Tag literature

* sharing toys with Takuboku Ishikawa

José Angel Araguz 1 Comment

Tanka are my sad toys.

Takuboku Ishikawa

Takuboku Ishikawa (1886 – 1912) said the above statement at the end of an essay, explaining how he approached the form with the intimacy of a diary.  They were “sad” because he wrote them while unhappy – they were “toys” because they were useless to society.

This outlook is better understood within the context of Ishikawa’s short life which was burdened with illness and poverty as well as a frustrated ambition to be a novelist.  He felt his gift for tanka was useless and felt his novels and essays were of more value.  This misplaced ambition opened up in him the possibility to really give himself to his tanka.  Despite his outlook, he is known to have said that on “unhappy days…[there is] no greater satisfaction than to write tanka.” *

* luchadores, yo *

* these were my sad toys *

Since landing in Cincinnati, I have been busy revising poems and putting together a new manuscript.  In working through this notebook from two years ago I came across my notes from first reading Ishikawa’s work.  His ability to channel restlessness and desperation into short lyrics moves me to this day.

There is also that spirit, that high, of going on a good writing jag .  Ishikawa had a famous three day writing spree where he only stopped to walk through graveyards.

The  poems I wrote after reading him delve a bit into the past – into childhood – back when I would play with the toys above – little luchadores I would keep in a box under the kitchen sink.  His directness with the line – which can be grasped in the lyrics below – helped me wrestle past myself towards a clearer line.

*

excerpts from “Sad Toys” – Takuboku Ishikawa

like a stone
that rolls down a hill,
I have come to this day.

*

Fallen leaves of late autumn, destined to decay!
Following them in sympathy, I hurried to start my journey.

*

Not knowing where the wind has gone that blew it from its twig,
This stray leaf, bewildered and lost, has fallen on my sleeve.

*

her black pupils
absorbing only the light of this world
remain in my eyes

*

as boys born in mountains
yearn for mountains,
I think of you when in sorrow

*

waiting til I was dead drunk,
she whispered to me
those many sad things!

*

these poor thin hands
without power
to grasp and grasp hard!

*

bristling over the way
my moustache droops,
so like the man’s I now hate!

*

Happy drooping!

Jose

* I found some useful information on Ishikawa for this post here.

* Oregon: farewell (for now) with a few friends

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

The Act of Contrition – Sam Roderick Roxas-Chua

It’s hard to exorcise bees
you must start at a young age
and answer only to quiet things,
a hum from the television,
a wick’s last spark,
a pulse from a yolk,
study the many hues
of yellow and black,
flight pattern
and eyelash,
climb atop a hill
and offer your body
as pollen, it is not
until then, their black
bean eyes appear and
your penance begins
with its sting.

*on the road, yo*

*on the road, yo*

Me and mine are set to hit the road this weekend – so I thought I would send us off with poems by two members of the Eugene writing group, The Red Sofa Poets.

Sam’s poem above moves me in the way that it creates a mood and engages you in images – goes from the small to the epic and back again all in the language of, not religion, but sacredness.  The bees are both outside and inside the soul.

Toni Hanner’s poem below enacts the feel of a carnival ride – picking up images as it careens in its longer lines.  The pull of the line is set against the lists detailed by the speaker, the associations of which charge the poem with an undercurrent of immediacy.  In this way, the poem evokes the passing blur the world becomes in the movement and momentum of a carnival ride.

***

Carnival Ride – Toni Hanner

A dozen black tickets will cost you your shadow but weren’t you tired

of dragging it around anyway, ice box,

carbon paper, skate keys, chalk.  Hand it to the crone smoking on the corner,

ric-rac, floor wax, linoleum, hair nets, she blows

a smoke ring deftly around your face already you’re inside,

there are the girls in silver masks and here comes the ice cream

man with his jingly bells playing a tune you recognize as one your mother

used to sing, you turn to look and there she is, your mother, in her housecoat

laced with burns.  Typewriters, can of worms, chicken feed, fireflies,

and she is singing, your mother, but not that song.

*ferris is fair*

*ferris is fair*

Both of these poems were published in the first issue of Fault Lines Poetry.  The release party/reading for this issue was the first poetry event I attended upon returning to Oregon a year ago.

It has been a good year for the page and for the Influence.  We’ll be on the road for the next week.  Wish us luck!

Happy Oregoning!

Jose

* painting found here.