[Nick McRae]

Rev. 1 (in progress)

Green and Black Beans

In my garden black beans grow.
And green, apricot, blueberry.
My cherry trees fruit in
the molten sun of late summer.
I walk along a dirt path
where the golden oriole sings,
her morning serene and full
of light. I pass a salmon
merchant on the eastern flank.
To the north, a brood of chicken.
I watch the animals collide
like marble and piles of stone.
Their eyes blink at the pebbled road.
In my garden black beans grow
from rich, ancient soil.
I walk in circles between
my den, bedroom, my cellar.

- jade -> dirt

********************************

Original:

Green and Black Beans

In my garden black beans grow.
And green, apricot, blueberry.
My cherry trees fruit in
the molten sun of late summer.
I walk along a jade path
where the golden oriole sings,
her morning serene and full
of light. I pass a salmon
merchant on the eastern flank.
To the north, a brood of chicken.
I watch the animals collide
like marble and piles of stone.
Their eyes blink at the pebbled road.
In my garden black beans grow
from rich, ancient soil.
I walk in circles between
my den, bedroom, my cellar.

************************

As always I'll try to reply when I can. I have a clear day soon, so we'll see what happens.

For those interested in Du Fu:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu

Du Fu (Chinese: 杜甫; Wade–Giles: Tu Fu; 712–770) was a Chinese poet and politician during the Tang dynasty. Together with his elder contemporary and friend Li Bai, Du is often considered one of the greatest Chinese poets.[1] His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but Du proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like all of China, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.

Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages.[1] He has been called the "Poet-Historian" and the "Poet-Sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Béranger, Hugo or Baudelaire".

[Christine P'legion]

Hi Nick, I'm just passing through on your thread at the moment—I do like this poem and its quiet simplicity—but before I forgot I wanted to recommend a newsletter you might enjoy! I have an internet-acquaintance in Korea who is translating 300 Tang Dynasty poems (including by Du Fu among many others) on a one-a-week schedule. This is the latest: https://300tangpoems.substack.com/p/...men-of-letters

(I'll take a proper look at the poem later today, I hope!)

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Christine P'legion

Hi Nick, I'm just passing through on your thread at the moment—I do like this poem and its quiet simplicity—but before I forgot I wanted to recommend a newsletter you might enjoy! I have an internet-acquaintance in Korea who is translating 300 Tang Dynasty poems (including by Du Fu among many others) on a one-a-week schedule. This is the latest: https://300tangpoems.substack.com/p/...men-of-letters

(I'll take a proper look at the poem later today, I hope!)

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately those by Du Fu seem to be behind Substack's paywall.

If you've been reading Tang Dynasty poems I'll be interested to get your thoughts.

[Ashley Bowen]

Hi, Nick,

I'm confused by the second line. To me ear, it reads as if the N is growing apricot and blueberry beans. Are there such beans?

I thought the break on "in" in the L3 was strange and "molten" was not quite the right word in L4.

Overall, I think the poem is overly modified in a couple of places. "Jade path," "golden orioles" come to mind. "Rich, ancient soil," too.

I didn't think "collide' was the right word either as, to my ear, it seems to bring to mind a violent collision, but that could just be me.

I don't understand why you're repeating the same line in such a small poem.

Still, an interesting poem that I'm happy to have read.

A.B.

[Nick McRae]

Thanks Ashley. I'll avoid saying too much for now to see if I can gather a few more comments, but I did come across some info last night which might be worth mentioning. From the Wikipedia article:

Translation

One extreme on each issue is represented by Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred Poems From the Chinese. His are free translations, which seek to conceal the parallelisms through enjambement and expansion and contraction of the content; his responses to the allusions are firstly to omit most of these poems from his selection, and secondly to "translate out" the references in those works which he does select.[83] Other translators have placed much greater weight on trying to convey a sense of the poetic forms used by Du Fu.

When trying to emulate Du Fu's style I was using Kenneth Roxroth's translations, and this specific book. So maybe I should have titled the thread: In the style of Roxroth's translations of Du Fu.

I have pretty clearly defined thoughts on whether this poem hints at Du Fu's style (as presented by Roxroth), but I won't say much for now. I will say that the poem was a fairly quick experiment after my first introduction to the poet.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Ashley Bowen

Hi, Nick,

I'm confused by the second line. To me ear, it reads as if the N is growing apricot and blueberry beans. Are there such beans?

I thought the break on "in" in the L3 was strange and "molten" was not quite the right word in L4.

Overall, I think the poem is overly modified in a couple of places. "Jade path," "golden orioles" come to mind. "Rich, ancient soil," too.

I didn't think "collide' was the right word either as, to my ear, it seems to bring to mind a violent collision, but that could just be me.

I don't understand why you're repeating the same line in such a small poem.

Still, an interesting poem that I'm happy to have read.

A.B.

I appreciate the comments. One of the reasons I post poems is less for the workshopping, and more because every time I post one I learn something new and become an incrementally better poet. In this case your comment here did it for me:

Overall, I think the poem is overly modified in a couple of places.

'Over-modified' isn't a phrase I've heard before, so thanks for that. And I'll save the rest of your suggestions in my notes.

About the poem, I tried to mimic some of Roxroth's translations which were laissez-faire about enjambment. From what I could see Du Fu also used short declarative sentences, and he tended toward a kind of subdued, non-inflammatory language (at least in the selections I saw).

But where they diverge is that in the selections I read Du Fu's poems were more descriptive and decorative, like a painting. Where the poem I wanted to write was didactic. So there was some conflict between the phrasing I needed to use and how Du Fu did things in his poems. I couldn't quite say the things I wanted to say in his style. So in the end this is where I landed, which I don't think quite hit the mark.

In the content itself I was envisioning a medieval Chinese village, and the topic is a part of a series of poems I've been writing after studying Buddhism and becoming a practicing vegetarian. Rich, ancient soil is an allusion to both Buddhist and Indian philosophy.

On the whole, I'm not sure if the poem quite works as well as I'd like, but there are a few lines in it I enjoy.

[Matt Q]

Hi Nick,

This one isn't quite working for me yet. I like the repetition, and walking in circles, the sense of aimlessness, the way that it's open to the reading all that he's described in the outside world might be imagined, and he's just walking around his house. That said, various things confused me.

As Ashley says, there's something wrong about "green" in L2. It's a three-item list. One item is a colour, the other two items are fruit. I think you want "green" to mean "green beans", but I'd say it currently doesn't. Unless you mean: green, apricot and blueberry beans. But surely you don't. So, I'd say a tweak is needed.

I'm not sure what you're aiming for on the hard line-break on "salmon". It wrong-foots. Now, sometimes wrong-footing can be done to good effect to bring out additional meanings, but here I get an image of a man passing a salmon. Is that what you intend?

"a brood of chicken". Where I'm from that would be "chickens". Maybe it's different where you're from?

"I watch the animals collide". I wonder which animals, since only birds (and a hint of fish) have been mentioned in the poem. But OK, in the broadest sense, birds are animals. So, does this refer to the chickens? Or the chicken and the salmon. Are the orioles in the mix? Or is there another type of animal in the picture.

"like marble and piles of stone"

Assuming its chickens -- or in fact any sort of animal -- I'm finding hard to imagine them colliding like marble and piles of stone. In terms of the simile itself, what would that look like? What does it look like when marble collides with a pile of stones. A block of marble might knock down a pile of stones, depending on the size and weight of the stones. Though it kind of depends on how big and heavy the stones are, ditto the marble. Maybe the marble cracks, or even smashes. So it's very hard to get any idea of what image you have in mind and then translate that to chickens, or other animals, colliding.

"Their eyes blink at the pebbled road."

Are the pebbles intended to play off the marble and piles of stone? Are they what's left of the stones and marbles after the collision? Or is the connection just accidental?

"I walk in circles between / my den, bedroom, my cellar."

The dropping of the possessive pronoun from "bedroom" makes this list sound awkward to me. The poem might also have more of a sense of closure if you ended on a stressed syllable - with "cellar" it maybe tails off a bit. So you could go with: "my bedroom, cellar, den", for example.

And if I think too much about what that would look like (maybe I shouldn't) I find myself wondering how a circle can be formed by walking between one's den, bedroom and cellar. I can imagine him walking in circles in each room. I dunno, I guess it depends on the layout of the house. But still, with three points, it's hard to imagine a circle. Hmm, or maybe his path is spiral? OK, maybe I'm being a bit to literal here. But if you wrote, "I walk in circles in", or "through", we'd still have the N moving between each room.


best,

Matt

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

As Ashley says, there's something wrong about "green" in L2. It's a three-item list. One item is a colour, the other two items are fruit. I think you want "green" to mean "green beans", but I'd say it currently doesn't. Unless you mean: green, apricot and blueberry beans. But surely you don't. So, I'd say a tweak is needed.

Thanks Matt.

In this case it was definitely a shortcut. Usually I'm not too concerned about the text of my poems being completely coherent, sometimes I even prefer that they aren't. But I think you're both right here that this is too much of a shortcut.

I'm not sure what you're aiming for on the hard line-break on "salmon". It wrong-foots. Now, sometimes wrong-footing can be done to good effect to bring out additional meanings, but here I get an image of a man passing a salmon. Is that what you intend?

Not much intention, all of the enjambment is fairly arbitrary and (I think) following the translations, but I'll have to take another look. Thanks for pointing this out.

"a brood of chicken". Where I'm from that would be "chickens". Maybe it's different where you're from?

Think you might be right on this. I'm not seeing any references to 'chicken'.

"I watch the animals collide". I wonder which animals, since only birds (and a hint of fish) have been mentioned in the poem. But OK, in the broadest sense, birds are animals. So, does this refer to the chickens? Or the chicken and the salmon. Are the orioles in the mix? Or is there another type of animal in the picture.

From my perspective there's a delineation between the Oriole who's having a good day, and the others I see in the village. So it's asking a bit of the reader.

"like marble and piles of stone"

Assuming its chickens -- or in fact any sort of animal -- I'm finding hard to imagine them colliding like marble and piles of stone. In terms of the simile itself, what would that look like? What does it look like when marble collides with a pile of stones. A block of marble might knock down a pile of stones, depending on the size and weight of the stones. Though it kind of depends on how big and heavy the stones are, ditto the marble. Maybe the marble cracks, or even smashes. So it's very hard to get any idea of what image you have in mind and then translate that to chickens, or other animals, colliding.

In this case marble is a play off of 'marbles', to evoke marbles without using the obvious word choice. My vision is a bunch of animals packed into a small space, bumping into each other. Collide itself is a bit strong, but that's intentionally so, I just liked the feel of the word.

Similarly, 'piles of stone' isn't meant to have an intentional meaning, I just liked the feel of the phrase.

"Their eyes blink at the pebbled road."

Are the pebbles intended to play off the marble and piles of stone? Are they what's left of the stones and marbles after the collision? Or is the connection just accidental?

I think the connection might be more sub-conscious, intentional and not intentional at the same time. Pebbled road makes sense given the setting of a small village, and it does play nicely with the other phrases.

"I walk in circles between / my den, bedroom, my cellar."

The dropping of the possessive pronoun from "bedroom" makes this list sound awkward to me. The poem might also have more of a sense of closure if you ended on a stressed syllable - with "cellar" it maybe tails off a bit. So you could go with: "my bedroom, cellar, den", for example.

And if I think too much about what that would look like (maybe I shouldn't) I find myself wondering how a circle can be formed by walking between one's den, bedroom and cellar. I can imagine him walking in circles in each room. I dunno, I guess it depends on the layout of the house. But still, with three points, it's hard to imagine a circle. Hmm, or maybe his path is spiral? OK, maybe I'm being a bit to literal here. But if you wrote, "I walk in circles in", or "through", we'd still have the N moving between each room.

There's definitely lots of figurative language in this poem. In these lines the hope was to evoke a troubled, restless narrator. Someone who can't sit still because of the carelessness of the world.

I was curious if the narrative of the poem actually pulled through for anyone, but I wonder if it's a little too shrouded. If it is, I don't necessarily mind that, but I've been curious nonetheless.

Thanks for commenting