I think one thing Westerners won’t fully appreciate, unless they change their way of thinking, is the beauty of silence and nature. how words cannot express “everything”. not that I’m saying they SHOULD try to…

anyway your blog is really great. Greetings from the Philippines!~

Also, that thing about one language being more poetic than another – my impression is that people are very chauvinistic with regard to their own language. There are very few people who are in a real position to judge these things, and even the judgement of these people is subjective.

i feel the same way about english haiku. in fact, i feel like we’ve
discussed this topic before, many years ago, but didn’t really have
anything interesting to debate on this subject because we both basically
agreed that english haiku usually don’t work well.

nowadays, whenever i’m told to write a haiku, i usually write something
that derides the usage of english in the haiku format. i suppose that
this can get old pretty quickly, so i’m glad that i am rarely asked to
write haiku.

serendipitously, i have recently come across a collection of our old
published works. i wonder if you still remember writing these.

“don quixote nocturne” by phillip lipscy

isodynamic forces propel civilization on its precarious route.
all doubts remain unexpressed.
“genius” comprehends the intricate complexities.
yesmen we are to those
heartening the words of
isaiah.

Hi C ‘Quence, thanks for your very nice comment. I try to avoid blabbering about myself too much on this blog, as it’s not supposed to be about me but rather about interesting ideas. Maybe in the future though.

sss – that’s really interesting. I recently learned that my last name might have polish origins. I think you could do fine in Okinawa without too much in the way of Japanese skills, but knowing even a little bit goes a long way!

I know nothing about poetry, but recently I’ve been reading some poems by Paul Celan in “Collected Works”. I’m Polish – that may be important. The book is great (the poems are so soo sooo intriguing, words are symbols here, ’cause poems are in two versions: the original one in german (as Celan wrote in that language) and translated into polish, sometimes there are more than just one polish translation by some well-known polish translators. I know german a bit. I believe that poetry cannot by translated in 100%. It’s impossible to grasp everything during translating from one language to another. It’s really fascinating… and how fascinating must it be, when we compare such different languages as Japanese and English… I have to take up Japanese, especially if I want to go to Okinawa in two years time for some karate lessons…
take care

Interesting that you can speak Japanese. I am intrigued by that, I often wish I could speak other languages and wonder how much I am missing in my grand perspective of the world. I you care to go into any more detail of your background I would love to read it…