6 February 2004. Today I feel empty, not up to tackling anything more than a few haiku from the Peter Pauper collection called Haiku Harvest, which--I see--is the fourth and last volume in the set. The translators are Peter Beilenson and Harry Behn. In this volume, I came across one haiku that I remember long ago made an impression on me. It's by Ransetsu:

Its "blossom's worth" really got to me. Even though I was 19 or so when I first saw that, it may have introduced me to the device of basing a new word on some standard pattern of words, in this case "X's worth." It took me a long while to reach verbal maturity. I consider myself still pretty slow, verbally. That, right now, I can't think of a single "X's worth" pairing is not unusual for me. Ah, "book's worth" of insight. A "month's worth" of misery. Make that "shooting stars." I want these entries to be upbeat.

I just checked My Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and then the Oxford Unabridged, and found nothing to indicate "worth" as what I take it to mean here, "supply." Nor can I think of the more common instances of the locution, "X's worth," that I feel sure exist. Or do they?

Whatever, I still like the poem. It seems wordy to me, though--artificially expanded to fit the 5, 7, 5 pattern of syllables that the poems in all four of the Peter Pauper series adhere to. I'd prefer:

Or should it be:

to make the description match the process described in slowness of change? Obviously, I love to tinker with poems, my own or others. I'm not sure that my rendition is an improvement over the book's, but I do prefer the way it climaxes in "warmth," the poem's high point, rather than "at long last." For a while, I thought "long" should go, but then decided there was sufficient difference between "at long last" and "at last" to keep it in.

Is this a great poem? Not quite, I don't think. A charming description of just-spring, with (in English) a nice turn of phrase, and the subtle equaphor of warmth for color (unless buds really are noticeably more warm than the rest of the plant they're issuing from), but nothing truly startling. Still, a keeper.

On the page opposite Ransetu's poem is Basho's

This one is personally meaningful to me because I wrote what I thought was a brilliant little comparison of it to Jonathan Brannen's, "Temple Bells," which consists of just two lines, "a petal," and "a peal." Since I've vowed not to re-use material in this blog, I'll say no more about that (except to call Geof Huth's attention to the effectiveness of the title of Brannen's poem, which--for me--would be less than half as good, titleless). Oh, and I would hope the reader would note that what makes Brannen's poem so good is what its words do rather than what they tell.

Just above Ransetsu's haiku is a poem I do consider major:

This is another one I'd (arrogantly) release from its 5/7/5 prison to make it:

Actually, I am close to conceding I haven't improved this one. Both versions work, though--in spite of only telling. I'll say why tomorrow.