Frogpond 34.3 • Autumn 2011 (pdf) - Haiku Society of America

eing bound by it, how to use haiku as a tool not only for
expression but for the navigation of a life. I still read Sappho
and Homer, I still read Su Tung Po and Dante, and I still
read Bashō and Issa and Buson. These are wellspring poets
for me. Bashō’s teachings about writing are as relevant and
provocative now as they were when he was alive: “poetry is
a fan in winter, a fireplace in summer;” “To learn of the pine,
go to the pine;” “Don’t imitate me, like the second half of a
melon.” His navigation of the creative life and poverty, his
restless curiosity, his losses, even his death was exemplary,
really—Bashō’s last spoken words take the point of view
of the flies his students were trying to chase from the room.
They show how supple and compassionate a poet’s sense of
existence can be.
CE: The Ink Dark Moon, it’s been said, helped inspire what’s
become a working community of tanka writers, both in the
U.S. and in Australia. How do you see your role here, as a
poet, translator, and teacher?
JANE: I might not have published this Bashō piece at all, except
that people who’d heard it or read it in manuscript kept
telling me both that they loved the translations and that it
does bring something new to the table. That it was helpful.
That’s my hope for anything I do, though I write my own
poems outside of any hope, or intention, beyond the needs of
that particular poem and moment. I translated Bashō’s haiku
freshly mostly because I found I couldn’t use other people’s
translations for the original talk—not because they weren’t
good, just because, once you’ve done some translating, you
understand how much more intimate an entrance to a poem
that is. I am tremendously lucky that my old co-translator,
Mariko Aratani, agreed to re-join me for this project. As a
teacher of poems, I’ve been investigating the deep workings
of poetry for almost forty years now, both Japanese and Western.
I believe in the happy accidents of cross-fertilization and
that different traditions have always informed one another.
There are two essays in Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of
Poetry that talk about Japanese poetics and translation. My
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Frogpond 34:3 67