through which a frog slips away
into water's sound.
Meh. 5-7-5 again. Must be the formal poetry packet I just handed out to my students that's keeping me so rigid these days.
No, dirty mind, not that packet!
3.31.2009
3.30.2009
3.29.2009
Day 31
The old pond a space
for a frog to leap into,
for water to sound.
A bit more of the traditional kindy-garteny 5-7-5 style. This one perhaps more successful than the previous...
3.28.2009
Day 30
Pond yawns,
frog leaps in
water sounding out.
Taking a note from yesterday's funning around.
Also realized that I've blown the numbering of all the days, and will have to remedy that at some point in the future.
But then, aren't we always fucking up the numbering of all our days?
3.27.2009
Day 29
Off-the-wall pompilid--
Friulian jubilates except
Watcheye's soul brother.
Played the Oulippian n+7 game this afternoon... Except I also adj+7'd, prep.+7'd and v+7'd.
Seriously, you expected maybe 365 translations that I can't have any fun with?
Day 28
Fur ice yaw
karamu tobikomu
Maze no too
Here's what spellcheck thinks of Basho. I do like the "yaw"
3.25.2009
3.23.2009
3.22.2009
3.21.2009
Day 24
the old pond--
frog sprung into
water's sound
In "yesterday's" post, I caught onto the idea of "springing," which may or may not be available in the Japanese, but the way the spring and old meet up against each other creates an enjoyable premonition and admission of the surprise in the last line. I have to admit, though, my personal imagination of the pond is a humid, midsummery one...
Day 23
old pond--
spring frog
water sound
My first fully missed day, and the first day of spring, to boot. Anyhow, in honor of the equinox...
3.20.2009
3.18.2009
Day 21
Here by the old pond
a frog suddenly leaps in--
to water sounding.
5-7-5: see? Overdone. But that's the business of this blog, no?
3.17.2009
3.16.2009
Day 19
The old pond's
frog leaps in
water's sound.
Why not two possessives? Can't the pond, as central fact of the poem's occasion, be the source and the generation of the water's sound as well as of the frog? The environment--i.e., the larger locus of the poem's activity-- may very well be the source of this poem's meaningfulness, so I thought I might give the sound it's generative location in the pond itself. I do dig the enjambments quite a bit, whatever the case may end up to be.
3.15.2009
Day 18
Full, rude, ick, yet--
call what zooms toy boat coming
amazing;--no, all told...
Listening to Raoul Hausmann while cleaning up after Peter's 11th bday party, while doing laundry, while doing dishes and sweeping/mopping, which spurred me to a homophonic translation tonight. I was intending to head this way one of these days (though, at the tender young age of Day 18, it impresses upon me the breadth of this project--where the fuck else do I go from here?!?!).
I do like--quite a bit--the "Full," the "zooms" and the "no." The fullness of the pond seems to be a given in the original, but the insistence gives the poem new possible directions. "Zooms" is particularly fun--the idea of the frog's speed involves itself in there. The "no" is a bit more problematic, yet still fascinating. The idea that the frog has nothing to do with the sound is given a certain English-y force by fact of the "no"--which suggests that we (The Readers) are wrong in our assumptions of the splash being the product of frog against water--the sound is instead (and correctly, I believe) the water's.
More homophonic shit at later date(s), I'm sure.
3.14.2009
Day 17
small grove's
pond--
a frog's leap then
water's sound
Embellishment, yes. Yet this is my imagination of the pond, and why not allow it in?
3.13.2009
3.11.2009
3.10.2009
3.09.2009
Day 14
An old pond in which
a small frog leaps--
water sounds.
h/t to my first commenter, who pointed me to a discussion of kaeru/kawazu. Kawazu may mean the itty-bitty Kajika frog (so cute!). Thus, "little" may make a necessary entry into the poem.
I have to admit, though, I'm not so into the indefinite articles--they're too amorphous, which distracts from the directness of the original, of its tender force.
3.08.2009
Day 13
Small old lake
in which
a frog jumps
stirring water.
Dear, dear Oppen and his tremendous "this in which". It's the small nouns, crying faith, always, but there is the need for the adjectives from time to time as well. Here I'm aiming for Oppen's precise distractedness, his sense of p.o.v. as a perpetual variance, as multi-faced and -faceted.
I also like the isolation of that prep. phrase on one line, which makes use of the English force of the preposition (placed before its modify-ee) as a substitute for the cutting ya of the original.
The "stirring water" was unpremeditated, since I came upstairs from doing laundry and realized I had an entry to enter. It spilled out as I was typing it and I like it.
"In which" or "into which"? The "in which" suggests the pond as a presence, as a mode of current with-ness--the frog in this construction is a force co-terminal with the water, with its habitation. "Into which" places the pond in a relation of progressive change, highlighting the frog's amphi-beingness, and brings about an awareness in the reader as well--we're living (and leaping) continually in (and into) various circumstances. Is there a word that might suggest both? See--this is exactly why I wanted to take on this project--to consider the intensity of language in its smallest particulars. I'm digging this shit.
And why is "which" such a strange looking word?
Also, I've been thinking about why kawazu rather than kaeru--I thought that kawazu might just be a sort of archaic form of "frog," but it turns out that they're both in my Sanseido dictionary, and, what's more surprising, they share the same kanji. ???
Oh yeah, and the "small old lake" bit--there's no flippin' way I'm going to use the word "pond" 365 times in a row.
3.07.2009
Day 12
old pond
jump frog
water splash
Okay, so yesterday's was pretty shitty, but it did get me thinking about the rhythmic structure a bit more, particularly the roll of the original into that final mizu no oto. The verb/noun symmetry from yesterday's disaster allows a see-sawing aural motion, one that I trust puts the balances of Basho's pond into view. The (unindicated) viewer and the viewed and the delicate balance between the two of them in a silent grotto are troubled into language by the quiet breakage of silence as the frog slips into mizu no oto. Maybe this attempt gets somewhere near that taut wire of attention, where the odd imperative (or what might also be simply the juxtaposition of activity and object) "jump frog" strikes the wire and "water splash" sends the ripples of sound (and awareness of sound) out toward the reader/viewer.
3.06.2009
3.04.2009
Day 9
The old pond--
a frog's leap
sounding water.
Still luxuriating in the mizu no oto of the original. Here I'm trying to capture the sudden simplicity of the last line, wondering if the variousness of "sounding" might approach such an opening of awareness.
3.03.2009
3.02.2009
Day 7
mold pond--
frog hops through
water's sound
h/t to my son Pete, who overheard Ann and I last night talking about the first line, and he pipes up "mold pond?" Which was fortuitously misheard, really, since I'd been trying to figure out how, exactly, I might communicate the imagination I had of Basho's pond. It's a quiet space (quiet enough, naturally, for the quiet sound of water to make itself heard), shaded with filtered sunlight at certain slants, humid and cool, mossy and moldy, etc., etc. It's important to allow the reader access to that space, I think, since Basho's circumstance would have been very local and very particular, and, too, would have relied upon his audience's knowledge of that locality and that particularity. Translation is, as Bottom the Weaver lets us know, a transportation, and I'm curious and zealous enough to transport myself to Basho's pond, to that Japanese coolness and humidity, that sanctified habitat of Basho's eye and ear. There needs be indication of that foreign locale, both the linguistic (mizu no oto) and the specific (the moss, the bamboo, the surround of environment). "Mold" might not be a perfect vehicle, but I'm damn glad to have a son around to eavesdrop--it's gotten me thinking in new lines.
Also! The troubling western connotations of "leap" (i.e., Kierkegaard; i.e., faith and all) tend to leach into the Japanese tobikomu (which, I'm discovering, has its own strange etymology [?? does one call the combinations of kanji "etymology"? See--told you I'm no Japanese scholar...]). Hmm. Maybe I'll have to chat with someone who knows what it is I want to talk about... Still, I've got issues with "leap" anymore, but don't like "hop" or "jump" much better.
(Slip?)
3.01.2009
Day 6
an old pond
frog hops in--
plop
Well, Mr. Patton, I've gone and done it: "plop" it is. And at first I thought it might be worse than yesterday's Latinate edition, but now I'm not so sure. All them o's in there are sort of nice. And you know me--I'm all good with the onomatopoeic. Cf. Keroac's translation of the Pacific at Big Sur: "Ker plotsch-- / Shore--shoe-- / god--brash--". Perhaps I'll have to borrow that Kerouacky "Ker plotsch," which, as Ann notes, is sort of the sound of a plunger leaving a toilet, or, maybe, the sound of water being quickly and variously displaced (by frog, ocean, plunger, etc.).
I think the "hops" is what works for me here--there's another translation that has "plop" in it somewhere, but I forget whose.... The "hops" give the whole poem a complete sonic direction towards that final occasion of the frog slipping under the surface.
Ooh, also nice is the sole non-o in the poem, the i of in, which provides a sort of aural compliment to the ya of the original.
Okay, I'm kinda cool with this one now.
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