Recent books on the New Year, Cherry Blossoms & Dirty Senryu w/ 7000+ translations by robin d gill
robin gill
Minasama,
Talk about gobusata, I think it has been a couple years since my last post to pmjs. I have many questions, as always, but In my capacity as author-publisher and publicist of Paraverse Press, I have three new books to announce first.
The 500-page “Fifth Season” (2007) has about 2000 old haiku and dozens of waka about the neglected season that once was the first. It is the first half of the shinnenbu volume of my huge haikai saijiki and covers twenty New Year themes. Blyth, despite writing well about the character of the New Year in Japan, gave it only a tenth of the space he gave to the other four seasons, perhaps because he felt the high proportion of the symbolic and culturally specific content made it untranslateable, or, at least not amenable to his treatment of haiku. Despite filling, or half-filling a large gap in translated haiku, the book has yet to be graced with a critical review. The two reviews to date are far too general to support their extremely positive and negative conclusions. Before proceeding with the saijiki, I must have some input, so if anyone here might be interested in the poetry of this Japanese dream time, please consider reading and reviewing it.
The 740-page “Cherry Blossom Epiphany – the poetry and philosophy of a flowering tree” (2007) has about 3000 haikai, all about cherry blossoms, blossom-viewing and cherry trees. Obviously, this book supplants my book with 1000 haiku about sea cucumbers as the largest collection of poetry on any single subject (will this get me into Guinness?). 65 chapters treat the viewing chronologically, phenomenologically and conceptually. I most enjoyed writing the chapters on the late-blooming cherry with the contrary notions about late-blooming as a positive/negative thing and the yae-cherry for its change of fortune from being admired to despised as (supposedly) foreign. Unless you, like I, have Shiki’s bunrui-haiku-zenshu, you will be astounded at the breadth of the haikai, which include about 50 by Sogi, which, I think, prove that, renga-shi or not, he was already writing what we call haiku today. There are scores of waka, for haikai did not invent the sakura. Like all my books, the original is always provided, not only in romaji, but as is. Harold Wright had kind words for the book in the Kyoto Journal, but it sure could use a longer, more detailed review if anyone has the energy for so large a book.
The last book, about 500 pages, has 1300 dirty senryu, the sort that Blyth could not translate for fear of the censors and Ueda would not translate for fear, I would guess, of the politically correct. It has two titles with different isbn #s because I was curious to know whether more potential readers would jump for “The Woman Without a Hole” or “Octopussy, Dry Kidney & Blue Spots” (2007). If I am not mistaken, this book will become for dirty senryu what Legman’s book did for dirty limericks. I plan to improve it, and all my books, with each edition and welcome suggestions from all. For example, I just discovered while working on a book of kyouka (one of three more to be published this year) that Izumi Shikibu had a poem on menstruation that should have at least been referred to in a chapter called “Moon Duty, or until she falls off her horse,” on the page or two dealing with the problem of being denied entry into shrines . . . You can bet there are more lacuna, even if this book treats some subjects more thoroughly than some might wish.
The content of all books is outlined and links to reviews, glosses and errata provided at my website www.paraverse.org. Books are all searchable at Googlebooks, some at Amazon. My address changed long ago and as we wait for the revised bios to appear, please feel free to e-mail me: uncoolwabin at hotmail or robindgill at gmail, both com.