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21/05/2005
Books & Poetry: "The Ink Dark Moon", "Of Gravity & Angels", "A Long Rainy Season"
Today I received three new books - Poetry.
Last week, I discovered Izumi Shikibu.
Beautiful...
I was so impressed by her that I decided to get whatever she had written.
In the end, the only book I could order was The Ink Dark Moon, with love poems from Izumi Shikibu and Ono no Komachi.
Shikibu is...is...Let me use the words in the introduction:
"intimate, lyrical, and deeply moving...
...illuminates certain areas of human experience with a beauty, truthfulness, and compression unsurpassed in the literature of any other age"
Like that!
I recommend this book wholeheartedly. The precission and compression Shikibu shows are simply unsurpassed, second to none. Really!
It contains probably the most deeply touching love poems I have ever read, perhaps only comparable to those of Emily Dickinson.
Maybe only Neruda can approach both women, and only in the original spanish... English translations just don't get it. Must be really difficult to translate this guy
...
I was so touched by Shikibu's poems, that I wanted to know who the translator was...
It happens to be Jane Hirshfeld. Knowing how difficult it is to translate poetry, I thought that it would be interesting to investigate further about the translator ^^
Well, Hirshfeld happens to write poetry too...
..and this takes me to the second book, Of Gravity & Angels.
While I havent' completely read it yet, I have to say that I liked some of the poems there.
Looks promising ^^
...
The third book, A Long Rainy Season, is about contemporary japanese women's poetry. Tankas and Haikus.
After a quick look, I don't like it as much as the other two.
Anyway, there are some interesting poems there:
I have to confess that, right now, most tankas and haikus are a bit impenetrable to me.
...
All said and done, everybody should run, not walk, to Amazon, and buy The Ink Dark Moon... now.
^^
Last week, I discovered Izumi Shikibu.
...
this world exists
as a sheen of dew on flowers
Beautiful...
I was so impressed by her that I decided to get whatever she had written.
In the end, the only book I could order was The Ink Dark Moon, with love poems from Izumi Shikibu and Ono no Komachi.
Shikibu is...is...Let me use the words in the introduction:
"intimate, lyrical, and deeply moving...
...illuminates certain areas of human experience with a beauty, truthfulness, and compression unsurpassed in the literature of any other age"
Like that!
I recommend this book wholeheartedly. The precission and compression Shikibu shows are simply unsurpassed, second to none. Really!
It contains probably the most deeply touching love poems I have ever read, perhaps only comparable to those of Emily Dickinson.
Maybe only Neruda can approach both women, and only in the original spanish... English translations just don't get it. Must be really difficult to translate this guy
...
I was so touched by Shikibu's poems, that I wanted to know who the translator was...
It happens to be Jane Hirshfeld. Knowing how difficult it is to translate poetry, I thought that it would be interesting to investigate further about the translator ^^
Well, Hirshfeld happens to write poetry too...
..and this takes me to the second book, Of Gravity & Angels.
While I havent' completely read it yet, I have to say that I liked some of the poems there.
Looks promising ^^
...
The third book, A Long Rainy Season, is about contemporary japanese women's poetry. Tankas and Haikus.
After a quick look, I don't like it as much as the other two.
Anyway, there are some interesting poems there:
First calligraph of the year -
too much force
in my brushstroke.
The first laugh
of a baby's life,
made without sound.
- Teiko Inahata
All the butterflies in the field
I hide
in my breast.
Wheat -
with such certainty
we assume death completely yellow.
- Kiyoko Uda
I have to confess that, right now, most tankas and haikus are a bit impenetrable to me.
...
All said and done, everybody should run, not walk, to Amazon, and buy The Ink Dark Moon... now.
^^
00:20 Posted in Blog , Books , Poetry | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this