Article
Reading Nectar’s root as far as its Resonance reaches
August 18, 2008
In an extended phone conversation, Mari Kashiwagi spoke to me about each of her selections. Given that the presentation is extremely sparsely populated with words, I had wondered whether its author might be as gnomic as her verse. But to my pleasant surprise, her words flowed, explicating each piece. It was as if she were trying to fill me in on what was swirling in the fathomless well of her mind, from which she had pulled out a single string of words to arrange in the corner of a large white space. She invited me into the inner workings of these poems, allowing me to have a glimpse of her poetic world, which is spare in form, but brimming with her sensuous, and often sensual, take on living things bound by space and time.
The following is a reading of the title poem ‘Nectar’s root’ based on what she said to me that day, supplemented by some e-mail communications with her and a review of some of her own writings. I hope this will give PIW readers further insight into ‘Nectar’s root’ and Mari Kashiwagi’s universe.
Form
Even though Mari Kashiwagi is probably at the forefront of experimental modern poetry among her contemporaries in Japan, she is clear about her affinity with a traditional Japanese poetic form, tanka, and about its influence on the manner in which she presents her poetry. Yet she stresses that she feels the traditional poetic form is too restrictive for her creative expression.
A tanka, a 31-syllable (5-7-5-7-7) poem, is normally presented in a single vertical line in print. The vertical presentation is important to her, as Kashiwagi puts it, not because it has been traditionally practiced, but because it relates to “a matter of gravity”. She sees the shape of the vertical presentation as an organic creation standing in space and time, governed by the universal law of gravity. In her mind, the vertical figure is a plant, a flower, or even a person, standing singly. And the living thing is rooted in and nourished by the great earth or the accumulated past, to face the present, aspiring toward the future. Kashiwagi urges us as readers to visualise this presence on her pages. In this context, she is presenting one line or a few lines on facing pages as a discrete piece of poetry, similar to the manner in which a tanka is often presented in calligraphy on a single sheet of paper.
At the same time, Kashiwagi also speaks of the significance of reading several tanka under a unifying theme. In one of her essays, she says her experience of one tanka is enhanced by the others, giving her a more sensory and deeper grasp of the first. The same can be said about ‘Nectar’s root’. While each stands independent and alone, these short pieces echo with each other and resonate throughout to form a subtly amorphous world. In this sense, ‘Nectar’s root’, as a whole, is a long poem, presented like a series of story boards.
Space
Within the white space, words are placed to shape a figure. The space and the words together conjure the drama of a larger story. In other words, space in Kashiwagi’s poetry is an integral part of the poem. The author uses words to show an image as well as to tell us a story. Instead of a narrative, she uses evocative and suggestive words sparingly and carefully, to invite the readers into the drama.
When a figure stands alone in a large white space, it captures our imagination, and what it speaks to us intensifies, building urgency, because our attention is directed singularly to its voice. The surrounding space provides the air through which the voice travels, echoes and resonates. The space is the universe where the story unfolds.
Time
Such a universe is inevitably governed by Time, which connects the eternal past to a future yet to be born. In this sense Time is, though silent and invisible, an inevitable presence here. The inhabitants of this universe, Nectar, the flower and Apple, represent different phases of life. Each carries the weight of the past, and faces the fate of passing from existence. Every existence is temporal, and ephemeral.
The sense of transience is palpable throughout. Kashiwagi’s awareness of transience is firmly rooted in the belief that the past is always in the present, preparing for the future, as ever-regenerating life cycles on. We see this when a flower opens, “facing/back/into the past . . . to deposit//pollen” and when the time comes, “petals/depart//what has not been me/replaces me/to go on”.
Thus life continues, ruled by time, each inhabitant of this world assuming its transient form, as Apple, as a flower, as Nectar or as Me, for the duration of its allowed existence. In the world these poems collectively forge, these beings appear, disappear, and re-emerge singly and collectively, at times amorphously trading places with one another. As a whole, ‘Nectar’s root’ is a symphonic presentation of lives carrying on to the beat of a silent metronome.
Resonance
Besides the interaction of words and space in time, tonal elements are delicately orchestrated throughout the work. The author speaks of her use of homophones as well as weaving in sibilants for certain effects and combining long and short vowels. For example, the word ‘ne 根’, though written in an ideogram clearly denoting ‘root’ (cf. Nectar’s root), has the same sound as the word ‘ne 音’ expressed with a different ideogram, meaning sound or musical tone. So this ‘ne 根／音’, according to the author, is the source of resonance in its title. None of these interesting elements are directly transferable into English.
However, ‘Nectar’s root’ contains various tonal elements beyond these phonetic devices. When “Nectar/ says/ ‘Me’” we hear its voice, and sense its tone, as it is delicately swaying, spreading its sound waves to linger in the air. When the flower says “I know it all”, we see its lofty figure, and are impressed with “how deeply/fragrant it is/swaying” and hear its voice. The flower’s voice, along with its strong scent, also gets infused into the air to linger on. Even those who “are no longer physically here” can sing, however ghostly they might sound. Not only that, history is a sonorous presence in the air: “Apple/touches//Nectar//what its flower has seen//resonates”. And the accumulated past resonates through the air from the tip of its current existence: “Resonance/of/what has passed away//at a flower’s pinnacle”. The rhythms that run through past, present, and future also resonate throughout Kashiwagi’s symphonic universe: “something/that/runs/through//allows/flowers/to depart/as/flowers.”
Nectar: Me
Nectar is central to this symphonic drama. It is the sweetness and the force that sustains life. The poem opens with Nectar welling inside Apple to the point of splitting it open. As Apple is split to decay, Nectar is out in the open. Then, we hear Nectar’s voice: “touched into swaying/ Nectar/ says/ Me.” The words are arranged on the page as if to suggest a rounded shape, forming an impression of a drop of Nectar. Its voice is probably soft and delicate, yet sonorous, but more notably it says ‘Me’. As Kashiwagi explains it, when Nectar gets nudged to one side, it says ‘Me’ before it is conscious of what it is saying. It is the moment of birth of its self-awareness. And now that its voice has been uttered, Nectar has proclaimed that it exists on its own right and that it is fully aware of its own significance. It says ‘Me’ to assert that it is a central voice as well as a core presence in the world in which it exists. Nectar, then, appears ‘unrobed’ before us, seeking company to ‘sing’ together. Nectar flows through life: conception, birth, growth, maturity, decline and succession.
The Voice
Like Nectar itself, ‘Me’, the voice, is amorphous. The author takes full advantage of an aspect of Japanese grammar to make it so. Japanese grammar allows for the subject of a sentence, and sometimes objects along with it, to be omitted where a reader or a listener can make a reasonable assumption as to what it is. So at times it can become an intriguing puzzle when reading a Japanese literature, particularly classical works, to determine who or what really is speaking. For a poet, this grammatical licence is an irresistible device. In our phone and e-mail conversations, Kashiwagi discussed this aspect of her poetry in great detail. What impressed me, listening to her, was that as fluent and precise as her explications were, she was deeply ambivalent about, or possibly unwilling to specify, the subject or the voice in any given situation. And I wished I could simply make use of the same grammatical licence in my English translation as well.
Thus in the original some voices are clearly identifiable, but elsewhere a voice may be singular, multi-layered, or an amalgam, leaving readers with ample freedom for interpretation. This simply won’t work in English translations, so I have supplied pronouns, with the assistance of the author.
However, this issue is not fully resolved in Kashiwagi’s mind relative to English translation. As she read a certain line that uses ‘we’ in English translation, she wrote, “I will try to be courageous to accept the word, ‘we’, although I somehow feel I am torn apart.” This remark stopped me for a second and then hit me hard. Kashiwagi so deeply identifies herself with each voice, that she may be feeling some separation anxiety from having to make room for another by accepting the word ‘we’. She is implicitly Nectar, a flower, a fruit, and a plant itself. Yet she is not happy about simply accepting ‘I’ instead of ‘we’, either. That is, I believe, because she knows that paradoxically she is also an omniscient voice clearly sharing its vantage point with Time. I have come to realize that her duality, her simultaneous intense immersion in and philosophical detachment from the subject matter, is the very source of the energy that grabs me as I read the original.
The Poet as Me
In a dialogue with Toshiya Watanabe, a composer who recently wrote music to one of her poems, Kashiwagi says, “To me, to display my poetry . . . is like showing a nude photograph of myself. I can’t help but feeling that poetry is part of my physical self.” This echoes with her comment above on the word ‘we’ in English translation. She so personally identifies herself with Nectar, a flower, or Apple, that each of these is her own flesh and blood.
The remark opens up the possibility of reading ‘Nectar’s root’ as an allegory of the poet’s creativity. Take a flower, for example. When a flower gloriously blooms, it wears a reminder of life’s transience: “Resonance/of/what has passed away//at a flower’s pinnacle”. With its root firmly planted in the earth, supplied with sustenance from the fertile darkness, it knows its dependence on the accumulated past: “to flower/is/to suck//root//darkness”. As a flower opens its petals, infusing the air with its scent, it also has to bear the weight of its own existence: “flowers/entrusted/with/the weight/of/flowering//sustain/scent”. This creative self, be it a flower’s or the poet’s own, is seeking someone to whom it can open its petals, “Wishing/to/bloom//to be/something/different”, so it can reach yet another height.
In the beginning
When I first opened Nectar’s root as far as its Resonance reaches by Mari Kashiwagi, I was struck by the unusual amount of white space. Throughout the book, all of the facing pages are empty except for a single vertical line or a few short vertical lines. The title sequence of poems consists of 45 short pieces presented on 54 unnumbered spreads for a total of 108 pages, as if to suggest that there is no break from the beginning to the end. I found it graphically interesting and pleasing, but as I read on, I was also amazed at the cohesive presence forged by the space and words, generating energy, drama and subtle yet distinctive voices.
For publication on PIW, Mari Kashiwagi selected 30 pieces out of the original series of 45 to present a unified entity comparable to the original. The layout for the English translation is intended to convey the figurative aspect of the original presentation. When I first opened Nectar’s root as far as its Resonance reaches by Mari Kashiwagi, I was struck by the unusual amount of white space. Throughout the book, all of the facing pages are empty except for a single vertical line or a few short vertical lines. The title sequence of poems consists of 45 short pieces presented on 54 unnumbered spreads for a total of 108 pages, as if to suggest that there is no break from the beginning to the end. I found it graphically interesting and pleasing, but as I read on, I was also amazed at the cohesive presence forged by the space and words, generating energy, drama and subtle yet distinctive voices.
In an extended phone conversation, Mari Kashiwagi spoke to me about each of her selections. Given that the presentation is extremely sparsely populated with words, I had wondered whether its author might be as gnomic as her verse. But to my pleasant surprise, her words flowed, explicating each piece. It was as if she were trying to fill me in on what was swirling in the fathomless well of her mind, from which she had pulled out a single string of words to arrange in the corner of a large white space. She invited me into the inner workings of these poems, allowing me to have a glimpse of her poetic world, which is spare in form, but brimming with her sensuous, and often sensual, take on living things bound by space and time.
The following is a reading of the title poem ‘Nectar’s root’ based on what she said to me that day, supplemented by some e-mail communications with her and a review of some of her own writings. I hope this will give PIW readers further insight into ‘Nectar’s root’ and Mari Kashiwagi’s universe.
Form
Even though Mari Kashiwagi is probably at the forefront of experimental modern poetry among her contemporaries in Japan, she is clear about her affinity with a traditional Japanese poetic form, tanka, and about its influence on the manner in which she presents her poetry. Yet she stresses that she feels the traditional poetic form is too restrictive for her creative expression.
A tanka, a 31-syllable (5-7-5-7-7) poem, is normally presented in a single vertical line in print. The vertical presentation is important to her, as Kashiwagi puts it, not because it has been traditionally practiced, but because it relates to “a matter of gravity”. She sees the shape of the vertical presentation as an organic creation standing in space and time, governed by the universal law of gravity. In her mind, the vertical figure is a plant, a flower, or even a person, standing singly. And the living thing is rooted in and nourished by the great earth or the accumulated past, to face the present, aspiring toward the future. Kashiwagi urges us as readers to visualise this presence on her pages. In this context, she is presenting one line or a few lines on facing pages as a discrete piece of poetry, similar to the manner in which a tanka is often presented in calligraphy on a single sheet of paper.
At the same time, Kashiwagi also speaks of the significance of reading several tanka under a unifying theme. In one of her essays, she says her experience of one tanka is enhanced by the others, giving her a more sensory and deeper grasp of the first. The same can be said about ‘Nectar’s root’. While each stands independent and alone, these short pieces echo with each other and resonate throughout to form a subtly amorphous world. In this sense, ‘Nectar’s root’, as a whole, is a long poem, presented like a series of story boards.
Space
Within the white space, words are placed to shape a figure. The space and the words together conjure the drama of a larger story. In other words, space in Kashiwagi’s poetry is an integral part of the poem. The author uses words to show an image as well as to tell us a story. Instead of a narrative, she uses evocative and suggestive words sparingly and carefully, to invite the readers into the drama.
When a figure stands alone in a large white space, it captures our imagination, and what it speaks to us intensifies, building urgency, because our attention is directed singularly to its voice. The surrounding space provides the air through which the voice travels, echoes and resonates. The space is the universe where the story unfolds.
Time
Such a universe is inevitably governed by Time, which connects the eternal past to a future yet to be born. In this sense Time is, though silent and invisible, an inevitable presence here. The inhabitants of this universe, Nectar, the flower and Apple, represent different phases of life. Each carries the weight of the past, and faces the fate of passing from existence. Every existence is temporal, and ephemeral.
The sense of transience is palpable throughout. Kashiwagi’s awareness of transience is firmly rooted in the belief that the past is always in the present, preparing for the future, as ever-regenerating life cycles on. We see this when a flower opens, “facing/back/into the past . . . to deposit//pollen” and when the time comes, “petals/depart//what has not been me/replaces me/to go on”.
Thus life continues, ruled by time, each inhabitant of this world assuming its transient form, as Apple, as a flower, as Nectar or as Me, for the duration of its allowed existence. In the world these poems collectively forge, these beings appear, disappear, and re-emerge singly and collectively, at times amorphously trading places with one another. As a whole, ‘Nectar’s root’ is a symphonic presentation of lives carrying on to the beat of a silent metronome.
Resonance
Besides the interaction of words and space in time, tonal elements are delicately orchestrated throughout the work. The author speaks of her use of homophones as well as weaving in sibilants for certain effects and combining long and short vowels. For example, the word ‘ne 根’, though written in an ideogram clearly denoting ‘root’ (cf. Nectar’s root), has the same sound as the word ‘ne 音’ expressed with a different ideogram, meaning sound or musical tone. So this ‘ne 根／音’, according to the author, is the source of resonance in its title. None of these interesting elements are directly transferable into English.
However, ‘Nectar’s root’ contains various tonal elements beyond these phonetic devices. When “Nectar/ says/ ‘Me’” we hear its voice, and sense its tone, as it is delicately swaying, spreading its sound waves to linger in the air. When the flower says “I know it all”, we see its lofty figure, and are impressed with “how deeply/fragrant it is/swaying” and hear its voice. The flower’s voice, along with its strong scent, also gets infused into the air to linger on. Even those who “are no longer physically here” can sing, however ghostly they might sound. Not only that, history is a sonorous presence in the air: “Apple/touches//Nectar//what its flower has seen//resonates”. And the accumulated past resonates through the air from the tip of its current existence: “Resonance/of/what has passed away//at a flower’s pinnacle”. The rhythms that run through past, present, and future also resonate throughout Kashiwagi’s symphonic universe: “something/that/runs/through//allows/flowers/to depart/as/flowers.”
Nectar: Me
Nectar is central to this symphonic drama. It is the sweetness and the force that sustains life. The poem opens with Nectar welling inside Apple to the point of splitting it open. As Apple is split to decay, Nectar is out in the open. Then, we hear Nectar’s voice: “touched into swaying/ Nectar/ says/ Me.” The words are arranged on the page as if to suggest a rounded shape, forming an impression of a drop of Nectar. Its voice is probably soft and delicate, yet sonorous, but more notably it says ‘Me’. As Kashiwagi explains it, when Nectar gets nudged to one side, it says ‘Me’ before it is conscious of what it is saying. It is the moment of birth of its self-awareness. And now that its voice has been uttered, Nectar has proclaimed that it exists on its own right and that it is fully aware of its own significance. It says ‘Me’ to assert that it is a central voice as well as a core presence in the world in which it exists. Nectar, then, appears ‘unrobed’ before us, seeking company to ‘sing’ together. Nectar flows through life: conception, birth, growth, maturity, decline and succession.
The Voice
Like Nectar itself, ‘Me’, the voice, is amorphous. The author takes full advantage of an aspect of Japanese grammar to make it so. Japanese grammar allows for the subject of a sentence, and sometimes objects along with it, to be omitted where a reader or a listener can make a reasonable assumption as to what it is. So at times it can become an intriguing puzzle when reading a Japanese literature, particularly classical works, to determine who or what really is speaking. For a poet, this grammatical licence is an irresistible device. In our phone and e-mail conversations, Kashiwagi discussed this aspect of her poetry in great detail. What impressed me, listening to her, was that as fluent and precise as her explications were, she was deeply ambivalent about, or possibly unwilling to specify, the subject or the voice in any given situation. And I wished I could simply make use of the same grammatical licence in my English translation as well.
Thus in the original some voices are clearly identifiable, but elsewhere a voice may be singular, multi-layered, or an amalgam, leaving readers with ample freedom for interpretation. This simply won’t work in English translations, so I have supplied pronouns, with the assistance of the author.
However, this issue is not fully resolved in Kashiwagi’s mind relative to English translation. As she read a certain line that uses ‘we’ in English translation, she wrote, “I will try to be courageous to accept the word, ‘we’, although I somehow feel I am torn apart.” This remark stopped me for a second and then hit me hard. Kashiwagi so deeply identifies herself with each voice, that she may be feeling some separation anxiety from having to make room for another by accepting the word ‘we’. She is implicitly Nectar, a flower, a fruit, and a plant itself. Yet she is not happy about simply accepting ‘I’ instead of ‘we’, either. That is, I believe, because she knows that paradoxically she is also an omniscient voice clearly sharing its vantage point with Time. I have come to realize that her duality, her simultaneous intense immersion in and philosophical detachment from the subject matter, is the very source of the energy that grabs me as I read the original.
The Poet as Me
In a dialogue with Toshiya Watanabe, a composer who recently wrote music to one of her poems, Kashiwagi says, “To me, to display my poetry . . . is like showing a nude photograph of myself. I can’t help but feeling that poetry is part of my physical self.” This echoes with her comment above on the word ‘we’ in English translation. She so personally identifies herself with Nectar, a flower, or Apple, that each of these is her own flesh and blood.
The remark opens up the possibility of reading ‘Nectar’s root’ as an allegory of the poet’s creativity. Take a flower, for example. When a flower gloriously blooms, it wears a reminder of life’s transience: “Resonance/of/what has passed away//at a flower’s pinnacle”. With its root firmly planted in the earth, supplied with sustenance from the fertile darkness, it knows its dependence on the accumulated past: “to flower/is/to suck//root//darkness”. As a flower opens its petals, infusing the air with its scent, it also has to bear the weight of its own existence: “flowers/entrusted/with/the weight/of/flowering//sustain/scent”. This creative self, be it a flower’s or the poet’s own, is seeking someone to whom it can open its petals, “Wishing/to/bloom//to be/something/different”, so it can reach yet another height.
© Takako Lento
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