"This whole Experiment"
Bashō, Lawrence, Blake, Dickinson, Ryuchi, Monk
Matsuo Bashō (tr. from Japanese by R.H. Blyth):
D.H. Lawrence:
William Blake:
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Emily Dickinson:
A little Madness in the Spring / Is wholesome even for the King, / But God be with the Clown— / Who ponders this tremendous scene— / This whole Experiment of Green—/ As if it were his own! / quick
whole- swift fleet sweet by / fair Apocalypse / —[green]where
Tamura Ryuichi (tr. from Japanese by Christopher Drake):
Thelonious Monk, “Green Chimneys,” rec. 1968:
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Basho (via Blyth) --I love the consonance of "autumn," "one," "same," "green" on either side of the line with long "e." The long "e" ties together "ning," "sea," "fields," and "green." The sounds have so much similarity that the sound and sense fuses perfectly around what I find the most exciting part--the anticipation of green to burst into many colors.
Lawrence--I'm most drawn to the unexpected color of green for dawn. This is my "first time" reading of an "apple-green" dawn. That's delightful.
Dickinson--I love that green is an "Experiment" and not an "experiment." Green got proper consideration and treatment.
The repetition in Blake's last stanza line/s reminds me of Spencer. So much echo in each poem. Spenser has 20+ "echo rings": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45191/epithalamion-56d22497d00d4
I don't know, or maybe I mean, I can't say exactly who or what the "man with a green face" is but what a bugle call to resist, to fight the money culture, the techno-finance matrix, late capitalism. "We need more cunning to hunger harder/ more imagination to end our dreaming . . . and if you say that only evil exists/ then history will whisper back:/all great things are evil."