B Is for Basho

Has it Changed My Life? Quite Possibly.

So, Calvino's Invisible Cities is our next book.  Period.  I just finished reading it, which reading, as I've said before, was slow and savory, and I'm trying to decide: am I the same person, now that I've finished it, I was before?  Just the fact that the book's brought me to this question is saying a great deal.  Of course, to place it upon the pedestal aside the very few other truly life-changing books, I must compare it to them.  This also raises an interesting question: what is it that makes a book life-changing for its reader?  It's not a particularly difficult question, just interesting.  The answer, I think is simple: it must be a combination of [1] the book's quality (though generally to a lesser degree) and [2] the circumstances of time and place of the reader's life.  As it is, Invisible Cities is of a higher quality than some of the books way up there.  For example, as wonderful as Life of Pi is, it has its [few] limitations, one of which is word craft.  Don't get me wrong.  Martel is an excellent craftsman of the sentence, but Calvino is of the master-smithing status of Borges, Chabon, and McCarthy.  Other books include the obvious tomes of The Divine Comedy and East of Eden/Grapes of Wrath, as well as the Alice books, Ender's Game, Wonder Boys, and Blindness.  Each of these books arrived in my life at key moments, did their business, such as it was, and took up permanent residence upon my bookshelves--literal and metaphysical.  Does Invisible Cities, an essentially perfect book (yeah, really--and not perfect like Joyce, but perfect like, well, Joyce if he had a freaking heart or if Steinbeck could write briefly yet as powerfully), warrant place among the others?

Nearly all of the best books I've read, save All the Pretty Horses, which just bloody tortured me, broke me, heart and spirit, and highlighted in thirty-foot capital, fluorescent letters, "YOU CAN'T WRITE!" inspire me.  You see, I want to be a writer.  Rather, I want to be a successful writer.  I want to be a writer whose stuff people want to read!  The best books nearly always inspire me to write.  They tickle the muses who come and circle me and whisper in my ears and give my fingers and cerebral frontal lobe the itch and make me want to CREATE.  Yeah.  Well, Invisible Cities has done that--and in frickin' spades, man.  The last time I felt the bug this strongly (at least via a book) was when I finished Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North (or however you want to translate it) and subsequently began my own hyohakusha and used the genre and text as model for my creative writing students' end-of-year project.  (My hyohakusha ultimately failed (I'm an inadequate poet), though many of my students wrote and created brilliantly, beautifully.)

Basho was a three years ago.  Since reading it, I've returned to it again and again.  I've studied its poetry and form and in four or five translations.  I've traced his path on maps.  I've referred to and used him as model in poetry and a book of my own.  Has it changed my life?  I dare say it has.  Maybe it just takes time for a book to climb the long stair to the top once it's arrived at--been permitted access to--the base.  If this is the case (and you can't tell right away if it's happened), I expect Basho will soon arrive at the top right along with Steinbeck et al and Calvino will have likely just recently begun the ascent.  Time will tell, I suppose.

Regardless, this book amazed and amazes me.  I am eager to read it again.

Sunday Poetry XXVIII -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 2

Like last week (not to mention the next few weeks to come), I'm going through an old secondary English lit textbook.  The two for-sures will be the first and last poems the book has to offer, and I hope to be caught by--caught because maybe I've never read it before, particularly like it or hate it, or am flabbergasted that it's found its way into the textbook at all--a few others in between.

(I suppose it's some sort of commentary on the recent economic condition of public schools--because I really haven't been out of the secondary English classroom for long--that all the textbooks I've got in my personal collection are from the late eighties and early nineties.)

Prentice Hall Literature, Bronze

1991, 1989

The Village Blacksmith

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

Under a spreading chestnut-tree

      The village smithy stands;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

      With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

      Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,

      His face is like the tan;

His brow is wet with honest sweat,

      He earns whate'er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,

      For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,

      You can hear his bellows blow;

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,

      With measured beat and slow,

Like a sexton ringing the village bell,

      When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school

      Look in at the open door;

They love to see the flaming forge,

      And hear the bellows roar,

And catch the burning sparks that fly

      Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,

      And sits among his boys;

He hears the parson pray and preach,

      He hears his daughter's voice,

Singing in the village choir,

      And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,

      Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more,

      How in the grave she lies;

And with his haul, rough hand he wipes

      A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,

      Onward through life he goes;

Each morning sees some task begin,

      Each evening sees it close

Something attempted, something done,

      Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

      For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life

      Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

      Each burning deed and thought.

Upon Mistress Susanna Southwell,

Her Feet

Robert Herrick

            Her pretty feet

            Like snails did creep

      A little out, and then,

As if they started at Bo-peep,

Did soon draw in again.

Three Haiku

Basho, translated by Daniel C. Buchanan

On sweet plum blossoms

The sun rises suddenly.

Look, a mountain path!

Has spring come indeed?

On that nameless mountain lie

Thin layers of mist.

Temple bells die out.

The fragrant blossoms remain.

A perfect evening!

The Flower-Fed Buffaloes

Vachel Lindsay

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prarie flowers lie low:
The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass
Is swept away by wheat,
Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by
In the spring that still is sweet.
But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us long ago,
They gore no more, they bellow no more:--
With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low,

Lying low.

Winter

Nikki Giovanni

Frogs burrow the mud

snails bury themselves

and I air my quilts

preparing for the cold

Dogs grow more hair

mothers make oatmeal

and little boys and girls

take Gather John’s Medicine

Bears store fat

chipmunks gather nuts

and I collect books

For the coming winter

A Song of Greatness

Chippewa Traditional

Mary Austin

When I hear the old men

Telling of heroes,

Telling of great deeds

Of ancient days—

When I hear that telling,
Then I think within me

I, too, am one of these.

When I hear the people

Praising great ones,

Then I know that I too—

Shall be esteemed:

I, too, when my time comes

Shall do mightily.

Miracles

Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, 

Or stand under trees in the woods, 

Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night 

with any one I love, 

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, 

Or animals feeding in the fields, 

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet 

and bright, 

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place. 

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, 

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, 

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, 

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. 

To me the sea is a continual miracle, 

The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the 

ships with men in them, 

What stranger miracles are there?

KIM VI -- chapter 3.2: I Do Not Pester Them

the old soldier

starting reading at: "'Certainly the air of this country is good,' said the lama. 'I sleep lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking till broad day. Even now I am heavy.'"


(I didn't think of this until just now:) We've briefly covered another pilgrimage--another type of pilgrimage--on the blog: that of the Japanese hyohakusha.  In this case, Basho is the master and his travelling companion, Sora, is the chela.  While both Buddhist (Lama and Basho--regarding the latter, I'm assuming), Kim's master is on a religious quest, while Basho's is more of personal, spiritual enlightenment.  Is there a difference?  What draws mankind to quest and pilgrimage?  My family is moving across the country this summer, and I can already smell the asphalt of the road, and it is exciting!  The "pilgrimage" seems to be as multifaceted as the symbolism of rivers.  Thoughts?

1. I love the comparison of the Lama to the camel.  Maybe it's just the westerner in me, but it seems remarkably indicative of not only gate but demeanor.  More than that there is also the element of a camel's use in travelling long distances.
2. "Delhi is the navel of the world."  Hmm, how many such navels are there across the globe?
3. "I have never pestered them: I do not think they will pester me."
4. Matthew 13:42 -- "I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much."
5. Why is longing for the past, according to the Lama (or anyone else for that matter), weakness?
6. Narratively speaking, what is the point of showing the episode with the old soldier?  (Though I haven't read it, the old soldier reminds me a little of the bumbling Don Quixote.)

Regarding the Rosary
This is a handful of cardamoms,
This is a lump of ghi:
This is millet and chillies and rice,
A supper for thee and me!

Sunday Poetry IV -- My Collective Rambling Take on "The Collected Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme"

WARNING!  THIS ENTRY IS HUMONGOUS!

It's no surprise by now that I love Thomas Ernest Hulme.  In spite of this love, I have attempted to keep my commentary as unbiased and broad as possible; and, as in my classroom teaching (not that any of you really require a teacher), have tried merely to point out the available doors, opening only a few, rather than shove you through them.  I am, as always, entirely open to contradiction and refutation, discussion and question, and even, if you're willing, blind sycophancy.

***

I would like to offer two categories of the beautiful, and those based upon the artists who create, rather than the works themselves.  First, there are those artists whose raw, natural abilities permit them apparently effortless access to the beautiful.  Examples: Mozart and Chopin (see playlist below), Matsuo Basho, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt (forgive the inclusion of athletics, but I do indeed see track and field as art, truly).  Second, there are artists whose talents they must wrestle and struggle into submission in order to most efficiently and effectively magnify them.  Examples: Bach and Debussy, Mike Powell and Michael Johnson, T.E. Hulme.  The former astound like the gods; the latter astound like only the most dedicated and successful of humanity can, whose tortuous and oft tortured hard work (and think Mike Powell, a long jumper, doesn’t fit the bill?  Read about him) play out in their art and genius so much more resonantly than that of one who just does it.  The art and success don’t flow from the soul like breath; rather they’re a mortal struggle, and only the strongest survive.

The Effortless (Usain Bolt; Carl Lewis):

The Dedicated (Michael Johnson; Mike Powell):

It’s possible that Hulme is not one who managed survival.  After all, what is the measuring stick for a poet’s success?  Depending upon your functioning definition of survival, at least in this context, consider this: T.S. Eliot (no poetry slouch, I’m sure you’ll agree) claimed in his The Criterion that Hulme had written “two or three of the most beautiful poems in the language.”  But If that's the case, and in consideration of "survival," here’s what I don’t get?  If this dude—Thomas Ernest Hulme—is really so freaking great, then why doesn’t anyone ever study him!?  Why didn't he write more? Why isn't he ever on a Hallmark card?  (Perhaps this should be the ambition of teacherly life.)

Thomas Ernest Hulme only ever published 7 poems.  (Any others we have were all published posthumously.)  While there are further poems of his available now, they’ve been culled from his personal notebooks or they were published not as stand-alone works but demonstrations for his literary philosophies.  5 of the aforementioned 7 were made available by Ezra Pound, as I’ve enthusiastically mentioned before.  The 6th of the 7 is more like this:

Even before reading the poem—all 8 words of it—the title alone, “Image,” tells us it doesn’t belong.  What kind of title is that?  Well, actually, as titles go, it fits the bill, making suggestion of, without giving away, the material to follow; but it’s so generic (especially compared to two other similar poems, which we’ll look at shortly, “In a Station of the Metro,” by Ezra Pound, and “The Red Wheelbarrow,” by William Carlos Williams) as to be glib.  (It is possible the title is in fact not a title at all, but a label ascribed by some anonymous editor somewhere along the line; I recently found the two lines in their original philosophical context and it, together with a companion piece (see way below), was without title of any sort.)  This poem was an experiment, yet an experiment profound enough to warrant inclusion to major literature anthologies and, less significantly, change my life.  Here they are, Hulme's third:

     In a Station of the Metro

     The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

     Petals on a wet, black bough.

     —Ezra Pound

     The Red Wheelbarrow

     so much depends

     upon

     a red wheel

     barrow

     glazed with rain

     water

     beside the white

     chickens.

     —William Carlos Williams

     Image

     Old houses were scaffolding once

     and workmen whistling.

     —T.E. Hulme

Hulme’s definition of the concept of IMAGE is this: just what the senses can acquire instantaneously via presented material.  That being the case, each of these poems is indeed imagistic—Pound’s is the most romantic, tapping directly into the emotion of a metro station, insinuating the weather and colors and thus the mood of the place; Williams’ is very localized, yet through its few words paints a picture of an entire farm, wet, green, and gray after a storm or shower; but it is Hulme’s that is the most expansive, reaching through the entire life of a house, an "old" house—one that has survived, either for its grace, its structural integrity, historical significance, or some combination thereof.  This image, more than just the house, calls also on the reader's impressions and experiences of City and the given city’s history and the surrounding buildings.  The poem took on greater significance for me when I lived in Saginaw, Michigan (as compared to having first encountered the poem in Provo, Utah), a once-great city losing its light by the plague of rotten economy, and perhaps more similar to what Hulme had in mind.  It is a city replete with blocks and blocks of old houses that were certainly once mere scaffolding and whistling workmen, then made homes with tended yards and family traffic, then subdivided for apartments, and now forgotten and moldering under dirt and ivy.

Yet this poem, beautiful as it is—or, rather, as beautiful as its image is (there is a difference  between the sign for something—here, the poem—and the referent—the image) —was not written for its own merit, but as demonstration for his definition of Image and what the potential of words may be to literally stimulate more than just eyes or ears.  There is something about the immediacy of “Image,” the poem, that brings me the smell of wet concrete, dug earth; the sound of distant construction workers’ talking and laughing and of their hammers and the creaking timbers raised in frames, then the emotional weight of the history that follows.  While this effect, for me anyway, is less with Pound’s attempt, Williams’ "The Red Wheelbarrow," on the other hand, similarly manages to prick the schema and recall a composite of all my many Midwest memories of rain and farm and all the subsequent sensory impressions right along with them.  Pound’s lack of success--more unfair than it deserves--for me is most likely due to my absence of personal history with metro, train, or subway stations.

While none of Hulme’s poetry can be reasonably labeled as “widely published” or “recognized,” there are 5 that are at least available with relatively little digging (in order of their appearance in Hulme’s Ripostes): “Mana Aboda,” “Autumn,” “Above the Dock,” The Embankment,” and “Conversion.”  Pound’s tribute was not the first publication for all these poems, but I think there’s a measure of his own artistic touch (particularly as "Autumn" was originally published before "Mana Aboda") in his order of their presentation.  This sequence is as tangible a contribution to the overall collection’s  substance as the poetry itself, and for this organization of assembly is potentially indicated Hulme’s overall philosophy, approach, and frustration (which emotion I’m less convinced was an issue, and may actually need to be replaced with boredom, as I’m learning*) with writing poetry.  The problem is that this impression may be solely evinced by the fabrication of Pound’s assemblage, not the words of his friend that fill the after-market scaffold.

***

The Collected Poetical Works of Thomas Ernest Hulme

Whatever may be the case and what may or may not have been communicated and manipulated between Pound and Hulme for the publication of the former’s book, the progression of idea and theme through the five poems is undeniable, and I mentally compare it to a ballet—the musical elements, at least, though the dancers are not uninvited.  Consider Andy Narrell’s Green Ballet.  The pieces are disparate, yet possess between them a similarity of concept, approach, and style which work together to, as they say, make the whole greater than the pieces.  Similarly, as Hulme’s work transcends the old limitations of words, so does Narrell (a humbler accomplishment, though nonetheless beautiful) transcend the old limitations of steel drums.

Before you go on, take a moment a reread the five poems, and while reading look for the following motifs and themes: beauty, mythology (and general religiosity, especially in terms of our proximity to heaven, where deity resides), and references to agriculture; as well as a general impression of whether the poem leans toward the positive connotation or the negative.

…

Conclusion?  If you were to label just one of the motifs or themes as the one most dominant, which would it be?  It would be beauty, as far as I’m concerned, and both in mention and demonstration and as it relates to God.  While its intention is vague in Ripostes (and specific only to “Mana Aboda” in its other published locations, T.E. Hulme, Selected Writings and The Collected Writings of T.E. Hulme), the prefatory sentence is significant, despite how hard it is to really "get."  I believe that Pound, if not Hulme, saw this sentence as a viable preface not just for “Mana Aboda,” but for all five poems together, and that he intended it to behave as such.  This being the case, then Beauty is definitely our dominant theme, especially considering the final poem, “Conversion,” which takes place “in the time of hyacinths,” a classic and mythical symbol for sublime beauty, and thus the opposing book end.

So what about the poems’ connoted moods?  Is beauty not an issue of the good and pleasant and happy?  On the scale from positive to negative—zero in the middle—doesn’t beauty fall, by its very nature, dominantly, if not wholly, on the plus side?

This preface, I think, is decidedly negative.  If beauty is a soldier (recalling Hulme’s military service), it merely marks time; if it’s among the realm of physics (recalling Hulme’s other dominant interest), then it makes no waves, ineffectual and impotent; if the next—a “feigned ecstasy of an arrested impulse” —well, then we need to broaden our gaze.

Remember Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his Romanticism, in particular that of “Kubla Kahn” —the very embodiment in textual form of the definition for Romanticism?  The Romantics were all about finding the explosive ecstasy of the creative process and painting it within the frame of literature.  Hulme mocks this.  (For my part, I love Coleridge, though not as much as Hulme, but if proof is in the pudding, Coleridge is the more durable.)  That ecstasy of surging poetic expression and experience—union of natural inspiration and poetical genius—is feigned!  It’s a farce!  It doesn’t really happen!  And it’s natural end, perhaps—a piece of poetry that adequately praises beauty and its eternal creator—isn’t realized.  Nor is it in Hulme's.

Why?

Well, that’s where we get to “Mana Aboda,” which contextualizes the prefatory statement and leads us into the following four.

I've talked a little about this one before.  What it comes down to is that Mana Aboda, a goddess (but more than that if you dig into here name: the celestial home or locus of godly power in feminine form), is bored with attempted poetic praise, yet, by indication of her hunching over the Earth and her mourning, appears intent on seeing what else might come her way.  Is she sad that something better hasn't come along, that the creations (her creations?) can't manage better than they do?  Interesting the Hulme chooses "Josephs" as the descriptor for all the poets, perhaps even himself.  Joseph, the stepfather to God's son on earth.  Poets will never be gods, but what of their poetry?  Is there more potential here, and that's why she mourns?  If poets may indeed be Josephs, can their poetry be sires of God?

"Autumn" departs this small religiosity and takes a more Tolkein'ish stance--bucolic and agrarian.  But God is not absent; He's never far from one of these five poems, in fact, as Hulme seems entirely bent on maintaining an upward gaze, except in "Conversion," later one.  But here, God, or the god, present as the face of the moon (and this is the Tolkein, anti-industrialization point of comparison, I think--he and Hulme were contemporaries, after all, and served in the same war), condescends and visits the man walking (Hulme? a poet? mankind?), and shows that He is everywhere--in the stars, the town's citizenry, the growth of crops and the rest of the verdure.  Put another way: God is everywhere, and we are welcome to pass through and observe, as He observes us.  But why only the nod?

Going back to the previous poem, is the nod on this evening stroll any less respectful or complete than the well-intended though menial tribute of the rose, song, or poem?  Maybe this is all the more respectful for the practical realization that any more praise is no more complete--just frilly, as though the prayer were more for the garnered respect of other poets and men, not God.

While readily apparent in the first poem, what significance there is and so easy to recognize for its exotic words, so here is the title so easy to overlook for its blatant mundanity, but a title--at least in the hands of the skilled, or attentive, at least--is never a throwaway, and here, it is the link to the overall theme of beauty unattainable.

Such is the call of any title, and the essence that elevates it from label, which is so often the case for novels.  A poem's title, and any artistic piece's title, should be a matting and frame (consider a worn wooden frame versus a lavish gilt one, and what their careful selection can do to the artwork within), indicating significance of colors, direction of eye, intended value, audience, etcetera.  But what beauty might this frame add to the poem?  "Autumn."  I think it taps into the nostalgia of the reader, and the general experience most of the Northern hemisphere has with warmth against the chill of coming winter.  More than that, well, how beautiful is a crystal clear autumn night with a great big harvest moon hanging low?

Into the next poem, "Above the Dock," it is this moon, the oculus of God, that carries the torch, though it might be said that the torch is dropped.

There are two ways to look at this entry, and I think they go hand in hand.  One is the continued ubiquity of deity, and second is the simple beauty of the image presented.  This is another poem written just after the very invention of the new poetic movement and by its inventor after all.  Looking at this image and its beauty, it persists in the melancholy of the previous two ("Mana Aboda" is obviously melancholy, but the blue of the second rests in the season, autumn--always at least a little mournful, especially at night).  The moon is "tangled," and once looked "so far away."  If the moon is again our connection to Heaven, then we lose the benevolence of the ruddy-faced farmer.  Now He is far.  And when we realize that it isn't the moon at all--God, or his eye--it's just a balloon, which distances Him even farther from us than he was.  Notice also that there are no stars this night; they've retreated with their moon, and the stars are a device Hulme uses as frequently and pointedly.  These stars, however, make their renewed appearance in the fourth poem, "The Embankment," at least by influence, if not in personal appearance.  Here we also get a second mention of the impotence of poetry.

Scanning this poem, there appear a string of allusions and references.  An "embankment" is, most simply, a wall of earth; a "fantasia" is not typically used to represent fantasy, but is a free-from musical composition (kind of like Hulme's own free-verse poetry); the literal music of the fantasia goes with the fiddles' and their finesse, though distant they are, in line 1, and no more than a lost glamor in line 2; lines 3 and 4 indicate that futility of poetry--or "poesy," an old way of saying poetry--and itself a potential symbol for the opulence mentioned in 1; and lines 5-8 are a prayer where once again we get the great, unfortunate distance between God and the narrator, and this with the addition of a nice little bit of negative connotation in "star-eaten blanket," like the stars are no more than noisome moths at the woolens.

This poem seems a lot bigger to me than the previous three.  Is it imagistic?  Yes.  The flashes of old riches and earthly comfort are visual and even audible; the prayer has a strong tactile quality to it; the emotion--a sixth sense--is stronger here than in any of the others; and the embankment itself, like an earthy sofa for the homeless--spiritually or literally homeless--against which they may rest their backs, wrapped in a natty blanket.  Such a blanket, though, is mere fantasy for this fallen gentleman.  He's lost everything, God is too far away--either because that is the nature of this capricious God, or because the man has done something to sacrifice his favor--as is the false poetics of his former life, and there is no blanket.  In this desperate moment he prays, but without hope.

So what of beauty?  I have to confess a personal preference here: this is my favorite of all of Hulme's poem.  It is also his most famous (if famous can describe any of his works).  There's a close second in "Town Sky-Line," below, though it lacks the emotional potency of "The Embankment."  What it does have is a distinct dark beauty of language; it is despair and ugliness portrayed elegantly, beautifully, which only heightens the emotion of the solitude and emptiness the man feels.

Makes me wonder what he did or what happened to him.  Makes me wonder about the possibility of autobiography.  It sounds confessional--almost.

Before we move on, look back at the progression so far:

1. an abstract look at deity and her disappointment--with unverifiable cause--and the futility of poetry;
2. it is night, cold, and there is God, present if unreachable;
3. night lingers, God has departed;
4. the thrilling nightlife has completed its course and left a casualty, who prays for the simplest comfort but is left without.

The title of the fifth appears to offer reprieve: "conversion," the word, indicates a change from one state to another.  Has the gentleman--and is this the same man from the preceding two poems? --turned his life around?  Have prayers been answered?  Is God not so far after all--drawn near by the man, or the man having drawn himself nearer God?  "Conversion" is not, I think, a return to day and a departure to another land where, perhaps, the grass is greener or the flowers more lovely.  Given the context from the rest of the suite, I believe this is a dream, which does not remove the dreamer from his physical location and predicament, except for the temporary relief sleep might offer.

This fifth contribution returns us to the abstraction of the first, and, as I mentioned before, is the foil for the mentioned theme from the preface.  But beauty here has an almost malevolent presence.  Beauty doesn't need the encased protection and offered-immortality of poets' words; beauty, loveliness, is her own eunuch--her own protector.  The narrator--the man, Hulme, all of us, whoever--walks into this dream cheerfully, expecting relief, perhaps.  And every visual cue indicates such should be the case, but the beauty is suffocating and sweeps him away, wrapping him up bodily, just his little eyes peeking out, to the final river.  While I believe that the "peeping Turk" is just for the image of it, and the Bosphorous because it's right there in Turkey, the "final river" is the important metaphor, as there are two eternal destination, each with its own series of rivers, four a piece in fact: Paradise and Hell.

I expect at this point the man awakes, but it's not mentioned.  The end is left open.  I wonder if beauty is taking her revenge on the poet for such shoddy adulation.  Here the poet literally steps into--invades--the beautiful, rather than just attempting to transcribe it, and it is indeed a trespass.  He's not permitted, and she defends herself from his uncleanness.  Note the return of the explicit female that's been missing since "Mana Aboda," and after her attack, like an immune system, the man is carried away, ignominious as the Joseph he is.  (But come on!  Is it that insulting to be only a Joseph!?)

And that's it.  "The Collected Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme."  

So, uh, therefore what?  Is there a point?  A lesson?  Or, being a collection of imagist poetry, is it just something pretty to look and think about?  

A final thought:  Hulme is not only a master technician, but an artist.  Artists tend to have statements, or a font from which they draw the necessary emotion and passion to drive their work.  These poems are indeed emotionally driven, but I don't know enough about Hulme to make any conclusion about where the emotions draw from.  I want to say this series is autobiographical, but I can't.  Maybe instead I see myself in that man of these poems who seeks God and beauty, and is left--worst case scenario--lost in a river or cold against the embankment (interesting: in "Conversion," there is a wrapping, a blanket of sorts, while in "The Embankment" it's denied him).  I certainly fall short.  I fail over and over again, and it even seems that the very beauty I seek to explore and convey in my own writing is indeed out to get me.  She is the source and object of my inspiration, and I only ever catch glimpses of her from either end--source or result.  But this, for me, is a thing separate from seeking God; while here, for Hulme, they appear to be the same, or at least closely connected.  My problem with Hulme is that by all appearance, he let frustration and hopelessness win out.  He stopped writing poetry long before his death.

Or did he just stop while he was ahead?

***

The Treasure Hunt

Tracking down Hulme has been a treasure hunt.  It started five and a half years ago with a research project assigned to my students.  One group took Hulme.  I had only two of his pieces at that point, "Image" and "The Embankment," but knew nothing else about him--nothing.  The group worked diligently but found little, only a few more pieces that only further sparked my curiosity.  For the most part, the following years were too busy to do much more than enjoy what I did have.  The last couple months, however, have seen an increase of fervor for the hunt, and it's been exciting--from "digging up" a few more pieces online, to taking my son into the bowels of the philosophy section of the BYU library to find Hulme's Collected Writings.  There's something about this quality of the unknown, the discovered, and the required efforts and adventure that make all of it--the man, his life, his art--that much more attractive.  Maybe he's really not as great as I think he is, and that's why he's so greatly unrecognized, and maybe I'll come back to all this in a few years and wonder why I was so smitten.  Maybe it was just the thrill of the hunt.

Who cares?  I've loved every minute.  His words are still electric and inspiring.  And that's the point, I think.

***

A couple additional pieces (special thanks to Sarah C., who found these HERE (scroll all the way to the bottom of the preview and get the final few poems I didn’t know even existed—exciting!) and relayed the message):

Consider the following as a foil to “Image:”

[untitled]

The flounced edge of a skirt

            recoiling like waves off a cliff.

And one more:

Town Sky-Line

On a summer day, in Town,

Where chimneys fret the cumuli,

Flora passing in disdain

Lifts her flounced blue gown, the sky.

So I see her white cloud petticoat,

Clear Valenciennes, meshed by twisted cowls,

Rent by tall chimneys, torn lace, frayed and fissured.

***

* I wish I had all these materials--the hard-to-find and expensive collections--just with me (though that would sacrifice the adventure of tracking them down).  Alas time and money are temporarily insurmountable obstacles.  There are  available sources which could give me all the information I need—and which I really want—to write a much more complete portrait of this artist—maybe my favorite artist—than anything I’m managing here.  Unfortunately, copyright laws prohibit a full disclosure of his “Selected Writings” by Google Books, and his complete writings are only available by $200 payment or regular patronage to BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library, twenty minutes away.  I am not dissatisfied, but it’s difficult sometimes to moderate my impatience for the information and materials I really want.  Selfish, huh?

***

Playlists:

Mozart and Chopin -- 

(perhaps Mozart's "Requiem" doesn't fit the effortless/dedicated dichotomy)

[Bach and Debussy]

By the way, Hulme and the other imagists believed that the cadence of poetry should not be like the measured time of a metronome or a duple versus a triple meter, but follow the cadence of a musical phrase.  Put more simply, the meter should follow the singer or the violin, not the rhythm section or, for you steel drummers, the engine room.  Ballet, not steam engine maintenance.  In their words: Pound, “Compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metaphor;” Hulme (who appears even to mock those of the carefully measured meter in metric), “It is a delicate and difficult art, that of evoking an image, of fitting the rhythm to the idea, and one is tempted to fall back into the comforting and easy arms of the old, regular metre, which takes away all the trouble for us.”

*

Special thanks to James and Devin (here) who helped me work out a couple of especially baffling passages.

Sunday Poetry III -- Matsuo Basho, A Casual Artist and Adventurer

On the Poet's Trail:

by Michael Yamashita

Nearly three years ago, back before my most cherished of subscriptions sadly expired, I read one of my all-time favorite articles in the good periodical, National Geographic.  While I have sung NG's praises repeatedly since my childhood, this particular article came together in a rarely exquisite nexus of photography, essay, and art.  Being the bugger English snob that I am (and hypocrite to boot), I've often snubbed my nose at the "poor" writing of the photographers and scientists that generally pen for the magazine (I've since humbled myself and been humbled), though I've always praised the photography.  Also, I've always been a fan of the chosen subject matter in general, being a general subscriber to Life on Earth and the weirdness it pulls out of itself.  This article, however, I'd have never anticipated of the magazine, which I've received via grandparents, parents, and, though with less consistency, my own small investments.  It's LITERATURE, after all!  Yet, somehow and if not immediately, it made perfect sense.

I'd heard of Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet and reputed father of the haiku, but I'd never read more of his stuff than a few of those three-liners in my various literature text books.  The NG article piqued my interest, however, with its scattered Basho quotations, some minor biography, and, most of all, that combination of pictures and narrative from the lucky man who got to go mirror that--well, I want to say PILGRIMAGE, but that's not what it was.  The guy just went for a walk!

The best part of the article for me was the great word "hyohakusha," which according to NG translates to "one who moves without direction," which is a travelling descriptor I've wished for myself my entire life (just imagine: me and my steel drum, one-way ticket to Italy...), but that's another entry.  I snapped out of it and thought instead of a perfect, big-assignment writing prompt for my creative writing students.

That, too, is another entry.

I found dug up a text for Narrow Road to a Far Province and was entranced.  (There's a little bit a wikipedia, HERE, but I really recommend reading the whole thing--it's THAT worth it.)  I'd quote from that very file now, however and unfortunately, somewhere along the line I lost my file for the book and since then all the good translations have been ripped from the web.  Even Google Books has only got an excerpt of an introduction!

But I did find a translation HERE, which, while being a somewhat--or apparently--clumsy translation, yet offers a decent, free glimpse into the experience of Basho's wandering (despite my gripes with the words, the website is nicely interactive and offers notes throughout the text--always nice).  Here are a few excerpted poems:

It looks as if
Iris flowers had bloomed
On my feet --
Sandals laced in blue.

*

Bitten by fleas and lice,
I slept in a bed,
A horse urinating all the time
Close to my pillow.

(I laughed out loud when I first read this one; the other translation I read was not quite so demur.)

*

I felt quite at home,
As if it were mine,
Sleeping lazily
In this house of fresh air.

Crawl out bravely
And show me your face,
The solitary voice of a toad
Beneath the silkworm nursery.

With a powder-brush
Before my eyes,
I strolled among
Rouge-plants.

In the silkworm nursery,
Men and women
Are dressed
Like gods in ancient times.

This one was written by Basho's travel companion, Sora.  He tends to be a bit wordier than his practically terse master, though at times Sora's words tend to be less frivolous--maybe he's compensating for some literary insecurity.

*

In the utter silence
Of a temple,
A cicada's voice alone
Penetrates the rocks.

*

The night looks different
Already on July the sixth,
For tomorrow, once a year
The weaver meets her lover.

The great Milky Way
Spans in a single arch
The billow-crested sea,
Falling on Sado beyond.

*

Move, if you can hear,
Silent mound of my friend,
My wails and the answering
Roar of autumn wind.

*

On a cool autumn day,
Let us peel with our hands
Cucumbers and mad-apples
For our simple dinner.

*

This is the final poem of the journey:

As firmly cemented clam shells
Fall apart in autumn,
So I must take to the road again,
Farewell, my friends.

***

Additional note:

I've always been interested in the complexities of translation.  Translating from a language so dissimilar to our own as Japanese lends particular challenges.  Check out THESE nine translations of a single passage from Basho's work.