I think the problem is trying to sound "Japanese," which means 
indulging in an imagined simplicity. The English of my one renga is 
profoundly referential to my own language and culture. Most words and 
phrases contain their histories, a nexus of meanings and suggestions 
of words unrelated except by sound. I don't see how that's a lower 
potential order of reference than kanji, tho of course it operates 
somewhat differently.

Beyond that, I think, Jesse, you may be talking about the problem 
that confronts all translation, both linguistic and temporal. What 
doesn't get said is what everyone knows. So, Shakespeare's imagined 
Venice, or for that matter his London, can only be experienced by 
reconstruction, and it never gets closer than arms length. Or in the 
present. A bunch of my poems are being translated into Spanish. I 
chose poems that were in the main translateable, no easy task in 
itself, but I'm aware of how much will necessarily be lost from those 
that remain. When I describe walking on a Brooklyn street with 
Carlos, for instance, I'm sending a wealth of unstated information to 
my primary readers, as surely as a Japanese poet is when he mentions 
a falling blossom. Another example. In a poem called American 
Language I say I'm driving across the high prairie. I don't have to 
tell Americans that I'm not just talking geology. There is no way to 
say it in Spanish. Llanura elevada is geology and no more--lost is 
the metaphysical space of the Westerns and the whole history of 
bloodshed. Another example. I begin a poem "The farmer's daughter..." 
There's no other reference to the traditional jokes, but I expect 
readers to get it without thinking. Untranslateable.

Is there something else I'm not getting?

Mark

At 01:22 PM 3/31/2008, you wrote:
>Point taken, Jesse, but, but...?
>
>I suspect you're absolutely right about haiku, but I think one can
>point to some tries at haibun, englished as process, for example, that
>work very well in english (even if losing a lot of what the 'original'
>Japanese form comprehends).
>
>But then I read them as english poems, so perhaps I just dont see how
>badly they fail, in terms of the form theyre patterning themselves
>on....
>
>Still, thinking of even the few poets I know who have tried something
>along those lines, like Sheila Murphy or John Tranter, for example,
>I'm glad to have them....
>
>Doug
>On 30-Mar-08, at 7:53 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>>Sad to say but English language poetry written to emulate Japanese
>>forms
>>tends to sound chopped, truncated, minced into what I call "Zenglish."
>>After studying the "stuff" in the original language I'm not happy to
>>read most of the the so-called equivalent writing in English.
>>
>>Of course it's possible to write short, short poetry in English.  A
>>few
>>of Herrick are about as close as English can come to what kana and
>>Kanji
>>can do so effortlessly.  Sanuel Menashe has also done it once or
>>twice.
>>
>>Most of the other stuff is, well--"stuff."
>>
>>Sad that we have the feeling that languages as different as Japanese
>>and
>>English work in the same way to produce equivalent effects.  They
>>don't.  That's why I believe that English language haiku is a
>>misnomer.  Add to this the sense of ease and entitlement that allows
>>us
>>to misunderstand haiku (so easy that kids can enjoy writing it!), the
>>cultural hang-over of post WWII Japan when the West was flooded with
>>cheaply made goods from the islands, etc. etc., instant ramen noodles
>>etc. etc., and we have a real
>>problem with coming to grips with what is indeed a dazzling mode of
>>expression in the original.  Our cultural, Anglo-centric chauvanism
>>keeps getting in the way.
>>
>>Of course we could probably substitute French, German, Spanish, for
>>English in the above statement and still come pretty close to the
>>truth.
>>
>>I was first introduced to the idea of "difficulty" and haiku writing
>>when I arrived in Japan and began to talk with the Japanese about
>>poetry.  But wasn't haiku so simple that grade school teachers in
>>America could coax tons of it from their charges?  Hadn't I written my
>>share of it when I was a child?  Didn't every English "teacher" who
>>found his or her way to Japan suddently breaking out in the stuff like
>>rashes from too much msg in meals?  You could see their Zenglish in
>>the
>>haiku column of the Mainichi Simbun with someone saying which was good
>>and which was bad!
>>
>>When I started to study the language (and I must say even now I'm far
>>from mastering it)--and sat with significat haijin who wrote,
>>published,
>>and won awards for their work in Japanese--only then did I understand
>>what the Japanese were telling me.  Haiku is hard as hell to write.
>>Moreover, the use of Kanji makes the thought so compressed that
>>finding
>>an equivalent in English in the melding of form and content to even
>>begin to give the feeling of the original is well-neigh impossible.
>>The
>>sense of "ease" and "anything I say is haiku is haiku" that so many
>>seem to find in the act of writing this form is simply an illusion
>>born
>>of a misunderstanding--linguistic and cultural.
>>
>>Stuff indeed.
>>
>>Jess
>
>Douglas Barbour
>[log in to unmask]
>
>http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
>Latest books:
>Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>Wednesdays'
>http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
>to rid me of
>the ugh in
>thought
>i spell anew
>weave the world
>out of the or
>binary
>
>         bpNichol