WEBVTT

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Now I'll read some three
line poems to reward you

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for trying to listen to that.

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A few years ago, I was
working on translations

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of poet I love very much a
great haiku poet named Kobayashi

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Issa.

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His family name was Kobayashi.

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Issa was the name that he took
as Japanese poets traditionally

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did.

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And Issa means tea.

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He wrote around he's
roughly a contemporary

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of Robert Burns a little older
than Blake and Wordsworth.

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And he wrote at a time when
the last great haiku poet

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in the 18th century had been
a very great poet who is also

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a great painter named Buson.

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And in the wake of
Buson's work the tradition

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of Japanese poetry had gotten
very visual and very precious.

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Haiku has a tendency
to get precious

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because the Japanese language
admits of punning a lot.

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And Issa revived it.

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First poem-- first day of spring
is New Year's day in Japan

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and it's everybody's
birthday and it's

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a day celebrated by everybody
getting presents and putting

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on new clothes.

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And almost every haiku
poet wrote one every year.

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So if you read through
the work, or maybe

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watch them taking
their pulse year

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after year on New Year's day.

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This one goes, New
Year's morning.

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Everything is in blossom.

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I feel about average.

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There's a seasonal
word in every haiku

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and an important aspect of
them or reference to a season.

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They're incredibly explicit.

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If the reference is to a
plum leaf or a pear blossom,

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they know that it's after
the plums of blossomed

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and that means it must be
very late April, early May.

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And the days are
just getting longer,

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and the white of
the pear blossom

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is associated with that.

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And they would not
make the mistake

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of writing a poem about a time
earlier when it's just crisp

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and your desire first
wakes up, and you're

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talking about pink plum
blossoms about the later time.

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I mean the haiku are
accurate to within five days.

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They have that feeling and
belong to that sense of being.

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Big frogs belong to
late summer heat.

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A huge frog and I
staring at each other.

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Neither of us moves.

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This is a summer poem.

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It's an urban poem.

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This moth saw brightness
in a woman's chamber

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burned to a crisp.

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Neurotic males everywhere.

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This is one of my favorite poems
in the world, this next one.

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It's another New
Year's day poem.

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Asked how old he was,
the boy in the new kimono

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stretched out all five fingers.

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[HUMMING] I love that poem.

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He's got the new clothes
because it's that day.

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And so it's his birthday.

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And so he's turned the year
and Issa sees the kid going.

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And he notices that
that's all the fingers

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there are on that hand, and
goes, ah, with a smiling face.

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Asked how old he was,
the boy in the new kimono

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stretched out all five fingers.

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It's an incredible poem.

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This is a peach--

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this is one of those
pear blossom poems.

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Pear blossoms are white.

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The poem depends on
your having observed

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what the relaxation of people's
faces when they come out

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of a concert.

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Blossoms at night and
people moved by music.

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This is a summer poem.

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Nap half the day.

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No one punished me.

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This is a poem written
on his 50th birthday.

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From now on it's all
clear profit every sky.

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He used to belong to a
sect of Buddhism that

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took with radical
seriousness the injunction

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to honor all living things.

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One emblem of that
is in his work

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is that he wrote about
11,000 poems about insects

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during his life.

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I don't know how well this poem
applies in Arizona, however.

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It goes, don't worry spiders,
I keep house casually.

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His most famous--
you probably know it.

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His most-- it's everywhere.

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His most famous
poem of that kind is

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don't hit that fly, look,
it's rubbing its hands,

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it's rubbing its feet.

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So he's praying for mercy.

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That-- the period was as it
was in American literature

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a period of expansion,
militarism, jingoism,

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and patriotism.

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And all Japanese
poets were encouraged

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to write patriotic poems.

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And this is so far as I
know, the only patriotic poem

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that Issa ever wrote.

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The sea slugs they just
don't seem Japanese.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And the other side
of him that is not

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that I have is not represented
in this little group

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very much is there's what
goes with that attention

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to small beings is the
thinness of the mind's

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skin and a sensitivity
to pain that's like--

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Oh, I don't know.

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It's like Baudelaire,
Strindberg, Du

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Fu, the great sufferers and--

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this poem is called hell.

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Bright autumn moon, pond
snails crying in the saucepan.

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The word is very
hard to translate,

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and I took it around
and asked someone else

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and they said hissing.

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So I tried bright
autumn moon, pond snails

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hissing in the saucepan.

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And a Korean guy, an
engineer, professor

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of computer engineering
who a great lover of Issa

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said that the right English
word would be mewling.

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Mewling.

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So bright autumn moon pond
snails mewling in the saucepan.

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And I walked around for a while
saying hissing in the saucepan,

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crying in the saucepan, mewling.

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And I got so freaked
out that I just thought

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all translations are imperfect.

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I'm not going to think
about this anymore.

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