1.
While I was reading about Matsuo Bashō in these two chapters, I was thinking a lot about Emma Ramadan's lecture. Bashō invented the idea of haikai spirit, which was concerned with the interaction of diverse languages and subcultures, the friction between new popular culture and poetic traditions. Haikai spirit was interested in defamiliarization or dislocating habitual, conventionalized perceptions of poetic language or topics and recasting them into contemporary culture. His methodology involves playful, lively dialogue between poetic forms, both the old and new, to form a kind of communal art. This is in conversation with what Ramadan said about interesting moments of friction in translated literature---how two languages interacting through translation form interesting moments that should be appreciated instead of wiped away. There is suspicion of the strange or foreign in translation---the effects of an effort to preserve our "American" literary landscape, but just as Bashō explored the fusion of different poetic traditions, there is strength and beauty in these playful interactions, in the constant "borrowing" of words, images, and ideas. I also noted that the poetic technique of "borrowing" has a name: toru.
2.
Listening to Beichman talk about the minimalism and stickiness of the haiku was particularly impactful because I had experienced the same sensations---each of Bashō's haikus is a singular, tactile image or moment, and yet they hold so much in so few words. Each image stays with your mind and body. In the haiku about the octopus traps, which I had written down from our first reading because I found it so vivid and beautiful, we have a kino, or seasonal word that carries its our poetic associations ("summer moon". In this case, it could be the temporality of both summer and life, impermanence at large. That was another element of this lecture that struck me: the generosity of the haiku for diverse interpretations/meanings.
3.
Akiko struck me as an interesting figure because her tankas were able to hold her life and the way she grew within that life: from writing about women enjoying sex and reclaiming the erotic, to urging her brother not to go to war, to then supporting Japanese imperialism. Although short and direct, these tankas communicate the various moments that made up her life and their immense complexity.
4.
Tawara's tankas seem to have reached a wide audience because they embrace both the history of the form and modern contexts, just as Bashō articulated in his ideas of haikai spirit. She doesn't shy away from words that communicate modernity and popular culture: McDonald's, "Hotel California," etc, yet she is still able to preserve the musicality and evocativeness of the poetic tradition. I also loved the image of "salad" being genuine and deeply felt, while never bitter or overwhelming. I thought it was a new and interesting way to interpret the conciseness of the form.
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