BGM: Derrick May - Strings Of Life
Nowadays I started thinking about the relationship between poetry and me by writing/creating my studying poems. I remember this... Once, when I was a college student, a professor said to us that "Please one collection of poems in your bookshelf". As I wrote yesterday in this journal, I notice that there are really few collections of poetry in my bookshelf in the room. And I have never read those books so often, or I should confess that I have to be ashamed with the idea of "OMG! I have completely forgotten this book I am having actually!". For example, Japanese original version of collections of Charles Baudelaire's poems. And Lou Reed's poetry (I have an English version). I forgot those books had existed... In other words, I treated poetry really roughly by now. So I have to face the tradition of poetry from now as modestly as possible (but how long can I keep on doing that effort?). I remembered Toshiko Watanabe's book about poetry. She wrote about the reason why we underrate poetry. Her conclusion was "Through the encountering poetry in school education, we already have an unhappiness". I remember so. I need to read her book again.
Through the school education, we encounter the poetry. It means that we need to read the poetry as "good stuff" because they are already decided as "masterpieces" in textbooks. We read that "good stuff" (or we "have to" or "are forced to" read), and try to read how the poet/author had felt. But Watanabe writes that encountering poems must be more "personal". Through encountering poetry in a "personal" chance within our life, we replace the impact from poetry which can't be decided as "masterpieces" immediately in ourselves naturally. Then poems can be replaced as precious stuff for us. That's the meaning of enjoying poetry... This is the main opinion of her I remember. In other words, poetry might be totally mysterious. We sometimes have to accept those mysterious poems as great stuff... Yes, I have a sympathy with this opinion. I guess the art itself is such a great and mysterious one. Even the Beatles was once really "mysterious" or "enigmatic" for us (I heard like that so I might have made a mistake). Or we can see how The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" was treated as nonsense once.
Yes, I am really ignorant. I have learned how I can write my poems from music. About Japanese musicians, I have learned the style of Pizzicato Five, Motoharu Sano, and b-flower. I can also remember the influence of foreign musicians as Momus and Blur. In other words, I have never read any Junzaburo Nishiwaki, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas (Sorry! I have to do read them). If I could use cool words to explain, I would say that I had learned the poetry within "urban" situation as "streets". Not from any education, but from pop culture. The poetry within advertisements and magazines. Of course, I won't affirm that completely. If I learned the first step of poetry steadily in schools, I could write better poems... I feel that with reading my "studying poems" I wrote today again). But I have to endure that uncool fact as "my life". That "outsider life of poetry" is my life. I need to "give up" something to survive, and face the limit of my potentiality. That is one of the lessons I have learned in my life. Today, I wrote another poems. Of course, it is just "a study". But I will keep on writing, then it would show its "sprout".
This evening I had a meeting. But... I had gotten so exhausted that I slept a little bit after dinner. Therefore I had to attend too lately at the beginning time of meeting and disturbed the meeting (I'M REALLY SORRY FOR THAT!). After that, although ZOOM had a lot of troubles and I had to face them, I finished my presentation about my "Tokyo Story". Reading Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood", I stepped the Tokyo life I had adored actually. But the reality always win... so I had to do bitter taste of that real life. Other members sent me tender comments, so we enjoyed that meeting with warm vibration. We talked about the 1990s Japanese life (the era the internet had just started, so we had to build our relationships only in real life and it bothered me a lot because I was just a nerd/otaku). We also talked about Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and AUM incidents, At last, I have to face this fact. Everywhere I go, I have to follow myself. I can't run away from myself... so I need to "give up" about this too. I live my life in my style, and that's great enough. Thank you so much for this meeting.
