The Seashell Game - Round 2

[Lorin]

Interesting, Mark, but I'm so glad this information came after I'd read the poem, otherwise it would've added that theoretical or doctrinal touch and I wouldn't have have been able to feel my way into it without overcoming that barrier.

If this information is pertinent, what the poem might show is that Kuan Yin is a human 'archetype', one which we can all experience within our own nature.

In any case, Senegal's poem is in a class far beyond the ordinary run of 'Zennier than Thou' haiku. The old EL haiku maxim of 'show, don't tell' is validated here.

- Lorin

[Peter Yovu]

Both these poems, but especially Aoyagi's, have tugged at me since I made my comments above. Cid Corman has said about haiku that it is "a form of poetry... where each word is a matter of life and death". With this in mind, I look at the line "ants out of a hole"—each word a matter of life and death, "ants" no less significant than "hole". Something out of nothing. It strikes me on that very existential level, and the urge to make a story out of this, to imagine particular ants emerging from a particular opening, diminishes the power. Of course, I have numerous associations with "ants", some informed by the what follows in the poem, including the appearance of (musical) notes on a page, of creatures, as someone noted, associated with industry (not creatures generally associated with play). I also think of a colony of ants as an organism, the individual as cells, neurons let's say, in constant communication. Thoughts arising in the brain. Memories. But mostly, the thought that arises in my brain is the one central to philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing?

In what follows it is the word "the" which gets to me. It carries enormous weight, and if anyone knows another poem where the word "the" is so freighted, I would love to know it. I believe it is clear that the author does not expect the question she asks to be answered. Even if it could be, the answer would be meaningless. It seems to be how the mind works though: there tend to be questions below the ones we ask. like: when I did I stop regarding a beloved childhood object as mine, or even,  as me... when did Thou become it? The poem itself answers the question: it has arisen out of observation and memory, by a kind of playing, on a larger instrument, one with deeper notes.

I have found myself wondering: is this poetry or is it a psychological (and philosophical) provocation? I don't know if this question needs to be answered.

If the word "the" looms large in Aoyagi's poem, for me, the word "corpse" is, for different reasons, equally vast in Senegal's poem, and the word "cadaver" would not change my thoughts. It gives, by way of hyperbole bordering on the surrealistic, so miniscule a thing as a mosquito an emotional weight which might be comic were it not almost unbearable.

As images go, those in Aoyagi's poem are rather dry, thought provoking. Senegal's images are, by contrast, tidal. The former leads... to thought and memory; the latter pulls: at the heart, lungs, and throat. It is the very emotional gravity of the "mosquito corpses in the lamp"—the stillness of it—which finds its counterweight in the action of sobbing.

I'll just add this observation: where a great many haiku begin not so much with an image as a placemat on which to set an occasionally vivid dish, both Aoyagi's and Senegl's incorporate, or juxtapose if you will, two rich images: ants out of a hole/ a red toy piano; and, mosquito corpses in a lamp/ someone sobbing in a room. I guess I've made it clear how I feel about that.

[Mark Harris]

Some haiku create a tension by both inviting and resisting interpretation. A poem which is easily "grasped" will be easily manipulated, or made to serve our own purposes. A poem which evades our grasp, or allows itself to be grasped only to just as soon slip away, will maintain its own integrity and life. Seems to me this describes Aoyagi's poem, and in a different way, Senegal's as well. --Peter

Interesting, Mark, but I'm so glad this information came after I'd read the poem, otherwise it would've added that theoretical or doctrinal touch and I wouldn't have have been able to feel my way into it without overcoming that barrier. --Lorin

Lorin, I hope you'll take everything I say here with a grain of salt; I'm glad to see you have no trouble doing so. :) However, I believe haiku, as with poems of any genre, are more rewarding when considered in context (the pursuit of which occasionally takes me down strange roads, I'll admit).  

"The poem itself answers the question: it has arisen out of observation and memory, by a kind of playing, on a larger instrument, one with deeper notes...I have found myself wondering: is this poetry or is it a psychological (and philosophical) provocation? I don't know if this question needs to be answered." --Peter

yes, and imo observation and memory are rooted in the sensual. Because many of us have had similar responses to similar experiences, Aoyagi allows us to arrive at our own emotional responses. I receive the emotion after a slight delay, followed by a wry recognition, followed by an unalloyed response. Am I provoked, or seduced, to arrive at that response? Her poem offers a different sort of seduction from Senegal's, and is less visceral, I agree, but for me they both lead to emotion.

[Peter Yovu]

Mark, I'm slowly (being a slow reader and generally slow) swimming into the depths of Iain Mc Gilchrist's The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the making of the Western World. I wonder if you know it? He touches, from several points of view including (especially) the neurological, on matters such as language, music, the body-- on how the Right Hemisphere is the relational, context-providing part of the brain, and the left operates primarily via re- presentation of parts. It takes the world in and seals it off as its own---- it does not have the ability to see the "whole". The LH is connected to "handedness"-- most of us are right handed-- it is what wants to "grasp" and use. I am still uncertain how this informs my own tendencies to, while enjoying wrapping a story-- a context?-- around a haiku,  to nonetheless feel it is limiting. I want to go to the place prior to story and language even-- to music and the body. I would probably have to say more about McGilchrist's ideas to make that more clear.

[Lorin]

Peter, you may be interested in this:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/stories/s1137394.htm

- Lorin

[Peter Yovu]

Lorin,

thanks, I'll check this out. I'm a big fan of All in the Mind, by the way. Natasha Mitchell spoke with Iain McGilchrist recently, as you may know.

[Mark Harris]

Peter, I don't know the McGilchrist book. I have a special interest in cognitive neuroscience, though, and the title is intriguing. I'm aware of the way the hemispheres of the brain sometimes work together and sometimes don't (there are people who have had their brain hemispheres surgically separated, and the two halves of their bodies act with different intentions, essentially "at war" with each other). I know from your poems, and what you say about poems, your need to go beyond story to music and the body. Body is one experience we almost all share, close to universal, even though our understandings of that experience vary.

By context, I don't mean story. A poem without narrative will be informed in many ways by context. An example would be the way Scott Metz subverts narrative and assumed meaning by borrowing from different sources, which though recognizable, are changed.

I want to go to the place prior to story and language even-- to music and the body.

You are using language to get to a place prior to language. You are outside of yourself trying to get in? Can we escape language, once learned?

not fair to ask these questions, which might not be answerable. I pose them to show I understand, which I might not.

imo, Senegal's poem works on many levels. It is in its own way intellectual. That doesn't stop it from giving you a body punch.

[Karen Cesar]

En el candil cadáveres   
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

Umberto Senegal

Some things to consider in reading this verse:

zancudo:

long-shanked; long-legged
wading; wader, wading bird

candil: olive-oil lamp; tine (of an antler)

cadaveres: corpse; cadaver
cadava:  burnt stump of furze

habitation: habitation; house; dwelling; room; biol. habitat




8- (9-10) – (5-7)

* my count depends on how one pronounces 'Alguien' and 'habitation.'




In the oil lamp corpses
of mosquitoes. Someone sobs
in the house.



* I would like to lengthen the verse in English but ... the problem with translating 'solloza' as either 'sobbing' or 'is sobbing' is that there is a construction for that.

* the problem with 'living room' is that the author could have specified and did not.


What I want to bring out here is the possibility that Umberto Senegal may be referring to an olive-oil lamp (which is what my old Spanish dictionary has for candil). In which case, if the lamp is sufficiently open, the mosquito bodies are floating.

I am voting for Senegal's verse – in Spanish.

Why I wonder the translations rewriting the verse sans punctuation?

The verse when read in Spanish has the sound of water. Every element of the haiku serves a purpose. Lineation, word choice, punctuation etc. It has duende.

Of course Fay's verse is very good too ....

Karen

[David Lanoue]

To answer Karen's question, why no punctuation in my English translation?

The poet sent me a book-length manuscript and gave me permission to publish for the first time many of his recent haiku, along with my English translations, for a piece that came out last fall in Modern Haiku: "Umberto Senegal Revisited." MH Haiku 41.3 (Autumn 2010): 50-59. I agonized over the capital letters and punctuation that pervade his haiku (standard procedure in Latin America, though some poets have recently begun to buck this trend). In the end, I decided to re-make his haiku in the most contemporary style for haiku in English. One goal of a translator is to keep invisible those things that are invisible to readers in the original language. For Colombian readers the capital letters and punctuation are expected and thus, almost invisible; for most English readers they SCREAM and, I fear, get in the way of a direct experience of the poems. At least, that's what I felt then--and still feel.

Zancudo is the Colombian word for "mosquito." Habitación is indeed the word one uses when ordering a hotel room, just like it is in English. "I'd like a room, please." However, like in English, the word by itself, without a hotel context, means "room"--not "hotel room" and certainly not "house." Of course, if a reader wants to make it a hotel room in his or her imagination, the language allows for this. "Living room" is possible, but the poet doesn't specify this--once again, it's the reader's choice. The candil, yes, is a type of oil lamp. I left out the word "oil" in my translation because I felt that the rhythm and sound are better in English with just the word "lamp." I hoped that readers would figure out there must be some sort of flame involved--due to the corpses. Maybe this was a mistake.

The bottom line: This poem is a thousand times better in Spanish but (I think) quite evocative even in an imperfect English translation--as evidenced by the discussion so far.

[Lorin]

"The candil, yes, is a type of oil lamp. I left out the word "oil" in my translation because I felt that the rhythm and sound are better in English with just the word "lamp." I hoped that readers would figure out there must be some sort of flame involved--due to the corpses. Maybe this was a mistake."- David

No mistake, David, and I think you made the right choice regarding the poem's rhythm in English. It's quite clear to anyone who has ever used an oil lamp (or kero lamp, or even gas lamp) It's the area within the glass 'funnel', at the bottom, that encircles the wick, where the mosquito corpses collect. With any other sort of lamp, we couldn't see them.  With a lamp glass that was closed at the top, like many electric lamp glasses, there'd also be nowhere for the mosquito corpses to collect.

As far as style goes, I'm not with 'the haiku police' who consider that a norm or a current fashion is a rule, and if a writer wants caps in his/her poem, then that's fine with me. It doesn't interfere with my reading. But that's probably because I don't consider what makes a haiku a haiku is a matter of style, nor even of strict form.

- Lorin

[Karen Cesar]

Drat. I wrote a long post and lost it.

All that remains ... these links:

http://www.tibetantreasures.com/tthtml/ttmerch/Shrine%20pages/butterlamps.html

http://orthodoxincense.com/vigillamps.html

I understand what you mean, Lorin, about the kerosene lamp and I have a couple of those. I have also used an open votive lamp as pictured above which is where I get the image of the 'floating' mosquitoes ....

Olive oil is rich in symbolism.  'Olive-oil lamp' is the translation for 'candil' given in the Spanish dictionary I pulled from my bookshelf. I did not see 'olive-oil' used in any of the online translations so, it may be an archaic usage.

I am not saying Senegal meant a votive lamp, or one using olive oil; he could have had a kerosene lamp in mind. But, it is an alternate reading... another layer.

The other translations/uses of 'zancudo' are of interest (to me) because of Senegal's use of fire and water.

The translations of 'habitacion' came from the same dictionary. I wondered why Senegal used 'habitacion' rather than the more common 'el cuarto' for 'room,' though for all I know -- and more importantly, don't know -- in Columbia, 'habitacion' may be the more common usage.

habitacion: habitation; house; dwelling; room; biol. habitat

'Habitacion' is the word the maid used for our hotel room in Seville. The image of a temporary dwelling place may or may not correlate to the idea of the body as the temporary dwelling of the soul.

Trying my hand at translating Senegal's haiku was an exercise. In retrospect, sharing my thoughts on this haiku may have been a mistake, one I will not compound by going into my theories on translation.

David, I apologize if I offended you. That was not my intent.

Best,

Karen

not something
I meant to have happen --
last leaf to fall

Karen Cesar
Blithe Spirit, Volume 20 Number 4

[Peter Yovu]

I wonder: what do those who are "new" to haiku make of these two poems? Do they challenge what you understand haiku to be? Aoyagi seems to use the world as an entry point into her own life. Senegal is pretty explicit about emotion. How do you respond to that? I don't want to redirect the purpose of this thread, but to engage some who might be reluctant to say how they feel about these poems. Yes?

[Lorin]

Yes, Peter, I think it would be good to hear from people relatively new to haiku. I'd like to know what others make of these two haiku as well.

(I don't agree with you about 'explicit emotion' in the Senegal poem. Sure, we have 'someone sobbing', but that's not 'telling' the emotions conveyed by the poem itself. )

Come on, people, be brave and tell us how these poems work for you.  :) Nobody gets eaten!

- Lorin

[Peter Yovu]

Well, maybe nibbled at a little.

[Mark Harris]

it would be irresponsible to promise not to

hang on, let me go check the code of conduct...