What I count on is a white birch that stands where no human language is ever heard.
This semester, I took a class in Western poetry, specifically, "Love Lyrics in the Western World". From Sappho to (so far) Charlotte Mew, I've been getting a steady diet of the best that Antiquity and Anglophone countries have to offer. Sadly, the course has been limited for the sake of time and material to poets of the English speaking world, and so we have missed out on Baudelaire and other greats, except in passing. Apart from that minor complaint though, I greatly enjoy the course. It's significantly contributed to my knowledge of Western poetry, and I've developed an even greater appreciation for some old favourites, such as dear Percy Shelley. It not only refined my understanding of many a previously inscrutable poems, but it's helped me appreciate my own literary heritage as a product of Western culture. Whether or not we're erudite individuals, our poetic traditions plays a role in shaping our outlook on love. Who is unfamiliar in America with, "How do I love thee, let me count the ways...." or "My Mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"?
However, today on a whim, I decided to look up one of my old favourites from studying Japanese poetry, my original love and passion. I searched for the poetry of Yosano Akiko, a famous Japanese anarcha-feminist pacifist social reformer who used her poetry as a vehicle for her own tumultuous emotions and expressions of desire for both love and social change.
What a revelation! It was like coming home after a long journey abroad. As I read her delicate, spider-web like threads of musing and sorrow, I felt a tug in a way reading Shelley or Wordsworth never brought about in me. Her poems are characterized by being simultaneously classical in the Japanese sense, and yet very modern and candid. While I am often bogged down in the structure and elaborate wording of Western poets, Yosano's simple poetry, as a human as a woman, presses its icy finger to my neck and does not let go until the chill reaches my heart.
I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, this made me realize that regardless of my heritage or my gradual move away from the study of literature in favour of law, the poetry of Japan will always play an integral role in my life, whether I realize it or not. There's wisdom in them, wisdom which touches my warm skin to make my hot blood surge.
However, today on a whim, I decided to look up one of my old favourites from studying Japanese poetry, my original love and passion. I searched for the poetry of Yosano Akiko, a famous Japanese anarcha-feminist pacifist social reformer who used her poetry as a vehicle for her own tumultuous emotions and expressions of desire for both love and social change.
What a revelation! It was like coming home after a long journey abroad. As I read her delicate, spider-web like threads of musing and sorrow, I felt a tug in a way reading Shelley or Wordsworth never brought about in me. Her poems are characterized by being simultaneously classical in the Japanese sense, and yet very modern and candid. While I am often bogged down in the structure and elaborate wording of Western poets, Yosano's simple poetry, as a human as a woman, presses its icy finger to my neck and does not let go until the chill reaches my heart.
I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, this made me realize that regardless of my heritage or my gradual move away from the study of literature in favour of law, the poetry of Japan will always play an integral role in my life, whether I realize it or not. There's wisdom in them, wisdom which touches my warm skin to make my hot blood surge.