From Does grass sweat, translations of an insignificant Japanese poet by Jee Leong Koh (2016), commentary by Sam Fujimoto-Mayer (2066)

 

 

Note on the Translation

 

In September 2011, when I moved into my Upper West Side apartment, not far from 80 Riverside Drive, where Yone Noguchi boarded for a time, I found a half-burnt sheaf of papers in the enormous red-marble fireplace that took pride of place in the living room. Someone had done a poor job of burning the papers, perhaps out of reluctance. My fingers discolored by the ash, I discovered that what I had in hand was a collection of haiku, written out by the same hand. To my further surprise, the poet made several allusions to people and places that I knew from living in New York City. I was thus compelled to translate the poems from the Japanese. As I worked on these exhilarating, enigmatic pieces, I found myself searching out the street corner, the tree, and even the bird that had so enraptured our poet. In this manner I traced the route taken through Central Park—entering at 86th Street on the west side, then running south of the reservoir, or else strolling north of the Great Lawn by The Arthur Ross Pinetum, and finally exiting on the east side at either 84th or 85th Street. Slowly I was beginning to live the life glimpsed through these haiku. I now walk in the poet’s footsteps every day to where I teach school. The manuscript had a title ぐらつく, or “Unsettled,” which has been crossed out firmly with three pencil strokes. I take the deletion as the author’s intention, and so I have given this book a title by quoting one of the poet’s haiku instead. He or she signed off as “an insignificant Japanese poet.”

 

Jee Leong Koh
New York City
November 16, 2016

 

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