Totul despre Iubire
English discussion room => Poetry => Subiect creat de: rksingh din 31 Mai, 2006, 02:24:13 p.m.
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Tall houses appear
to grow like trees from the plane
slowly rising high
people turn tiny
with cars, water, birds and beasts
in the summer flame
nervously worried
watch the moving mass of clouds
from the window
eternal patterns
nature's wonder on the edge
a streak of orange
thousands of lights
twinkle in colours like stars--
seat belt fastened
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In a formal way, I would say there is a haiku sequence. But it depends on the way the reader decodes this sequence. Each haiku can be interpreted differently. If we look at them as a whole, as a illuminating moment at the window of a plane, when a sunset reveals its secrets wonders, I would say there is only one poem, expressing beauty as a cosmic vision (from the point of view of the eye watching down from the sky toward earth). But, one can read each stanza, as you call them, as an independent haiku, if the regard is oriented toward the immediate picture. For instance, in the first haiku, the word “plane” can be decoded both as an airplane or a field. Houses grow like trees in a plane or houses look like trees watched from a plane.
In the second haiku... people turn tiny because of the distance between the earth and the plane, but also they can “turn tiny” because of their smallness compared to the infinity of the universe. And so on. Even the title can be misleading: is the window the window of a plane? or the window of a house? or the window of the soul?
As for the cultural difficulties, I don’t think that in this case it could be o real problem. Still... in different cultures, the perspective of life (in a deep sense) is different, that’s maybe way an European would probably read this poem as o whole rather than an Asian. Because the Europeans have (as a distinctive feature) a holistic perspective (because of the myth of globalization, maybe?), while the Asians have a propensity for details, for “tiny” things, for uniqueness. But it does not mean that the poem can not be read both ways by either an European or an Asian.
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Dear Lorelei:
I feel enlightened by your reasoned commentary which is also a fine critique of the poem.
I wish some more people had responded.
Best wishes
R K