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?

Day 20

Old pond-- 

green frog leaps in

water's sound.

Good old Matty O'Basho.

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.

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.

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?

Day 16

quiet pond--

a frog slips in

the sound of water

Old pond here

a small frog leaps into it.

Water sounds.

What can I say? It's late and at least the second line has seven syllables, if anyone's counting.

pond

frog

slurp

Dialing this mo' fo' in.  It'll happen again, don't you worry...

This old pond--

a small frog leaps in

water sounds.

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.

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.

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.

Day 11

age pond

jump frog

splash water

See Pond age. 

Age, Pond, age!

Man. This one really sucks.

Day 10

The age of this pond--

frog leap

into water.

Hum. "Arachne... go spin on that tent rope." 

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.  

Day 8

an old pond

a frog-leap

splashes

Meh. 

Some days are like that, no?

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?)

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.

Day 5

antiquated pond

amphibian leaping in

aquatic sounding

And that's even worse... Basho done by the SAT. The sounds are lovely (the repetition of the t sounds, the a's, the p's in "pond" and "leap" rhyming with the b in "amphibian"), but those words don't sound right to the English ear, unless you're a pretentious shit. Plus, they're just not accurate--"antiquated" meaning something like "obsolete" (and I can't imagine Basho understanding a pond in the way we understand computers), and amphibian referring to much more than the species kawazu. 

I was contemplating trying to translate the poem into Latin. Since our latinate English words seem most closely to approximate the syllable length of the Japanese, I figured they'd sound more natural and less hoity-toidy in Latin. Then I thought it would be even more hoity-toidy to translate it into Latin.

Day 4

At the old pond's side

a frog slips away into

the sound of water.

See? 5-7-5 is just too much room for our Angl0-Saxon words to wiggle around in. The prepositions are unnecessary and overdone--they focus us too much on the moment, a HUD of poetic attention. And that "away"--ick, so much metaphysic in that word. Again, as well, the trouble with the articles--should any of these activities and objects be definite? Or indefinite? Or is the indeterminacy the key of the original (this frog here, and also all frogs at all times everywhere)? 

And finally, ugh, the syntax ("the arrangement of the army") puts us into a lockstep lemming-like march to that final period, where we all plop in with the frog, only we can't breathe underwater...