For my literary project, I decided to try and write some Senryu. I hadn't heard of the style before the project, but it seems to fit my purposes much better than Haiku. I don't think these are at all traditional, but I enjoyed writing them and trying to structure them around the morae was fun.
サムライを
みます。あめです。
すいません。
いいトヨタ
はきれいですか。
たかいです。
カタカナは
がいこくのじじゃ
ありません。
Here are some explanations of the Katakana:
ReplyDeleteIn the first poem, the movie サムライ is juxtaposed with the natural world. In a similar way, although the poem is written in the Japanese language and a Japanese style, the word サムライ seems foreign, creating another tension.
Toyota is a very strange word, since it can be a name, but in katakana acts as a brand. Thus it works well for a poem about commodification, since it is neither とよた or くるまのトヨタ.
It has always seemed strange that "カタカナ" is written in Katakana and not Hiragana, since it doesn't fit into any of the traditional categories. Because most words are now written in Hiragana, カタカナ seems foreign especially in this poem where it stands at the head of a mostly hiragana composition.
Juxtaposing samurai and the natural world is so poetic and beautiful. You can really take the samurai out of the scene and see it in the context of his surroundings.
ReplyDeleteI like the social commentary you made with Toyota and commodification. Very interesting analysis of an interesting brand!
The last poem is my favourite, I really love how you let the カタカナ stick out awkwardly among the Hiragana to emphasize its strangeness.
Well done, Ethan! :)
I know this is completely random, but another fun fact is that foreignors don't really pick up the more common word in Japan.
ReplyDeleteFor example, ぶしwas more commonly used than さむらい, and yet that's not what we use. And せっぷくwas more commonly used regarding a samrai's honorable suicide (seppuku literally means to cut belly), but what caught on was the less used はらきり、which many Americans mispronounce as "harry karry".
Oh, and btw, to answer your question about my manga, I do find it hard to find a sound that has a Japanese phonetic equivalent. For example, I originally wanted to use "woosh", but it was difficult to do the "sh".