Poe's Grave

 Westminster, in Baltimore.  Poe's original grave, and later grander memorial

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

Poetry Tuesday: Poem on Airing Books on a Starlit Night

We unfasten the chest

Of books and

Offer this gift

To the stars who meet

Only tonight

                                                                                        -Emperor Go-Youzei, trans. Ann Yonemura*

Written on the custom of airing books on the evening of the Tanabata festival, celebrating the once-a-year meeting of the Weaving Maiden (Vega) and the Ox-Herd Boy (Altair), from the Chinese legend. 


*Found in Twelve Centuries of Japanese Art from the Imperial Collections, p. 70

Sunlight Through Colored Glass

The handled jug, gold bottle, and small sea green vase belonged to my Grandmama.  The cobalt blue is a replacement for a close match I gave it away as a sorry/replacement for a china vase that Scaramouche knocked down and broke.  The red was just because I love crimson:

千早ぶる 神代も聞かず 龍田川 からくれないに 水くくるとは

Chihayaburu Kamiyo mo kikazu Tatsuta-gawa Kara kurenai ni Mizu kukuru to wa

                                                                         -Ariwara no Narihira, Hyakunin Isshu, poem 17

roughly,

 Impassionate gods
Even in their time was it heard
Tatsuta river
 such crimson
water dyed

Friday Fabulosity: New Career Goal

Plumed hat, cape, and mask are de rigueur for this job.

Those with a Euro-centric education may discover an eerie similarity to a certain canonical English poem.

New career goal: éclair thief. 

 Find it in a library and read the rest of the story!

Waka != Haiku

I did not quite fling this book across the room in disgust, but it came very close:  

A cloud of blossoms
A hazy moon
Tast of mist, sweet wind

That is my waka for the spring tea that I plan for Auntie and my mother.  It is modeled after the greatest of the ancient Japanese poets, Basho.  His was better.

                            The Royal Diaries: Kazunomiya, Prisoner of Heaven, by Kathryn Lasky, p. 15

A waka is a classical Japanese poetic form of 31 syllables arranged in five lines. The Kokinshu (905 C.E.) is the first collection of waka only.  Kazunomiya would certainly have been familiar with it, as well as with later collections such as the Hyakunin Isshu, and would more believably have referenced such poets as Ki no Tsurayuki, Izumi Shikibu, or just possibly Saigyo.

An haiku is a later Japanese poetic form of 17 syllables arranged in three lines.   Crudely speaking, the haiku grew out of the first part of waka and came to be a standalone form.

Basho (1644-1694) was a master of haiku, not waka.  In a country with extant diaries reaching back to 600 years before Basho (Tosa Nikki, 934-35, oldest surviving diary written in the Japanese language), and extant literature from the early 700s C.E., Basho would hardly have qualified as ancient to Kazunomiya. 

I grant that historical fiction takes certain liberties with facts in order to create a more engaging story.  But unnecessary ignorance of even the basics of Japanese poetry styles, in a tale where such poetry is an absolutely key cultural underpinning?   When a wealth of material exists, beyond Basho? The author has been unforgivably lazy with this story.

Poetry Tuesday

An HULK-KU* for Dragon Age Origins, The Sloth Demon's Dream adventure arc:

Locked door, can't pick, drat

HULK SMASH!  Door open good now.

Monsters ahead!  Charge!

Smashing the doors was really fun.  Even though technically I'm a stone golem, not Hulk.

*scroll down for the hulk-ku

Poetry Tuesday: Because It Is Mine

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter--bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
                       -Stephen Crane


I was given a copy of The Black Riders and Other Lines for a moving-in welcome gift!

Poetry Month: Bread Baking with Rumi

If you are ever in need of a kiss, bring to mind the smell of fresh bread

And taste again a touch you once loved or are hoping for.

Following this recipe, I've spent the last few days making croissants.  I made them once before, following the old Joy of Cooking I got from my late and beloved grandmother.  I think the Joy of Cooking version tasted better but this version is so flaky! 

Poetry Wednesday: Not Fearing Vikings

Irish Archaeology provides and translates this short poem from the North of Ireland.

Bitter is the wind tonight

It tosses the ocean's white hair

Tonight I fear not the fierce warriors of Norway

Coursing on the Irish Sea.

Banned Poetry Tuesday: Shel Silverstein

This week, my darling and indefatigable boozers, is banned books week.  We celebrate our freedom to read or not read whatever we want while remaining vigilant against those who want to take that freedom away from us.  So, since Shel Silverstein's poetry has been banned at times, we have a selection from his A Light in the Attic. 

Somebody has to go polish the stars,

They’re looking a little bit dull.

Somebody has to go polish the stars,

For the eagles and starlings and gulls

Have all been complaining they’re tarnished and worn,

They say they want new ones we cannot afford.

So please get your rags

And your polishing jars,

Somebody has to go polish the stars.

Poetry Tuesday: Ogden Nash on Having a Job

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance,

Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance. 

Poetry Tuesday

                                                                 More and more
                                                                 All that is behind me
                                                                 Is what I long for;
                                                                 How I envy
                                                                 The returning waves.
                                                                                  -Narihira


Tomorrow I start back to Wyoming.  I only have to survive one more year there, and then I can come home. 

Poetry Tuesday: What Happened to the Hibiscus

As for the hibiscus on the roadside--

My horse ate it.

~Basho

I love Basho.  And his life.  Why does no one pay me to travel about and write haiku describing the experience?  

Poetry Tuesday: Lion King of Ling

                                      Know me as I am, the one who has been foretold.
                                      It has been written in prophecies, and you know it in your hearts;
                                      I am Gesar, King of Ling,
                                      Who brings prosperity, dignity and joy,
                                      Who destroys cowardice, delusion and slavery,
                                      I am Gesar, Lion King of Ling,
                                      The great conqueror and the great healer.
                                      I am the light of your darkness,
                                      The food of your hunger, and the scourge of your corruption.
                                      I hold the sword of truth in one hand,
                                      And the medicine of peace in the other.
                                      The time of my kingdom is now.
                                    

From the epic of Gesar of Ling, of the Khampas (or Khambas), the fierce warriors of eastern Tibet.

Excerpt from The Warrior Song of King Gesar, by Douglas Penick.

Poetry Tuesday: Ishq ki Ijazaat

To not be able to love the one you love 

is to have your life wrenched away.

To do this to someone else is to murder their soul.

                        -Vikram Seth

The Hindi is more beautiful than the translation, so please watch if your internet access permits.

Ishq ki Ijazaat

Love is my right, not a crime

To accept us as your own is the call of our times

Perhaps He has answers, the one who made us as one

Yet of different hues, are our passions spun

You deride us, of nature we aren’t

For you are the masses, and our number are faint

So we will barter for love your gods and your saints

The passage of ages drips, painted with our pleas

But you did not relent, the slander never ceased

You who wish to change us, answer us please

Where is the justice in your blind reproval?

In fear draped cocoons, hidden we’ve lain

Under archaic curtains that colour our pain

Banish these laws, unshackle the chains

Treat us as equals, embrace us without blame

Accept us as your own, it’s the call of the times

Since when has love played by the rules of faith

Or chained the helpless, or made caste it’s wraith

Or been bound by borders, or the rules of the age

Then why single us to be stopped by your rage

This meeting of hearts, your blessings can tether

You and us, all in love and celebrating together

So accept us as your own, it’s the call of the times

Let love be my right and no longer a crime

Poetry Tuesday: An Unsuccessful Secrecy Protocol

Since the pillow knows all,

We slept without a pillow.  

Still my reputation

Reaches to the skies

Like a dust storm. 

~Lady Ise

Poetry Tuesday: Cicada

Shizukasa ya

iwa ni shimiiru

semi no koe

Stillness

penetrating the rock

the cicada's voice

                   -Basho

I heard no cicadas in Wyoming.  It makes me happy to hear them once again. 

Poetry Tuesday: Vaster than Empires, and More Slow

Overquoted, perhaps, but still an excellent poem from Marvell. 

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day;

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood;

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow.

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

        But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long preserv'd virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave's a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace.

        Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may;

And now, like am'rous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.

Let us roll all our strength, and all

Our sweetness, up into one ball;

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run

Poetry Tuesday: Basho for a Moving Day

Even a thatched hut

May change with a new owner

Into a doll's house.  

Poetry Tuesday: Edna St Vincent Millay

Whereas morning in a jeweled crown

I bit my fingers and was hard to please

Having shook disaster till the fruit fell down

I feel tonight more happy and at ease:

Feet running in the corridors, men quick-

Buckling their sword-belts bumping down the stair,

Challenge, and rattling bridge-chain, and the click

Of hooves on pavement — this will clear the air.

Private this chamber as is has not been

In many a month of muffled hours; almost,

Lulled by the uproar, I could lie serene

And sleep, until all's won, until all's lost,

And the doors' opened and the issue shown,

And I walk forth Hell's mistress . . . or my own.