Indigo: Tanka Poetry (English and Japanese Edition)

<p>INDIGOに寄せて 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　ドナルド・キーン 日本人は千年以上も前から短歌を詠んできて、その間他の詩歌が新しくできても短歌はいつも特別な地位にあった。時代が明治になると、日本の詩人の大部分が西洋の詩歌の影響を受け、三十一字しかない短歌は、瞬間的な感覚の記録以上に表現できない、と考えられるようになった。しかし、反逆者として有名だった石川啄木は、短歌を軽視した詩人たちに次のように、短歌の持つ独特の価値を伝えた。 "一生に二度とは帰って来ない命の一秒だ。おれはその一秒がいとしい。ただ逃がしてやりたくない。" そして、啄木は幾分か皮肉に、 "歌という詩形を持っているということは、我々日本人の少ししか持たない幸福の一つだよ。" と結論している。 　啄木は伝統的な三十一字の文字数を守ったが、三行に分けて一行の長さをより自由にし、それは西洋の詩歌のように劇的な効果を生んだ。 　北久保まりこのINDIGOの短歌とその英詩もまた、千年以上前の伝統と極めて新しい知覚とを合わせ持っていて、実に読み応えがあった。短歌は古今集と同じように、五，七，五，七、七の模範があり、言葉や語句の多くは現代の日本語ではなく文語である。しかし、内容は現代人の心から湧き出たものに違いない。私の特に好きな短歌は音としても印象的である。 蛾の影のふいに大きくなりゆけり抗ひがたき抱擁ののち ga no kage no/ fui ni ookiku/ nari yukeri/ aragai gataki/ houyou no nochi suddenly the shadow of a moth growing larger- after an embrace difficult to resist 先ず、言葉が多少日常的ではないが、歌には現代的な雰囲気と感性が香っている。また、英詩の方により顕著だが、言葉や語句の間に存在する空間が多様性を感じさせる。 最初の言葉に読者は驚くだろう。蛾という虫は歌には稀であって、蛾そのものが嫌われ避けられているが、西洋の詩では、蛾はいつも灯りを探し求めるが故、詩人にとって常に好ましく近しい存在だ。この短歌には、このような二つの意味が、同時に美しくこめられているようで忘れがたい。 --Donald Keene</p>

Indigo: Tanka Poetry

Literature & Fiction

Kitakubo, Mariko

Poetry

Shabda Press

<p>"The Japanese, for over a thousand years, have composed the tanka and considered it their most important form of poetry. In the nineteenth century, the spread of European poetry induced many Japanese poets to doubt that a poem in only thirty-one syllables could be anything more than the record of a momentary sensation. Ishikawa Takuboku, though famous as a rebel poet, answered the doubters, "Although a tanka may last only a second, it is a second that will not return again, no matter how long one lives. I believe that such moments are to be cherished, I do not wish to let them escape." He added somewhat cynically, "One of the few blessings that we Japanese enjoy is having the tanka." Takuboku retained the traditional thirty-one syllables of the tanka but divided them into three lines, instead of the traditional single line, giving the form greater dramatic possibilities. The poems of Mariko Kitakubo, both in Japanese and in English, contain a combination of the thousand year old and the most modern. Her Japanese poems have the traditional number of syllables and the English poems are divided into five lines as in tanka: ga no kage no/ fui ni ookiku/ nari yukeri/ aragai gataki/ houyou no nochi suddenly the shadow of a moth growing larger- after an embrace difficult to resist The Japanese poems are in ancient, not modern speech. But the division of the poems into two sections in the Japanese and five in English makes the poems seem strikingly modern. Mention of a moth, an insect appealing to English poets but shunned by Japanese poets, may seem to separate the two worlds, but the embrace brings them together." ---Donald Keene "Mariko KItakubo's sixth book of tanka is a masterpiece of disquiet and profound yearning. It's poetry speaks to the human condition in an era that has just begun to understand, and attempt to divert and remedy, a ruination that evidence shows mankind itself has inflicted on the planet. Indigo leaves us gazing with longing upon our own disappearance into the existential drifts of time and materiality. Kitakubo writes, "my motherland / will be a coffin / of the stormy wind" and points to "the light rain / of radiation" to show us how "history is settling / in the bottom of the river." She sees herself as "an infinitesimal / splash in the dust" and outlines in images of stark finality a vision of sunflower seeds and a people-less planet "after the dream / of civilization." Here is poetry that steps with courage and passion into the forum of ideas and the enormous issues of our day. Kitakubo's mastery of the ancient tanka form gives to her testament in Indigo the perspectives of personalized history and the high art of a compelling literary tradition. My congratulations go to Shabda Press for publishing this first edition of a work so worthy of universal value and wide readership. May the voice within us all find equal resource, principle, and kinship." ---Michael McClintock, President, Tanka Society of America (2005-2011) and author of "The Tanka Café" in Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal. "From floating lanterns at Hiroshima to the unstoppable petal storm of cherry blossoms, Mariko Kitakubo's vivid imagery tugs at the full range of our emotions-from the horror of war to the joy of a new love, from redwood forests to dreams of Betegeuse, Indigo is a highly recommended journey you will never forget." ---Deborah P Kolodji, California Regional Coordinator, Haiku Society of America</p>

Distance

Kolodji, Deborah P

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