Japanese Poetry Quotes

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations - there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. ~ Santoka Taneda

Everyone calls him Blockhead
No one sings his praises
Or takes him to heart ...
That is the kind of person
I want to be ~ Kenji Miyazawa

On Hayao Miyazaki
I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."
Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?
"I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb. ~ Roger Ebert

To tell others that
It is a rumor
Will not do.
When your own heart asks
How will you respond? ~ Gosen Wakashu

Would the mountain cherry blossoms return my affection for there is no one else out here. /

もろともに あはれと思へ 山桜 花よりほかに 知る人もなし ~ Former Chief Abbot Gyoson

Pine trees rise through cloud
soar up into the blue skies,
bush clover spangled with dewdrops
sways in the autumn breeze;
As I dip cold, pure water
at the edge of the stream,
a solitary white crane
comes lolloping my way. ~ Baisao

Haiku does not express emotion from the inside out by displaying the mind of a character. Haiku builds the emotional thrust, makes the artistic statement from the outside in, from the physical world to the mind of the reader. ~ Harley King

This rootless shifting east and west
I can't suppress a smile myself
but how else can I make
the whole world my home.
If any of my old friends
come around asking
say I'm down at the river
by the Second Fushimi Bridge. ~ Baisao

The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Japanese poetry does what poetry does everywhere: it intensifies and exalts experience. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy. ~ Matsuo Basho

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear. ~ Lord Byron

I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence, what I can only describe as a sense of peace, which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry. ~ Georges Braque

The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air. ~ Henry H. Arnold

doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death ~ Inger Christensen

Pretense cannot sustain blind power. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Don't be scared to change the prince's name in your story. ~ Atticus Poetry

We
softened. and broke. and kneeled over in pain. and sang. and threw ourselves against the walls. against each other. and hid. and caved. and opened. and tossed ourselves into work. and danced. and shrank. and closed. and ate. and bled. and held on. and ignored. and accepted. and lied. and laughed. and created. and undid. and drank. and drugged. and loved something. someone. somewhere. ourselves. fiercer. and hated. something. someone. somewhere. fiercer. and swam. and rejected. and yearned. and distanced. and clawed. and touched. and some of us will disown you. because you hurt too much. some of us will have to say your name for a year. before we are able to sleep. ~ Nayyirah Waheed

Terri and her mother arrived. She was obviously a dedicated stage mother because she was loaded down with camera equipment, looking like a Japanese tourist. ~ Audrey Meadows

It is easy to suppose that few people realize on that occasion, which comes to all of us, when we look at the blue sky for the first time, that is to say: not merely see it, but look at it and experience it and for the first time have a sense that we live in the center of a physical poetry, a geography that would be intolerable except for the non-geography that exists there - few people realize that they are looking at the world of their own thoughts and the world of their own feelings. ~ Wallace Stevens

Sometimes we need a wise guide to peel back the ceiling of our lives to remind us that infinity never places any limits on our skies. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

In prose too much seems superfluous to me, in poetry (genuine) everything is necessary. Given my attraction to asceticism of the prosaic word, I could end up with a skeleton.

In poetry- there's a certain innate measure of flesh: less is impossible. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

I know certainly, for instance, it's part of the black aesthetic, the whole concept of art as business, art for art's sake, art as the competitive gesture, I connect with a very male-oriented concept of living, as opposed to, and we would call them alternate aesthetics, which include the black aesthetic, the feminist aesthetic, where art and poetry become part and parcel of one's daily living, one's daily expression, the need to communicate, the need to share one's feelings, to develop within oneself the best that is possible. And the definition of art as betterment, I think, is a mainstay of the alternative aesthetics. ~ Audre Lorde

Aikido is not ultimately Japanese: It is an art of universal truth and international significance. ~ Linda Holiday

We're all the same whoever loves. ~ Meg Flores

Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production. ~ Joseph Brodsky

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are -- an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd. ~ Tristan Tzara

The atmospheric intensity of two electric lovers is the most righteous place I need to rediscover. ~ Steven Storm

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And I was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair. ~ Emily Dickinson

Brushing a girl's hair
behind her ear
once a day
will solve more problems
than all those
therapists
and drugs. ~ Atticus Poetry

Poetry is, above all, a singing art of natural and magical connection because, though it is born out of one's person's solitude, it has the ability to reach out and touch in a humane and warmly illuminating way the solitude, even the loneliness, of others. That is why, to me, poetry is one of the most vital treasures that humanity possesses; it is a bridge between separated souls. ~ Brendan Kennelly

Poetry is play. I'd even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football. ~ Robert Frost

Japan is very cosmopolitan - it values its origins, but a world view hovers above this narrow perspective. The interest of the Japanese in their folk culture is transcendental. ~ F. Sionil Jose

The more rhymethere isin poetry the more dangerof its tricking the writer into something other than the urge in the beginning. ~ Carl Sandburg

Когда рыжеволосый Самозванец
Тебя схватил - ты не согнула плеч.
Где спесь твоя, княгинюшка? - Румянец,
Красавица? - Разумница, - где речь?

Как Пётр-Царь, презрев закон сыновний,
Позарился на голову твою -
Боярыней Морозовой на дровнях
Ты отвечала Русскому Царю.

Не позабыли огненного пойла
Буонапарта хладные уста.
Не в первый раз в твоих соборах - стойла.
Всё вынесут кремлёвские бока.

9 декабря 1917



When the red-haired impostor, fell Dmitri,
laid hold of you, you did not bow the knee.
Where is your pride, my princess? - Where, my beauty?
The rosy cheeks? the voice once wise and free?

And when Tsar Peter, coveting your beauty,
made to ride roughshod over filial law -
Morozova showed you the path of duty:
she was your answer to the Russian Tsar.

And Bonaparte's cold lips cannot forget still
The fiery draught you set before him then.
Once more now your cathedrals serve for stables.
The Kremlin's flanks will soldier to the end. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it. ~ Robert Morgan

Glossa

Time goes by, time comes along,
All is old and all is new;
What is right and what is wrong,
You must think and ask of you;
Have no hope and have no fear,
Waves that rise can never hold;
If they urge or if they cheer,
You remain aloof and cold.

To our sight a lot will glisten,
Many sounds will reach our ear;
Who could take the time to listen
And remember all we hear?
Keep aside from all that patter,
Seek yourself, far from the throng
When with loud and idle clatter
Time goes by, time comes along.

Nor forget the tongue of reason
Or its even scales depress
When the moment, changing season,
Wears the mask of happiness -
It is born of reason's slumber
And may last a wink as true:
For the one who knows its number
All is old and all is new.

Be as to a play, spectator,
As the world unfolds before:
You will know the heart of matter
Should they act two parts or four;
When they cry or tear asunder
From your seat enjoy along
And you'll learn from art to wonder
What is right and what is wrong.

Past and future, ever blending,
Are the twin sides of same page:
New start will begin with ending
When you know to learn from age;
All that was or be tomorrow
We have in the present, too;
But what's vain and futile sorrow
You must think and ask of you;

~ Mihai Eminescu

If Erik existed and lived life in despair,
We wish him to know we are here and we care. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

As flames do work and wind when they ascend,
So did I weave myself into the sense. ~ George Herbert

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams. ~ Carl Sandburg

I wish that they had the freedoms like the Japanese and the Koreans and the Mexicans and everybody else that has that freedom to come over here and play the game, because I know Cuba has a very strong baseball history. ~ Rafael Palmeiro

The world's perception of you
exists only in memories.
Give them new ones ~ Atticus Poetry

The thing about old friends is not that they love you, but that they know you. They remember that disastrous New Year's Eve when you mixed White Russians and champagne, and how you wore that red maternity dress until everyone was sick of seeing the blaze of it in the office, and the uncomfortable couch in your first apartment and the smoky stove in your beach rental. They look at you and don't really think you look older because they've grown old along with you, and, like the faded paint in a beloved room, they're used to the look. And then one of them is gone, and you've lost a chunk of yourself. The stories of the terrorist attacks of 2001, the tsunami, the Japanese earthquake always used numbers, the deaths of thousands a measure of how great the disaster. Catastrophe is numerical. Loss is singular, one beloved at a time. ~ Anna Quindlen

Spring has always been the dearest friend to me, with her voice like a feather tossed on the wind. With a tin pail of water in hand, I set out into the gardens grown in her warmth. A straw hat shields my cheek from the rosy stain of her sunlit kiss. When the work of the day is done, I find my little shelter in her embrace. ~ Erin Forbes

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember ... ~ Elif Shafak

The demons, they return to haunt the crimp in my heart. No amount of burning herbs, or magic spells and bitter potions cast the beasts away. Garlic rosaries won't
remove the black infection slowly devouring within.
Only love, perfect love, casts out the monsters and the fiends that invade like a thief in the night infecting and destroying, attempting to steal my joy. But love is life and I choose life. I choose love. Throw away the herbs, release the spells, let me swallow love's divinity. ~ Melody Lee