That is enough of haiku. Except for talking animals.
Perhaps, I will return to them later but today is a black day and I find it difficult to write even these few words. I hear a scratching sound coming from upstairs. I think I may have a fox in the attic. I have finished Bukan Pasarmalam about the death of Pramoedya's father. It was very sad and evocative and brought back many memories of Indonesia. Somehow despite all the suffering he went through Pram still continued write and criticise those whom he felt had destroyed the ideals of the Indonesian revolution. He is one of the great writers of the Twentieth Century and it is a pity his work is not more widely known in English. I declare Jill the winner with her exam haiku. WELL DONE JILL! The MacNeice haiku deserves mention as some kind of example of 'found poetry'. Another kind is the Rumsfeld Unknowns. As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns The ones we don't know We don't know. Tomorrow I am going to Liverpool to see the Giant Girl and her dog. I'll report back after the even.
Viv is coming up and giving me a lift. As it is her Birthday I felt I had to tidy the house clean the bathroom and make a Sussex Pond Pudding. I had a lemon I didn't know what to do with. Unfortunately I was attacked by a djin - perhaps it was the thought of the pudding - and I had to sit down for a while to recover. However I valiently got to my feet again and wearing a raffish eye patch to keep the dreadful light out of my aching eye I carried on accompanied by my two favourite Japanese girls,Petty and Booka. No one does Tiki Twoches at Twilight or Que Sewa Sewa like they do. To be fair they do an English r better than I do an Indonesian one. Please, please, please, no comments about the Scotsman who rolled his rs. I'm trying to get this blog back to something that resembles sensible again. Now to check the pudding. The proof of it though will be........... I cannot upload movies on this blog so am experimenting using youtube. I'm playing with the speech on my mac. It is very fiddly and took a long time to stop the ends being clipped. Kobayashi Issa Jill's friend's reaction to her ghostly cat reminded me of people I have met in Indonesia and India where superstition and the supernatural are still very much a part of most people's lives. Ghosts, djins and spirits are all around, down the drains, in the forests and in the water. I always find this rather disconcerting when I come across it, somehow it is easier to accept the religious beliefs that people have grown up with than to hear someone tell you they are late because they went out of their way to avoid a ghost, in the tone you might use to use to say you took the long way round to avoid a traffic jam. This acceptance of another imaginary world is something that we 'educated' Westerners usually associate with early childhood and I, at least, am unsure how to respond when I hear adults talking this way. I want to cry, 'Investigate!' To get photographs and measurements and all the rest to pin the thing down. But that is a futile exercise as what really needs investigating is the human imagination itself. All I can can do is say, 'Oh really?' in what I hope is a concerned and polite tone and try not to patronise or show my underlying irritation. But... if I am completely honest I am a little jealous too. I would quite like to have a djin under my sink in the way Roman households had their lares or the Saxons their cofgods as well as all those other pagan imps, hobs, kobolds and brownies. So, Jill I don't want a real cat but I will be happy to take your friend's ghost cat, as it seems to be a rather friendly spirit and probably one of the lot I've just mentioned. A while ago I was talking to friends about haiku and this morning I remembered the conversation and thought of Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North and wondered what had happened to my copy. I have never had much time for people who insist the haiku must have a 5-7-5 syllable construction, what is important to me are the two images and the movement between them. R H Blyth is my favourite translator and it is his version of Basho's most famous haiku I give below. (When I first wrote this I mistakenly said Ronald Blythe the author of Akenfield and not Reginald Horace Blyth the translator of haiku. Sorry if anyone noticed that.) Blyth does not stick to the 5-7-5 system although Basho's original does but I think his translation set captures the spirit of the original. See for yourselves, you can compare three famous translations at http://www.haikupoetshut.com/basho1.html The old pond A frog jumps in The sound of water. furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto I guess most of you are probably pretty familiar with haiku, and have your own views about the best way of writing them in English, but what about pantun? The four line pantun is a Malay/Indonesian poem and has two contrasting images similar to haiku but has an a/b/a/b rhyme scheme and is more like a riddle for the listener to interpret and pan tun are often used playfully between lovers and friends or to amuse children. As Prof Braginsky explains: If you want to know more about pantun here are a couple of links.
The first is the basic Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantunhttp://stateless.freehosting.net/Poietics%20of%20the%20Pantun.htm with a nice example about Raffles: Singapura negeri baharu, Tuan Raffles menjadi raja Bunga melur, cempaka biru, Kembang sekuntum di mulut naga. Singapore is a new country, Tuan Raffles has become its lord, Indian jasmine, frangipanni, Blossoms one flower in the dragon's mouth. (Translated by Sim, p.40) Not much subtlety here! Except perhaps there might be something I don't know about the flower symbolism. The second link is really interesting but a bit esoteric and 'Frenchified'. Besides it leans towards Windstead and I am still loyal to my old Prof. Vladamir Braginsky.Nervertheless there is a lot of interesting stuff in it, if this is the stuff you find interesting.http://stateless.freehosting.net/Poietics%20of%20the%20Pantun.htm Perhaps some of you might like to send me some haiku of pantun. I will not offer a prize as I still have not sent the last one off to Mr H Staggers of Merseyside. I will just put up the ones I like and lavish praise upon them. On Friday I went to Birmingham to see a performance of Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic. The piece was performed by The Gavin Bryars Ensemble led by the composer himself and was far more dramatic than I remembered, perhaps because I have never dared to play it at full volume. Viv described the music as hypnotic, and that probably the best I can come up with too as I don't have the vocabulary to describe music. I can only make comparisons with other composers and say not as repetitive or rhythmic as Glass or Adams, perhaps closer to Gorecki with a couple of Dansettes instead of a soprano. Just listen to it yourselves if you don't already know it.
Viv also gave me a small tree, a damson I think, to put in my large pot. And now there it stands in my back yard. I notice that there is a problem with some of the comments not showing up in the Wood of Fallen Logs entry.
Let me know if you are having any problems with the comments or the message box on the right of this page. As I could not reply to Jill's comment, I'll say it here: true friends don't ask why. If you said you urgently needed a log I'd have sent a tree. Baby Russets -I don't know why! - is a traditional English restaurant in Stoke that I passed today and thought about going in to try one of their baguettes. I also liked the sound of their Wild Mushroom and Halloumi Goulash. Unfortunately I did not have time to try either and had to hurry on to the Civic Hall to get my identity card. I suspect that Baby Russets may be run by foxes, but in fairness should add that they have excellent reviews online and also do pies and lamb shank, if you are ever looking for somewhere to eat in Stoke. Last night I suffered from a blistering headache so I took several painkillers and crawled into my bed to sleep it off well before it got dark.
I was awakened some time in the middle of the night by something throwing itself on top of me. My heart pounding, I sprang up in a panic thinking my house had been broken into and I was being attacked. It was a huge relief to find that it was only the cat who come into my room and jumped up on to the bed. It took some moments for my mind, confused and befuddled by sleep, to realise.... I have no cat. By the way, does the phrase 'No other tiger...' come from A E W Mason's novel or did he take it from elsewhere? I suspect he did but can't find any other reference. |
Archives
January 2014
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- Egypt
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- Back in the Land of Dreams
- From the Dinosaur Hotel to the Temple of Literature
- Flying West to Mimpi
- Lost in the Sea of Sand
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