{"id":3288,"date":"2011-01-25T06:30:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T17:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=3288"},"modified":"2011-01-25T10:38:14","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T21:38:14","slug":"tuesday-poem-haiku-spring-rain-by-kobayashi-issa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/01\/25\/tuesday-poem-haiku-spring-rain-by-kobayashi-issa\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: Haiku &#8220;spring rain&#8221; by Kobayashi Issa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>spring rain<br \/>\na rat laps<br \/>\nthe Sumida river<\/p>\n<p>Kobayashi Issa 1763-1827<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Last week Jeffrey Paparoa Holman posted another haiku by Issa, one of the great Japanese haijin, while Janis Freegard shared a poem by Japanese poet, Taigyu Ryokan: &#8220;<em>You Do Not Need Many Things<\/em>.&#8221;\u00a0 They put me in the mode for more haiku and this one, by Issa, is one of my favorites.\u00a0 For me, it epitomises the juxtaposition of images that &#8220;cut&#8221; each other and (and in so doing create something greater), that is the essence of haiku.<\/p>\n<p>As with all the best haiku, it can also be read equally well in reverse order:<\/p>\n<p>the Sumida river<br \/>\na rat laps<br \/>\nspring rain<\/p>\n<p>But read either way, I love the simplicity and power of the image: the freshness of the rain juxtaposed with the rat, which is vermin&#8212;and yet the rat, too, laps the river\/spring rain: it is part of the whole, with no judgement as to merit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>spring rain a rat laps the Sumida river Kobayashi Issa 1763-1827 &#8212; Last week Jeffrey Paparoa Holman posted another haiku by Issa, one of the great Japanese haijin, while Janis Freegard shared a poem by Japanese poet, Taigyu Ryokan: &#8220;You Do Not Need Many Things.&#8221;\u00a0 They put me in the mode for more haiku and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3288"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3295,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288\/revisions\/3295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}