I'm going to town today
For no good reason
But because I am restless
But war was, and is, never far off
I woke up today
Hearing you downstairs
Feeding the cats
But war was, and is, never far off
We both agree
This is the most beautiful fall in memory
It's the burnt orange in the late sun
But war was, and is, never far off
The colors of the foliage
Will not release me
Until the sun has set
But war was, and is, never far off
The sun has set
I am writing from the fringes
Seeing myself in a mountain
But war was, and is, never far off
"""""""".
* Ouoting Dennis Zhou from his review of Wong May's translation of Tang Dynasty poets for the 21st century.
Sometimes poetry comes easy. When I was younger I just wrote like crazy. I didn't think about getting it right because there was an urgency to my poetic. Metaphors came with their own momentum like ocean waves that, when they reached the beach or breakwater of my notebook or scrap of paper, would crash and recede to be followed by another. As I grow older, my writing is still a little like that (thank god), but, now I have my favorites -- waves I mean. I want and anticipate more of a relationship with my poetic.
And woe to the poet who has tamed the source of their inspiration.
You can't capture a wave in a photograph. Well, maybe it is possible but I have yet to see a photographer succeed in framing the energy or spirit of a wave. By the same token, you have to be careful when poems come with little conscious effort. It's easy to feel like a charlatan. I have seen poets, mostly seasoned poets, who write great stuff, but, based on the high water mark set by their best earlier work, they seem to be sleep-walking, or "painting from a photograph", or staying with the photograph-metaphor, writing for the frame. I don't want this to be me. (I'm talking about how writing around a pithy refrain, as I did in this poem, can be like "writing for the frame".)
One last thought: When Westerners write original haiku it often comes across as bad translation. That is because haiku arose from a non-Western culture. Translation of Chinese characters into English is not possible. Why would you do it? It seems like a waste of talent to me. (I believe you can glean more haiku from studying a traditional Chinese brush painting than you can from reading any English translation.) It's hard enough to be true to our own experience, our own poetic, even when we are writing in our own homegrown idiom.
(Article changed on Oct 17, 2022 at 12:11 PM EDT)
(Article changed on Oct 17, 2022 at 12:21 PM EDT)
