The four poems presented above are from a more recent attempt at actual translation, but a part of my earlier poem-song can also appear here as a further homage:Īs the way we make love is tight like thatĪBOUT POEMS AND POETICS: In this age of internet and blog the possibility opens of a free circulation of works (poems and poetics in the present instance) outside of any commercial or academic nexus. The poem marking that time, “At the Grave of Nakahara Chuya,” appeared a few years later in A Paradise of Poets and included a fake “translation” in what I took to be his style, or one of them, that brought some of his work into the domain of popular Japanese music. In 1997, as part of an annual poetry festival in his home prefecture of Yamaguchi, I came to his grave along with a group of Japanese poet-companions, to celebrate the 60th year of his death and the 90th of his birth. Over a short lifetime, Nakahara Chuya (1907-1937) was a major innovator along lines originally shaped by Dada and other, earlier forms of European, largely French, experimental poetry. Looking up at the sky, I saw a spider web, silver & shining. They spoke a language I didn’t understand & showed emotions I couldn’t unravel. In the woods was a very strange park, where women, children & men would stroll by smiling wildly. Something unspeakable would urge me on, & then my heart, although my life was purposeless, started pounding with a kind of hope. Women were lovely objects but not once did I try to go with one. Still I enjoyed the heft of it when I would hold it in my hands from time to time. True I still had a tooth brush, but the only book I owned had nothing but blank pages. I didn’t own a pillow, much less a futon mattress. And weirdly I could only smoke them out of doors.įor now my worldly goods consisted of a single towel. I was smoking cigarettes, but only to enjoy their fragrance. The taste of honey in the air, nothing substantial but enough to eat & live from. No one around who lived there, not a soul, no children playing there, & I with no one near or dear to me, no obligation but to watch the color of the sky above a weathervane. On a wooden bridge, the dust that morning silent, a mailbox red & shining all day long, a solitary baby carriage on the street, a lonely pinwheel. World’s end, the sunlight that fell down to earth was warm, a warm wind blowing through the flowers. Straight into my eyes, like he was getting mad, Then you know what? He kept on staring at me, Yesterday, I flipped a stone over that weighed Swore that the clogs that he was wearing weren’t his.” And that was just a while ago.Ī while ago. He would laugh and tell you that the stars became him He used to think of little things that didn’t matter.” Would cut his speech up into little pieces. His eyes like water in a pond the color when it clears, His smile that didn’t look like someone living. The weird smile that he wore, shiney like brass, He walked away, he walked out from that door, Occasionally I will solicit artwork if I’m feeling inspired.Translations from Japanese by Jerome Rothenberg & Yasuhiro Yotsumoto If submitting a formal poem, please feel free to include the name of the form (sestina, quatina, prose poem, etc.).ĩ. Reprints and previously published poems are welcome.ĥ. No formal acceptance or rejection (email, paper airplane, aural hallucination) will be sent. Read Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY for one week from the date of your submission and you will find out if your poem was chosen for publication when it either does or doesn’t appear online.ģ. Include links to your website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Response time is one week via publication. If your poem doesn’t appear online within one week, consider it rejected. Send ONE poem in the body of an email to SUBMISSION in subject heading (no cover letter).Ģ.
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