I am so enjoying this time at the sea shore. The Lotos-Eaters was wonderful. Here’s a little palate-cleanser:

Terse in the extreme, yet resonant, these short poems of Hughes intrigue me. Neither Haiku or Imagist, nor Epigrammatic like Pope or Porchia. But sharing in both the unspoken quality of the Imagism - the implicit mood, the feeling of watching, brooding; words that just hint at the scene they describe - and the effective, almost talismanic brevity and symbolic implications of Epigram - a poem like a small stone to be carried in the pocket. And finally, a poem that might have been penned by a child, and been no less striking for that.

Here are a couple more, one many of us know from school, and another

we may not have encountered due to its subject:

    I loved my friend.
    He went away from me.
    There's nothing more to say.
    The poem ends,
    Soft as it began,--
    I loved my friend.

‘Suicide’s Note’

    The calm
    Cool face of the river
    Asked me for a kiss.

By way of contrast, here is haiku poet Issa looking at the sea:

    looking at the mountain
    looking at the sea...
    autumn evening

    oh purple clouds
    when will I mount you?
    western sea

(a very Western haiku, if you ask me)

    watching the sea
    sitting on the lawn...
    roasted mushrooms

    my dead mother--
    every time I see the ocean
    every time...

    Hamamatsu beach--
    helping out the cicadas
    singing waves

and then, I can’t resist, thanks, Issa, for these, apropos of nothing…

    ain't a devil
    ain't a saint...
    just a sea slug

    hey boatman
    no pissing on the moon
    in the waves!

— David

Links

We’ve run one of Hughes’ poems before, the famous “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, Poem #410 (Biography attached)

  Issa has, surprisingly, not featured on Minstrels, though Basho and Buson
  both have. Here's a page with some resources on the poet and his works:
    [broken link] http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/logos/ainet/issa.html