marlene mountain
1999
as was/is
just stuff
7/6/99
re henderson. the 2 things of his writing i appreciate the most. if he thought
westerners could write japanese haiku he could have said in japan one isn't
considered a writer of it for some 20 years. [course a lot of that poet's
reputation depends on what school of haiku and one's teacher/master.] then
he could have said that we would have to at least double that time of study/writing
and study japanese for 20+ years and the people/culture not in theory but
as they live in the raw. etc etc. instead he said we would have to find our
own haiku. one of those brilliant duh statements which unfortunately fell
on westerners as a dud. because of western romantic notions of the japanese
arts. not as a dud to all poets of course but the mainstream/beginners/school
teachers who have to have rules or it's not art. hence: japaneasy haiku and
the translations trap. another dud are the emotions he said existed.
i had many an argument w/john that the martial arts ikebana archery etc were
on a par w/haiku. that it was the discipline of thought/no-thought and all
that after 20+ years which ran thru them equally. given his eng/amer lit background
he couldn't grasp that. the elitism of writing/'art'/'poetry.' he always said
i was nuts. one such argument when tadashi was here in '76 or '77. tadashi
was mum but i cried i was so frustrated when the ugly american slammed out
of the room in anger. big haiku little archery etc. [even tho i recently said
checkers/chess not an art i knew why you said bs.]
i was tho quite disappointed when henderson sold out and developed a wordsworth
type definition of nature [capital n; i still gag when i see it] combined
with one of the worst patriarchal constructs--duality--with bill anita whomever
for not only hsa but for the english dictionaries of the world. jeez. now
it's in big b & w in fp. i can hardly open the mag.
and senryu--i can't say enough bad things about that definition.
the other wonderment of henderson is the inclusion of literal translations
eg
issa's [as for] dragonfly's face mostly eyeball/s
something like that.
there's the big clue--literal translations.
however the first editor of fp lili tanzer [one of the 2 best editors but
seemingly lost in the shuffle for big haiku-people prominence/ego] had a great
feature. 3-4 'scholars' of japanese and haiku provided word-for-word literal
translations and a 'poetic' translation. all of them doing such with the same
haiku. a different haiku the next issue. another eye-opener as the literals
were often rather different thus differing haiku. course this is true of translations
anyway. but in haiku it seems very crucial for all those lessnesses and moods
and such.
this and many other things japanese i thought thru alone as best i could.
tho nothing prepared me for thinking as/in female. that huge personal bang
on the head along with reading/seeing a few women's contents/expressions/forms
etc and learning of the world's abuse of women and seeing thru the patches
have caused my had-about-as much-enlightenment-as-i-can-stand. as much of
a ' reality check' as i can manage. if i wanted peace/contentedness i certainly
would try to dump this stuff from my mind but i can't/don't want to. it will
have to leave on it's own. whether it leaves it's broadened my views/life/art/mind.
contrary to what the outsiders think--that i'm stuck out in 'no-man's land'
with a narrow content. ha--more ha's than anyone has ever put together. i
feel privileged this happened to me. in spite of the huge difficulties it's
caused in my life esp w/mother and brother. disgust from john cor et al.
'lucky me a freak of mother Nature.'
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