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Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters



23 May 2005: Looks like I may be starting a Basho pond competition. Yesterday, Karl Kempton sent me his version "in American":



old pond

  frog

 splash

    !


I averred that it was better than the Hamill version, but said I preferred a version with more explicit details, then turned statesman with the claim--which I do believe--that there are probably four or five equally good "best" versions, each doing something the others don't.

Karl questioned my imagination, which led me to pontificate once more on my own version, which follows:



   old pond;













     the sound 
       of a frog's

      splash-in

"Here," I said to Karl, "is why I prefer my version to yours (though, in the final analysis, I would consider them equal but different):

"Mine focuses on the sound of the splash, which I consider crucial. In yours, we can imagine the sound of the splash but it's not necessarily central. Also, in mine it's just the pond and the sound of the splash; Yours has a frog in the middle, which I consider distracting. That is, yours is three scenes: pond, frog and splash; mine just the comparison of the pond with the sound. Yours also short-changes the stillness of the pond. I have a colon and white space for that--and my use of the word, "sound" greatly increases the likelihood that the reader will immediately imagine the absence of sound preceding the sound.

"To each his own."





  









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