Machi Tawara's "combination of old and new" language made me think of how a translator chooses to decipher a poet's intentions with language. With our readings on Japanese poetry this week, I also wondered how colloquial use of language may, or may not, translate across languages and, ultimately, across cultures. Translating short poems might also present challenged in its length, especially in considering haiku. Coupling that with the intricacies of colloquialism, translating these poems may have had its unique challenges.
Similarly, reading Matsuo Bāsho's hokku, it's clear how limiting translating these pieces may be due to both each lines very short nature, and the overall poem's brevity. I can imagine some ideas not being transmitted across languages in the same way it was written. As an aside, I enjoyed the footnotes with background on each hokku.
Yosani Akiko wrote four hundred tanka written in classical tradition, "Disheveled Hair," though seen as controversial for its contents. Akiko compares the speaker's disheveled hair to a butterfly, signifying the disheveling of the tanka form into a feminist form, at least in these tanka, and a metamorphosis. It's interesting to think not only about the controversies of Akiko's poems due to their feminist rhetoric, but also how that works in a known traditional form. Although I'm not familiar with early 20th century Japanese poetry, I assume there may have been less traditional forms at the time, more accepting to images of female desire and passion. Additonally, I wonder if tanka, or other Japanese forms, were male-created and male-dominated, as we can see in early American literature.
Also in the 20th century, Sato writes, "I slip off / my flowery kimono / uncurl rainbow of laces." This poem, similar to Akiko's, talks about an undoing (uncurling), possibly signifying time for a change. The metaphor advocates for a social reform in how women were perceived at the time, perhaps even in how poems by women were interpreted.
- Hanan Akbari
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