From Comfort & Despair, poetry of Gary Simoni
INTRODUCTION
R.D. Laing wrote The Politics of Experience in 1967. In that work, the Scottish psychiatrist turned psychiatry on its ear when he penned his harsh and hyperbolic condemnation of the human race: "We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be."
While not the first to make such a point—Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre, Freud, and others had embellished the theme each as they saw fit—-Laing became the standard bearer for this notion within the psychiatric community. To remain sane under the weight of modern civilization was by his definition insanity. Bach was out; it was all just rock and roll.
History, it seems, supports such a dire conclusion. Even when read, history provides no panacea for the repetition of murder and mayhem. People are bought and sold. Citizens become so much collateral damage. A truism to wrap around this dim sentiment, be it true or tripe, is that you cannot control other people; you can only control yourself. And controlling one’s self, minding one’s own business, is a complicated, multifarious enterprise at best; a practice that should keep a person fully occupied and, with enough judicious application, that might even provide some relief from the worst of society’s ills. It is the anarchist’s anthem: if everyone behaved ethically and morally, there would be no need to legislate ethics and morality. This then becomes a good way to beat Laing’s rap. We are all murderers and prostitures; but we need not meekly acquiesce.
The world of arts and letters is replete with attempts to mollify or develop this conceit of Laing’s. Classicism, beyond the strict aesthetic definition of craftsmanship and control, might well serve as a means to contain human foibles, a means of containing rowdy randomness with precise form (a bucket, says Hulme, not a well). It is replete with rules and requisites, seeking order within harmony. Romanticism, on the other hand, is prone to flights of fancy, to chaos. Classicism is about restraint; romanticism is about freedom. Rarely is one sufficient. The two conjoined, blended like a good sauce, seem to suggest the path to be taken.
SKELETONS
Japanese poetry consists of many distinct forms and variations of these forms. They are all exceptionally prescriptive. Of these, haiku, a relatively newcomer, might be the most well known type. Many of the forms are over a thousand years old. The poetic explorations that trundle along in the pages of this book (Comfort & Despair) addressing themes that Laing might well recognize use three of these ancient Japanese poetic forms—chōka, tanka, and shichigon-zekku—as classic skeletons on which to hang some romantic modern flesh. The Japanese used these forms to write epics of war, erotic odes to love, and paeans to nature. The chaos of their life and times was contained in these relatively short clips in an attempt to understand the chaos.They were good enough for a few obvious truths then; and will serve equally well today.
(Two conventions that I prefer when dealing with Japanese and Chinese terms is to italicize the initial appearance of the term, and subsequently remove the italics. The second is to accept the lack of plurals in both Japanese and Chinese, and use the appropriate English form given the context.)
Waka
和歌, Japanese poem
During the Heian Period of Japanese history (784 - 1185), poets began to write idiomatic poetry in Japanese rather than classic Chinese. Initially, Japanese wrote exclusively in Chinese. Gradually, they developed their own distinctive syllabaries. The subject matter of the Heian verse was somewhat prescribed, but broad enough to introduce many new concepts to the old classic list.
In its largest sense, waka is the umbrella term that covers the entirety of Japanese poetry. More specifically, waka is the term used for those poetic forms that predate the emergence of renga or linked verse and its products, primarily sedōka and tanka. For example, the earliest classical compilation of Japanese poetry, the Man’yōshū (‘Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves.’ ca. 760), is a collection of waka. Originally labeled Yamato uta, waka began to appear in the early 7th and 8th centuries to differentiate native poetry written in nascent Japanese from kanshi, poems written in classical Chinese.
Chōka
長歌, long poem
Chōka are, arguably, the oldest form of Japanese poetry. Most historians studying ancient poetic forms date the chōka as far back as the 1st century. The word itself—長歌 in Japanese— means long (長, なが, naga) poem (歌, うた, uta); although uta also carries the meaning of ‘song’ and thus marries the recitation of poetry with chanting or singing. A contrasting form is the tanka (短歌) which translates literally to short poem or song.
The long poems were considered by most who evaluated the forms to be the most intricate and variable. They consisted of a series of katuata (片歌, half-poem; a traditional 3-line Japanese poem coupled with a 5-7-5 or 5-7-7 onji (syllable structure) which were combined to give a 5-7-5-7-7 or 5-7-7-5-7 structure. The number of lines of these poems varied, but often stretched to dozens of lines, sometimes exceeding 100 lines. Chōka can be of any length, but the most common structure is a series of three or four couplets, with each pair of lines forming a complete thought.
In addition to the alternating syllable pattern, chōka incorporated wordplay, alliteration, and other poetic devices to enhance their beauty and meaning. The form’s simplicity and flexibility allowed for creative expression while adhering to a structured framework.
The ability to write as many lines as needed within this form, made chōka ideal for the early epics from the 1st to the 13th century. Storytelling per se was rare in the Japanese language during the Waka period. Most often the Japanese poet would write epics in classical Chinese. Still, the occasional poet with a story to tell would tackle the chōka, the earliest of which can be traced back to the 1st century. It describes a battle and is 149 lines long. This lengthy verse was probably sung with the words intoned in a high pitch.
Tanka
短歌, short poem
The tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line either vertically or horizontally. A derivation of waka, these short songs are better known in English by their five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form. In the late Heian, tanka quickly became the preferred verse form not only in the Japanese Imperial Court, where nobles competed in tanka contests, but for women and men engaged in affairs both licit and otherwise. The tanka provided a brief yet prescribed form with a relatively free choice of subject matter so that it made for ideal ‘notes’ that could be dashed off and exchanged after a nightly tryst.
There is a superficial resemblance between the tanka and the sonnet, a longer poem that is written in fourteen lines. A theme is expressed over the first nine or ten couplets, then there comes a ‘turn’ of thought and the poem is resolved. Many sonnets take love and emotions as their subject as did the tanka. And the tanka also used a turn, known as a pivotal image, that marked the transition from a descriptive phrase of some image to some form of personal response to that image. This turn comes within the third line of the upper poem (kami-no-ku), with the resolution then in the lower poem (shimo-no-ku).
The brevity of the poem and the turn from the upper to the lower lines, which often signals a shift or expansion of subject matter, is one of the reasons the tanka has been compared to the sonnet. There are a range of words, or engo (verbal associations), that traditionally associate or bridge the sections. Like the sonnet, the tanka is also conducive to sequences, such as the hyakushuta, which consists of one hundred tankas.
The kami-no-ku (upper three lines) of the tanka became over time the haiku. The transition passed through the renga (also known as haikai no renga, or, commonly, as simply haikai) which was a collaborative poem with the first poet writing the initial three lines and a second poet writing the following couplet, then the first (or a third) adding a second three line poem that complimented or embellished the notions of the couplet. It was the first three lines (technically, just the first 17 onji, now known as haku—sound syllable) that were first labeled hokka; and it was not until the late 19th century that a writer named Masaoka Shiki renamed such poems ‘haiku.’
Many of the great tanka poets were women, among them Lady Akazone Emon, Yosano Akiko, and Lady Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote The Tale of Genji, a lengthy Japanese prose text that includes over four hundred tanka. Many excellent anthologies of Japanese poetry, most of which feature lengthy selections of tanka, also are available. Kenneth Rexroth is considered the preeminent translator of Japanese verse, and his One Hundred Poems from the Japanese is rightly considered a classic.
Shichigon-zekku
七言絶句
Shichigon-zekku are classical four-line poems consisting of seven kanji characters per line, commonly used in Japanese shigin (chanted poetry). They follow a strict structure of introduction, development, turn, and conclusion, typically depicting nature, emotion, or historical scenes with as much elegance as the poet can manage.
This Japanese verse form, often used by Buddhist monks, owes a certain debt to the classic Chinese qiyan jueju (七言絕句,) a form that represents ‘modern style’ poetry from the Tang Dynasty (618–907), and one that emphasized strict tonal patterns, rhyme, and concise imagery. The jueju's key characteristics are its four lines (a quatrain) with seven logograms per line with a rhyme scheme that found lines one, two, and four rhyming or, often just lines two and four. The tonality of the poem involves the emotional timbre of one’s voice as well as its pitch, volume, and pace—all the elements that communicate intent beyond words.
Only a slight difference in emphasis exists between the Japanese form and the Chinese. The Japanese poem was often chanted or sung and so were more concerned with rhyme and meter. Chinese poets used the form specifically to set a certain mood, so word choice and allusion became their critical elements. By the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279), it had become commonplace for poets to join three jueje together thematically and link them with pivot phrases. As seen in the work of Zen master Ikkyu Sōjun (1394 - 1481), the three quatrain verse had become, by the 15th century, a fixed commodity for the Japanese as well. The ‘pivots’ implied that they would turn one’s thought around and break the customary pattern of thinking, a key tenet, of course, of Zen Buddhism.
Climbing Stork Tower
登鸛雀樓
by Wang Zhihuan (688-742)
Wang Zhihuan was a Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. He is best known for his jueju “Climbing Stork Tower.” Only six of his poems survive, all of which have become classic.
The sun sets over mountains,
the Yellow River flows to sea.
To see 1000 li?
Climb the tower higher.
白日依山盡 (Bái rì yī shān jìn)
黃河入海流 (Huáng hé rù hǎi liú)
欲窮千里目 (Yù qióng qiān lǐ mù)
更上一層樓 (Gèng shàng yī céng lóu)