"I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse / keep me in your heart for a while"

[larryhammer]

Bad poetry fans, rejoice! I have found new depths of Japanese verse in translation.

Remember the rhyming haiku? I bring you something even worse: William N. Porter's 1909 translation of the classic anthology One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets. Take, for example, his version of #33 by Ki no Tomonori:

The spring has come, and once again
  The sun shines in the sky;
So gently smile the heavens, that
  It almost makes me cry,
  When blossoms droop and die.

I'll pause to let you stop shuddering.

Better now? Yes, it really is in iambics, 4-3-4-3-3, rhyming on the short lines -- rendering a tanka of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables unrhymed. But not only is it crashingly bad verse, Porter mangles the meaning: in the original, the unsettled heart belongs to the flowers, not the speaker, and grammatically it's a question of why do they fall.

But as awful as that is, I am very glad indeed that I did not meet his version of Ki no Tsuruyuki's #35 before drafting my translation, because ow did it require some brain bleach. As poetry it's not as bad, though it's bad enough:

The village of my youth is gone,
  New faces meet my gaze;
But still the blossoms at thy gate,
  Whose perfume scents the ways,
  Recall my childhood's days.

But it's even more inaccurate -- the words "village of my youth", "blossom", and "perfume" are correct, but that's about all. Poking a few others I know enough to judge the translation, Hitomaru's #3 is tolerable in a pedantic Edwardian sort of way, and aside from the gratuitously added smile and resting, Semimaru's #10 is close to correct, even if the rhyme is even more jangly than usual for him.

Although the love poems tend to come off particularly badly, the worst offense just might be #99, which turns Emperor Gotoba's graceful note of resignation into sub-Housmanian twaddle:

How I regret my fallen friends
  How I despise my foes!
And, tired of life, I only seek
  To reach my long day's close,
  And gain at last repose.

Truly, this is a remarkably bad piece of work. I will treasure this bookmark for a very long time indeed.

---L.

Comments

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I'll pause to let you stop shuddering.

That would be rolling on the ground laughing. Oh my...that is sooo bad.

I did buy the book I told you about, B Is For Bad Poetry. I haven't posted about it because I'm torn between being amused and annoyed. She wrote all of these very short poems, badly, on purpose. And since it is a featured gift book at Barnes and Noble, she will make more money from this one bad book than you or I will make from good poetry our entire lives.

Thus I am annoyed. *g* And pondering hackdom....

A couple of samples, purely for review purposes. ::cough::

"Sadness You Old Minx"

I even have trouble
parallel parking
on a lonely road.

"How To Save A Tangerine From Suffering"

Never peel it.
Use it to practice
juggling instead.
Give it a name.

"Letters To A Young Poet"

I would stick with R and M
and your choice of a decent vowel
preferably A.

And one of my personal favorites...

"The Perfect Love Poem"

Every time
I see your face
it reminds me
of you.

[larryhammer]

Okay, the last one is good at being a bad poem. The others are not quite bad enough -- they'd be at best dishonorable mentions in a Bulwer-Lytton contest.

Yes, that does make it both annoying and amusing.

---L.