{"id":104631,"date":"2018-01-08T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=104631"},"modified":"2018-01-07T14:53:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-07T14:53:22","slug":"introducing-kijima-hajime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/introducing-kijima-hajime\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Kijima Hajime"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2004, I had the good fortune to edit a literary anthology (<\/em>Manifestations), featuring work by such modern lights as former president Jimmy Carter, and a few touchstone-perennials like Mark Twain and Charles Baudelaire.\u00a0 A recent, happy and fortuitous find for me was the work of Kijima Hajime.\u00a0 (Fortuitous, since my long-time \u201cmatch-maker\u201d Japanese mother-in-law happened to meet a cousin of Kijima-san\u2019s and in their tete-a-tete about the potential couple\u2019s first meeting, Kijima-san\u2019s and my mutual interest in poetry was also mentioned and matched!)\u00a0 But I digress\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s fine.\u00a0 In various ways, poetry is an art of digressions.\u00a0 One builds unexpectedly\u2014through rhymes, metaphors, similes, assonance and consonance, etc.\u2014not just \u201ccastles in the air\u201d\u2014but castles, and sometimes shacks, to live in, get the feel of, try on for size, in order to gain new awareness.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hajime-san is just such a \u201cbuilder.\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019re not sure where he\u2019s going.\u00a0 He deliberately clouds the well-worn pathway, so we search for another way, a deeper &\/or higher meaning.\u00a0 Good poems persuade us to re-read them, maybe to say them aloud and to share them.\u00a0 Great poems become part of us.\u00a0 As Rilke concluded in his \u201cArchaic Torso of Apollo\u201d poem, great art persuades us: \u201cyou must change your life!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The following, from Responses Magnetic<\/u>, are Kijima-san\u2019s self-translations, as they appeared in the Manifestations<\/u> anthology.\u00a0 (I never got to know him in-person; he passed away in a Tokyo hospital shortly after the publication of the anthology\u2014a publication I dedicated to him and to Jimmy Carter, and with which he was well-pleased.)\u00a0 His work lives on.<\/em><\/p>\n

********************************<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Enormous Axe<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have only the criteria of shame,
\nWhich implies\u2026my likes and dislikes are extreme!
\nThere is no compensation for love.<\/p>\n

I have only a silent crucifix,
\nWhich suggests\u2026my eyes are always open!
\nI appeal to the wind, to the court of souls.<\/p>\n

I have only the enemy\u2019s melody.
\nWhich hints\u2026I am always persuaded in tears!
\nHumans are hacked down in every city.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ascent<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even at night we cannot flee from the dead souls of feuds.
\nWhen midsummer comes, we want to cover the sky with crepe.
\nToday, let\u2019s clamber up, mount, ascend and ascend.
\nWhen we reach the star of death,
\neven the haunted stop deceiving themselves.<\/p>\n

They won\u2019t complain in that empty space.
\nSince the cosmos should be our resonant instrument,
\nlet\u2019s compose an infinity of horribly beautiful ashes.
\nThough the wind\u2019s breath is distorted and we cannot hear messages
\nthe notes of our strange bird that pecked the ashes
\nmake a contagious parabola.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Raison d\u2019Etre<\/em><\/strong> of Red<\/strong><\/p>\n

One cannot live without stealing fire<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Having played with fire, one knows
\ninner forms, inner function.
\nFriends\u2019 unknown eyes meet
\nand the flame twirls up:
\nor oxygen consumes everything, then disappears.
\nWe become bones of ancient cities on the sea bottom;
\nwe become the musical score for flickering sunbeams:<\/p>\n

This time we perform love burning ourselves.
\nThis time\u2026this fire in darkness\u2026this demon\u2019s tongue\u2026
\nthis wick.
\nWithout red, I can never have a color.
\n___________________________________________<\/p>\n

Kijima Hajime, one of Japan\u2019s outstanding modern poets, published children\u2019s books, as well as poetry, and liked to illustrate his books with his own collages and ink drawings.\u00a0 Several of his books have been translated into English.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. Gary Corseri is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.<\/a>\u00a0 He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues worldwide and his dramas have been produced on<\/em> PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere.\u00a0 He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and has taught in universities in the US and Japan. Contact<\/em>: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In various ways, poetry is an art of digressions. One builds unexpectedly\u2014through rhymes, metaphors, similes, assonance and consonance, etc.\u2014not just \u201ccastles in the air\u201d\u2014but castles, and sometimes shacks, to live in, get the feel of, try on for size, in order to gain new awareness. Hajime-san is just such a \u201cbuilder.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}