Re: Lilipu: The Bonsai Language

In a message dated 2003:12:31 10:41:46 AM, takatunu@FREE.FR writes:

>Viktoro will never beat THIS one: the cheesiest poem a
>conlanger ever posted on this list:
>
>I tikanga nai pamingi
>Oa kamosa somingo
>I tolonga sotoko
>I kosoti kai manoki
>Olai pisomo
>A pilomi otai pikani!
>
>(Like a flower
>Born again
>Each morning
>Between the sky
>And the sea
>Oh my country!)
    That's cheesy 0_o?
    I like it - it reads like some of those classic, moody, sentimental "far
far from home"/"livin' in exile" type Chinese poems - the kins of poems that
got ol' Ezra Pound (1885- 1972) hot for all things Sino-poetic (and Confucian)
when he was just startin' up his own Imagistic poetics. And ol' Papa Pound got
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) goin' on this kick as well... thus
beganeth the American Objectivist school of poetics...and the Brits their Vortexist
school (& naturally the lingua-playing Dutch had their version, too. Even the
Icelanders were not un-affected by Pound and Chinese-like poetics ... i.e.
_The Poetic Edda, Volume 1: Heroic Poems_ edited by U. Dronke, 1969).
    And  - tho the Beats weren't exactly fond of Papa Pound's neoFascistic
politics (or his Jewbaitin'), poets like Early Beat Kenneth Rexroth and Later
Beat Gary Snyder have many times stated their debt to Papa Pound and Pound's
Sino-kick that got them goin on their own Sino-kicks... {"get ya kicks on Route
Sino-kicks..."}
    Pound attempted to translate, or quite francaly, _trans-litter-ate_
Chinese poetry using the then-current theories of Chinese linguistics that today
literally blows chunks for their insipidness and absolutely hilarious
side-splittin' misconceptions and unresearched "facts" of Chinese language(s),
culture(s) and people(s).

    Rexroth - takin up the gauntlet thrown down by Papa Pound - actually
studied and soaked up Chinese and Japanese - the peoples, the cultures and
languages.
    His classic translations are much more than mere transliterations or
word-for-word translations. And since he was doing this in the McCarthyist era of
Commie Witchhunts and White Cultural Supremacy, he suffered for his
"race-crossing" curiousity and his poetry (like his local "Communist fellowtraveller"
Dashiell Hammett who more than suffered for his _litterature noir Hard-Boiled_
being so hardcore Far Left in subtext, i.e. _Red Harvest_, Maltese Falcon_,
etc. "...the real murderers are always at the the top of the feeding frenzy
chain's Heap  ... very rarely do you find them in quaint, sanitized upper-middle
class English drawing rooms... The Butler was just a damn patsy... ").

     To this day in San Francisco's Chinatown, the colourful old poetic farts
at the China Gardens Teahouse fondly recall Rexroth buggin' 'em with 3x5
cards crammed full of questions about everything under the Chinese sun in
Rexroth's ultra-neat _tiny-as-rice-grains_ penmanship ... and Rexroth scramblin' to
take down the answers in notes mainly written in Chinese!
    An old-timer lectured me when I was doing research on Rexroth: "Oh,
Rex-rot'!, Rex-rot he one a' dose Adop'd Son a' China, ... Don' be more o' asshol
_low gwai_ than ya already-be by say-things like-a dat rat-bastard Ireland-man
Joe MacCard'ie!!! He dar'd say eben one god-damn bad thing 'bout Mister
Rex-Rot... Un-For-Give-able!"
    A Stanford U. Grad student - quite fluent in Standard English - from
mainland China via Hong Kong said something similar along these lines as well.
    Evidently Kenneth Rexroth is like a god to some Chinese.

    In turn, Gary Snyder has done the seemingly impossible - out did both
Pound and Rexroth... Snyder not only soaked up Chinese and Japanese, he lived in
Japan for several years (nearly a decade), and he became a Buddhist and Taoist.
    His translations of Han Shan the Cold Mountain Hermit are excellent on
both the lingua-aesthetic and poetics levels, but Snyder's own poetic works are
practically that of Han Shan _being incarnated_ now as Gary Snyder (Snyder's
classic nature poems, ie the ecological haikus and work-songs in _Riprap_[1959]
_Turtle Island_ [1968] and _ Earth House Hold [1969], are like classic Chi
nese hermit poetry time-warped & transplanted to a modern American
outdoorsman/survivalist).

    A somewhat close Chinese friend of mine vociferously argues that Snyder
is actually a hairy Chinese-Tibetan who is "Passing for White" cuz he is "one
of those Paper Sons on the Run!"
    I thought he was jokin' - until I got raked - hard - with a Mantis Strike
across the face...
    "No Fuckin' Joke, man ... No Joke this, _you_... Why you not serious? You
so irritatin' at times...
:::then he preceded to nasty mumblin's - in Mandarin, under his breath -
about "those damn ever-joking Cantonese'::"
    Sheesh, there are hell'a'lot Chinese poetry fans... and each blinkin' one
o' em has their own damn opinion, theory AND blinkin' whatnot... (And let's
not eveeeen go into possibly the nastiest arguements in recorded human history:
those over the various English translation editions of the _I Ching_....)

    BACK ON TRACK:

    And, in turn, Snyder influenced one our list's "patron saints",  Ursula
Le Guin (aka "Auntie Bear-Woman", etc.)
    About  1980-ish, Le Guin even tried her hand at translating the _Tao Te
Ching_ - the Cornerstone, the Arc and the Beam of Chinese Civilization and
Culture.
    And she did an excellent audiobook version with accompanying music by Tod
Barton (Besides the then-emerging New Age and "WorldBeat" markets, she
prob'ly, quite possibly, did this audiobook version because she knows not all
Chinese poetry FANATICS in the world read English fluently... and, quite
understandably, rather not be stalked by _this_ particular peculiar breed of poetry fan
that makes the AuxLang "hardliners" and Ultra-Trekkie-Klingons look like
absolutely lovely tame company in comparision).

>(Like a flower
>Born again
>Each morning
>Between the sky
>And the sea
>Oh my country!)
en goomeelegoo (verzeeoo 2003 CE):

blum seemee
nata ree-iteraa
goozen omnee
zeeloo tweenoo
aan ozeeaanoo
OO! natee-gaiaa mee!

---  º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º  º°`°º ø,¸~->

Hanuman Zhang, Sloth-Style Gungfu Typist
"the sloth is a chinese poet upsidedown" --- Jack Kerouac {1922-69}

"Chance is the inner rhythm of the world, and the soul of poetry." - Miguel
de Unamuno

"X Natale ti regalo uno sguardo sul mondo... ti regalo..."

    "One thing foreigners, computers, and poets have in common
is that they make unexpected linguistic associations." --- Jasia Reichardt

    "There is no reason for the poet to be limited to words, and in fact the
poet is most poetic when inventing languages. Hence the concept of the poet as
'language designer'."  --- O. B. Hardison, Jr.

"La poésie date d' aujour d'hui."   (Poetry dates from today)
"La poésie est en jeu."             (Poetry is in play)
                --- Blaise Cendrars

= ¡gw'araa legooset caacaa!
    ¡reez'arvaa. saalvaa. reecue. scoopaa-goomee en reezijcloo! =

[Fight Linguistic Waste!
    Save, Salvage, Recover, Scavenge and Recycle!]

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