John Gould Fletcher

“ As swaying pines.
The wind tosses hers
In circles
That recoil upon themselves:
How should I love—as the swaying or tossing wind?
[31]
Kurenai-ye or "Red Picture"
She glances expectantly
Through the pine avenue,
To the cherry-tree summit
Where her lover will appear.
Faint rose anticipation colours her,
And sunset;
She is a cherry-tree that has taken long to bloom.
[32]
A Woman Standing by a Gate with an Umbrella
Late summer changes to autumn:
Chrysanthemums are scattered
Behind the palings. ”

“ Therefore let us conceal them behind the words we have chosen. Our definition of poetry would then become that of Edwin Arlington Robinson, that poetry is a language which tells through a reaction upon our emotional natures something which cannot be put into words. Unless we set ourselves seriously to the task of understanding that language is only a means and never an [17] end, poetic art will be dead in fifty years, from a surfeit of superficial cleverness and devitalized realism. ”

“ Two vowels together must never be sounded as a diphthong, and a long vowel counts for two syllables, likewise a final "n", and the consonant "m" in some cases.
This method of writing poetry may seem to the reader to suffer from serious disadvantages. In reality this was not the case. Contrast it for a moment with the undignified welter of undigested and ex parte [12] theories which academic prosodists have tried for three hundred years to foist upon English verse, and it will be seen that the simple Japanese rule has the merit of dignity. ”

“ There is no flower more beautiful
Than the wild violet."
The wild violet, scentless, growing hidden and neglected among the rocks of the mountain-road, suggested to Bashō the life of the Buddhist hermit, and thus this poem becomes an exhortation to "shun the world, if you would be sublime."
I need not give further examples. The reader can now see for himself what the main object of the hokku poetry is, and what it achieved. Its object was some universalized emotion derived from a natural fact. Its achievement was the expression of that emotion in the fewest possible terms. ”

“ These prints, made and produced for purely popular consumption by artists who, whatever their genius, were despised by the literati of their time, share at least one characteristic with Japanese poetry, which is, that they exalt the most trivial and commonplace subjects into the universal significance of works of art. And therefore I have chosen them to illustrate my doctrine, which is this: that one must learn to do well small things before doing things great ”

“ The only part of it that we Occidentals could not accept perhaps, with advantage to ourselves, is the peculiarly Oriental insistence on an odd number of syllables for every line and an odd number of lines to every poem. To the Western mind, odd numbers sound incomplete. But to the Chinese (and Japanese art is mainly a highly-specialized expression of Chinese thought) , the odd numbers are masculine and hence heavenly ”

“ Of wine cups and compliments and kisses of the two-sword men.
And of dawn when weary sleepers
Lie outstretched on the mats of the palace,
And of the iris stalk that is broken in the fountain.
[24]
Court Lady Standing Under a Plum Tree
Autumn winds roll through the dry leaves
On her garments;
Autumn birds shiver
Athwart star-hung skies.
Under the blossoming plum-tree,
She expresses the pilgrimage
Of grey souls passing,
Athwart love's scarlet maples
To the ash-strewn summit of death.
[25]
A Beautiful Woman
Iris-amid-clouds
Must be her name. ”

“ Zen Buddhism, as Bashō practised it, may be called religion under the forms of nature. Everything on earth, from the clouds in the sky to the [14] pebble by the roadside, has some spiritual or ethical significance for us. Blake's words describe the aim of the Zen Buddhist as well as any one's ”