Spring, the metro, and the east

Spring, the Metro, and the

East

The Influence of China and Japan on Modernist Poetry

Chan Buddhism “A devout Buddhist… d[oes] not view

nature from an outside perspective; rather, he [is] himself a part of nature.”

Chan/Zen Buddhism shunya ("void") “As space is to substance, so is silence

to speech” "Anything you can omit that you know

you still have in the writing and its quality will show. When a writer omits things he does not know, they show like holes in his writing"

Chan Buddhism con. “Writing… is a wrestling with

inarticulacy, with the void.” “the connection between Zen and the

way of the warrior as fearlessness in the face of death”

Wang Wei (699-759 Tang Dynasty)

“He served in various official posts, reportedly attempted suicide when he was imprisoned during the An Lu-shan Rebellion, and only a poem written to his friend Pei Di from Bodhi Temple saved him from being charged as a collaborator during the aftermath of the rebellion.”

“YOU ASKED ABOUT MY LIFE. I SEND YOU, PEI DI, THESE LINES”

A wide icy river floats to far uncertainty. The autumn rain is eternal in the mist.

You ask me about Deep South Mountain. My heart knows it is beyond white clouds.

Zhaoming Qian on Spring and All

The technical “fusions that give Spring and All the Modernist appearance have origins in the Chinese poetic heritage”

“Fusion of Prose and Poetry” Called “fu” Dates back to Tao Quian (365-427).

Spring and All“Time does not move. Only ignorance and stupidity move. Intelligence (force, power) stands still with time and forces change about itself – sifting the world for permanence, in the drift of nonentity” (69).

Gudrun M. Grabher “the image of the haiku represents a

moment in time that is the eternal. It dwells in timelessness; it is anti-temporal or trans-temporal. The concrete image that is captured in time is being zoomed out of its temporal existence and cast into an image frozen in timelessness, as it is meant to give insight into truth that lies beyond time as well as space.”

Red Wheelbarrowso much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

The Zen of Haiku “Shasei” “in writing, do not let a hair's breadth

separate your self from the subject. Speak your mind directly; go to it without wandering thoughts”

“Direct treatment of the thing”

IN A STATION OF THE METRO The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.