Robert Hass, on translations, haiku and poetry
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- In this 1996 edition of The Writing Life, Roland Flint, then serving as Maryland Poet Laureate, interviews Robert Hass, the new National Poet Laureate about translating poetry, writing haiku and commuting between Washington, D.C., and California (Hass has written taxicab sonnets, he says). Hass has translated the work of Czeslaw Milosz and Japanese haiku. He reads "The Church Yard and "A Story about the Body." Hass then reads Milosz's poem "A Confession" that he translated from the Polish. Hass also speaks of the history of haiku, and the form's "amazing clarity." He reads several haikus in quick succession to show the affect. His works include "In the Garden: A Wedding Anthology of Poetry and Prose" and "The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Busan and Issa."
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Enjoyed very much your poems and unique cadence and word choices that had an emotional impact and kept me engaged throughout.
I, too, am a poet ( I write mostly Japanese format senryu , tanka and it’s usually humorous kyoka.
~~
here are a few of each:
~~
winter night
a homeless man
asleep with the moon
~~
dry wind only whistling among the oldest stones
~~
dentist chair
the hygienist removes
my Bluetooth
~~
centuries later
issa’s snail arrives
at the pond-
frightened by Bashō’s frog
it slips in without a sound
~~
mayfly
never made it
to June
~~
**senryu and tanka can be
serious at times, exemplified by the following two senryu:
~~
cattle car-
between the slats
human eyes
~~
stutthof-
the stench of burnt smoke
from the chimneys
~~
my plasticJesus
in communion with my plastic flowers
on my car dashboard
~~
All love,
Al
enjoyed your haiku analysis and guest Robert hass reading his poems and humorous haiku.
Here’s my latest haiku:
turning
a new
leaf
**the genesis of this haiku was the result of me wanting-in these troubled pandemic times-to turn over a new leaf and make a fresh start-especially to try and change my conduct
and attitude towards others and be less judgmental. Other published haiku writers have told me that the effectiveness of my haiku was the “double entendre” which is probably more suitable to senryu ( and probably why I am known more for my senryu).
But once in a blue moon my muse will bless me with an efficacious haiku
and I’m humbled.
All love in isolation
from Miami Beach,
Florida.
Al
hope you don’t mind me sharing the following poem, one of my all time favorite meta poetic poems by a poet named “Howard Dull” titled “Suibhne Gheilt” that I recently chanced upon. When I read it, I became speechless. And most of my poetry friends consider this as one of their all time favorites.
It was published in a 1970s anthology titled “ Open Poetry” and proves that once Poetry hits you in your heart, you could be the worst nefarious scoundrel with kings at your bidding and Empires at your command but you will be transformed and never again return to your former Self.
~~
Suibhne Gheilt
1
He has haunted me now for over a year
that madman Suibhne Gheilt
who in the middle of a battle
looked up and saw something
that made him leap up and fly
over swords and trees
- a poet gifted above all others -
11
How could a proud loud mouth
who yelled KILL KILL KILL
as he plowed done the enemy
- heads rolling off of his sword -
be so lifted up
( or fly up
as those below saw it
- wings beating)
be so suddenly gifted
with poetry
and nest so high
in Ireland’s tall trees?
Is there a point
where all paths cross?
And why am I so drawn to him
that all my questions
seem shot in his direction?
“And they ran into the woods
and threw their lances
and shot their arrows
up through the branches”
What parallels could I ever hope to find -
my refusal to fight
( weaseling out on psychiatric grounds)?
my leaving my country behind?
my poetry?
“and my wife wept
on the path below. . .
Oh memory is sweet
but sweeter is the sorrel
in the pool in the path below”
I fly down every night
to eat
111
Sweeney like the rest of us would have been better off if he had never anything to do with women.
But the point of it lies hidden
in a pool of milk
in a pile of shit
for you to see
when a milkmaid smiles
Sweeney like the rest of us flies down
and when she pours the milk
into the hole her heel made in the cowdung
Sweeney like the rest of us kneels down and drinks
and dies on the horn the cowherd hid in it.
So before you have anything to do with women
remember Sweeney the bird of Ireland
lying on his back
in the middle of that path
in the moonlight.
1V
And on my way home
this morning
( my wife
waiting)
my shadow
racing up the path ahead of me
I saw something
( a black stone?)
thrown
at the back of its head
ducked
and spun around
so fast
I almost fell down
- it was a bird
flying up into a tree
V
No good could come out of this war
out of what burns in the heart of our highly disciplined
John Q. Killer as a whole village bursts into one flame -
the villagers streaming like tears
towards the forest
cover his helicopter’s blades
blow the leaves off and
and the flame towards. . .
as we sit in front of our bubbles watching our president
( whose bubbletalk no one can escape and he is a little bit
mad -calling the reporters in for an interview while he’s
sitting on the bubble having
a bubble movement) and first
lady climb into their big bubble bed an Lucy, born of
their own bubbles, crawls in between -
“ Mah daddy has so many
troubles
turning the world into a bubble
and sick of crossfire -
the cries of the women and
children flying over his head -
he stumbled down to the
riverbank and found,
the wreckage twisted around the tree
behind, his skull. . .
Noises, there are noises,
noises that can of themselves drive
a man mad -NOISES!
But last night the Stockhausen penetrated from the four
sides of the auditorium, stripping each layer of feeling
and thought until all that was left was something the size
of a nut - so tiny, so hard, so impenetrable it was alone
in the middle of an infinite space. . .
-Howard Dull
~~
ps: Howard Dull was such an obscure poet that he never published a book and ( to my knowledge) never published another poem. But OMG, this was so brilliant that in my opinion it should be read and studied at the college level.
All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida,
Al
Thanks for this interview .I admired it a lot especially Robert Hass' speech about Haiku. I read some articles for him related to this subject> I'm going to translate some of his poems into Arabic.
Brief Bio:
I’m Al Fogel born in 1945
In 2010 while on Jane Reichhold’s AHA website workshopping poems I befriended a Chinese poet who helped me perfect my Japanese format poems. I am now considered one of the leading authorities on Tanka , Senryu, and Haibun.
Here are some examples of each of my specialties. They are all Contemporary American
Senryu :
~~
thrift store purchase
inside the leather jacket
a tarnished half-heart
~
Internet argument
all his words in CAPS
hers in EMOTICONS
~
personal trainer
I grunt sweat strain
and HE gets paid
~
after the divorce
he spends more time
at the Dollar Store
~
damsel in distress
Clarke Kent still searching
for a phone booth
~
cauliflower ears-
once a contender
now boxing vegetables
~
all variety of seeds
at an Audubon sale-.
early birds welcome
~
Buddhist fortune cookie
the unfolded paper reads
“better luck next birth!”
~
sudden downpour. . .
umbrellas open and adults
run for shelter
~
sidewalk cafe
birds and people
tweeting
~
deserted train depot
a long line of tracks
leading nowhere
~~
return to my youth
lit by the tracks
of Lionel trains.
~
Tanka:
~
crowded bus
a young lady offers me
her seat
it seems like yesterday
I was offering mine
~
deserted train depot
a conductor once shouted
“All Aboard!”
now just a line of rusted tracks
leading nowhere
~~
Haibun;
~
‘Round Midnight
It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a building on Broadway --an important midtown crossroads in the heart of the Great White Way.
My uncle still talks with reverence about how -in his heyday -he would travel by rail to the corner of Lenox and walk inside to the beat of jungle music. Who knew what to expect? One night you might be listening with rapt attention to Theloneous Monk and Dizzy Gillespie the godfathers of bebop in their signature beret caps, or the Nicholas Brothers flashing their wild acrobatic spins and splits, or enchanted by the sweet taste of Brown Sugar -with Bojangles out front. And when the Bird was in flight, even the moon was not high enough.
But in 1940 the ballroom closed its doors to make way for a commercial housing development and another kind of night.
Harlem
The A-train replaced
by the Bullet
~
Atlantic City New Jersey
I had just graduated from high school
I remember stopping for saltwater taffy -as evening journeyed slowly into night. Nearing curfew, we sat on a protruded sandy enclave--holding hands, looking out at the ocean, not saying much. In the distance the
lights from an ocean liner flickered as the night kept coming on in...
first “french kiss”
under the boardwalk
“over the moon!”
~~
-All love,
Al
Thank you
These are the two most beige people on planet earth
Nice.
Buen vídeo literario.
Sigo este canal, si os gusta mi canal de poesía . Bienvenidos.
Saludos.
Muchas gracias!
Man, Roland Flint look just like James Wright. Both really good poets lost too early.