performed during and after WW2 and as recently as 1970.

Now I'm on a roll I may even suppose that AHM has commited seppuku on behalf of the children yet to come - if I read "Atom Heart" as also referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sacrificing herself (which is what mothers do, if not entirely literally).

Mark,
nice to see Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto referenced in relation to this discussion.
Thanks.

P.S. 
being a cyborg yourself must enhance your sensitivity to these things ;)

 Added to the question "Who or what is Atom Heart Mother?" is the second question, "What is happening in the unitto basu?"

So far we have:

* birth
* menstrual 'bleeding'
* miscarriage (spontaneous or induced)
* suicide (ritual or otherwise)

As well, we have the odd thing that John points out: Atom Heart Mother is rendered in kanji, though foreign words and titles are usually rendered in katakana, and the second phrase, giving us the place ( "quintessentially 'modern Japan' "- JEC) is rendered in katakana , usually reserved for 'foreign' words or texts translated into Japanese - a deliberate switch which is waving a big flag, but what is it signaling? Is this indicating that there is another switch happening in this haiku? Or simply that cultural boundaries are being blurred, which might point to 'Cyborg Manifesto'?

Could it be that Mark is right on-track with the 'Cyborg Manifesto'? (which I wasn't aware of until today)

"Haraway underlines the critical function of the cyborg concept, especially for feminist politics. The current dualistic thinking involves a "logic of dominance" because the parts of the dualisms are not equivalent. Thus, the logic produces hierarchies that legitimize men dominating women, whites dominating blacks, and humans dominating animals.

Instead, Haraway suggests that people should undermine these hierarchies by actively exploring and mobilizing the blurring of borders.[3]"  (underlining mine)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg_theory

Despite our various interpretations and associations, the only certain thing in this haiku is that central unitto basu, which is given in katakana.

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts of blood

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
gushes blood/ gushes of blood

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
tears of blood


- Lorin

...an aside, but since her 'Astro Boy' haiku has been quoted in relation to 'Atom Heart Mother', here's Fay Aoyagi's haiku which is featured as today's THF 'haiku of the day' in relation to 'In my luggage' :



手荷物は劣化ウランと夏の海
teimotsu wa rekka uran to natsu no umi

In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea

Keiji Minato


August cicadas
could I carry an ocean
in one suitcase

-Fay Aoyagi

Hi Lorin - interesting variations. It can't be 'tears of blood' though. Here's a couple of dictionary entries (from differing word lists).

Best wishes, John

nagasu 【流す】– godan verb 「-す」; transitive verb
to drain;  to pour;  to spill;  to shed (blood, tears)

流す v. (Hira=ながす) drain, draw out; float; shed; ply

流す - it throws (?!)

.
What
the bloody hell?!
Atom Heart Mother

I am enjoying this comment model of the whisper game!

word on - word off ... are you kidding me?  (all respects to Kesuke Miyagi sensei)

;D

Quote from: John Carley on January 19, 2011, 06:19:12 AM
Hi Lorin - interesting variations. It can't be 'tears of blood' though. Here's a couple of dictionary entries (from differing word lists).

Best wishes, John

nagasu 【流す】– godan verb 「-す」; transitive verb
to drain;  to pour;  to spill;  to shed (blood, tears)

流す v. (Hira=ながす) drain, draw out; float; shed; ply

流す - it throws (?!)

ok, John, no 'tears of blood'  8)

'sheds bloody tears'? ... ahem, not very elegant.

- Lorin

Quote from: chibi575 on January 19, 2011, 07:00:40 AM
.
What
the bloody hell?!
Atom Heart Mother

I am enjoying this comment model of the whisper game!

word on - word off ... are you kidding me?  (all respects to Kesuke Miyagi sensei)

;D

What
the bloody hell?!
Atom Heart Mother

;D . . .indeed, Dennis. Though I might reverse it:

Atom Heart Mother
What
the bloody hell?!


( ...you'll have to translate the rest of your post for this little inhabitant of the Deeper South, though, she says, scratching her head.)

- Lorin

Lorin,

Sorry, I guess it's a guy thing, not a South thing... ref. Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi... "wax on ... wax off... etc., ...).

ciao  8)

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

(spurting blood, gushing blood, flushing blood?...down the toilet, after all many things have been flushed down the toilet as a means of disposal, actually and metaphorically)

...but until now discretion or timidity have prevented me mentioning that travesty of motherhood and birth, that ultimate lapse in good taste and very interesting case of a distorted Oedipal complex which inspired a pilot of a bomber plane to give it the name of his mother, "Enola Gay". And in case that wasn't clear enough to all concerned, the devastating cargo was named "Little Boy".

The first line of this haiku, the name of a British band's album, rendered in kanji where it would  normally be rendered in katakana, and the "quintessentially Japanese" prefabricated, all-in-one bathroom rendered in katakana, where one would've expected kanji; this odd switch that John noted seems to signal another switch within the field of the poem's discourse.

Surely "Enola Gay", the original, terrible Atom Heart Mother who 'gave birth' to The Bomb is the entity lurking in the underlayers of this haiku?

Or maybe closer to the surface:

"Enola Gay became the center of a controversy at the Smithsonian Institution, when the museum put its fuselage on public display on 28 June 1995, as part of an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.[18] The exhibit, The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, was drafted by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum staff, and arranged around the restored Enola Gay.[19][20]
See also: Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

...The exhibit brought to national attention many long-standing academic and political issues related to retrospective views of the bombings. As a result, after various failed attempts to revise the exhibit in order to meet the satisfaction of competing interest groups, the exhibit was canceled on 30 January 1995, although the fuselage did go on display.[22] On 2 July, three people were arrested for throwing ash and human blood on the aircraft's fuselage, following an earlier incident in which a protester had thrown red paint over the gallery's carpeting.[23] Martin O. Harwit, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, resigned over the controversy.[24][25]"  (underlining mine)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Gay

Apropos of nothing except coincidence, 2nd July was my father's birthday. There is a story of personal angst (his) connected to the war with Japan, off the Philippines in WW2, too. He was in the Australian Navy.


- Lorin

And the winner of the round is (drumroll)... Keiji Minato's haiku "in my luggage" (4-3).

Less important than the votes, as was true when Basho did this, are the reasons behind the votes and the discussion generated. According to my count, Alan, Lorin, Don and Mark favored Keiji's verse; Chibi, Carlos and Eve favored Ami's "Atom Heart Mother." Even though Ami's haiku didn't win in the voting, I think we all can agree that it should receive special commendation for generating the most discussion. This is quite a provacative work of word-art, isn't it?

John and Sandra commented without voting--which is OK, but it would be better, next round, if everyone weighed in with a judgement that forces us to think deeply and clearly about what constitutes a good contemporary haiku.

Now, on to Round Two!