A New Dream Song Newly Discovered

 

A DISCOVERED NEITHER FIT FOR DREAM NOR SONG       for J.B. who killed himself jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis, MN 

                                                                                                                

 

He seemed plastered, swell - ever the person well worth listening to: his slow bronchial tenor rolling in like fog. He puff-stopped, half-swiped his brow. Adjusted coke-bottle frames. He kept notes which he then lost. “Mother said …” he didn’t complete the thought.                                        

No toothbrush near his person. One suspects his tooth despaired. One suspects him guilty of an interest in swinging. Sodom! Gomorrah! His magnificent head   he somehow tilted heavenward    so as to consider invisible gusts and cool developments in jazz.  “Play chess?”                                                                                    “I do.” [One hic two hic.]                                                                          They play on deck under blankets.                                                                     “Scholar’s mate! [Three hic.] Oh, good God, how ridiculous!” [Four.]                                                                                                                     

How plaster tenor teeth despaired Eh?     magnificent head somehow:  Huffy Henry hid the day     huffy Henry dead.

 

 

Pound: a variation of line and theme

An intricate engine for producing                                                                         bird-song & glass globes of                                                                                      Byzantium £6 per unit cost                                                                              

A Few Words on Wright's Introduction to Buson:Haiku (Tavern, 2011)

Franz Wright provides a strange little introduction to his small collection of translations based on the haiku of Buson. I say it is strange because he hardly mentions Buson at all. He refers to Basho and Shakespeare. (They were not contemporaries, though both occupied the 17^th century: Shakespeare in the first half and Basho in the second.) He refers to Dante, who ‘wandered’ his own country, as did Basho his. Wright reminds us, Dante did not do so ‘voluntarily’.

As Basho wandered – not Buson – ancient Japan (a “difficult and gorgeous country”) he used the haiku form to record experience, to function one imagines as a kind of greeting card for establishing community along the way and for making sense of living itself.  Then Basho died.

In the history of Japanese literature, Buson is a later arrival. About Buson, Wright is less than forthcoming, noting only that he was a “wonderfully gifted disciple of Basho” and left behind “a very beautiful body of work all his own.”

For me, Wright’s small collection of Buson remains much cherished to this day, as it makes the perfect companion for a cafe on a rainy afternoon.

Tavern Books:  https://www.tavernbooks.org/

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Jon Cone