ohmarianne

yawp!

Sun, 31 May 2009 17:55:17 GMT

I think today is Walt Whitman's birthday! I love Whitman, I read him a lot in Japan. He is so rowdy and macho yet he loves operas and dainty hieroglyphics. My favorite Whitmans are "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking" and "To a Foil'd European Revolutionary."

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:21:58 GMT

I was reading a year-end round up where they asked Japanese writers to pick some of their their favorite poems from 2008, and one of Taguchi Inuo's selections was Obama's victory speech. I thought that was nice.

PS, It's pretty crazy that no major Japanese poetry magazine is available online. Most don't even have websites at all. The only way to subscribe is filling out a card and sending it by mail! I wonder why that is, it seems like a really terrible idea to me, what with all the troubles with print media.

we may smile, a little sadly ...

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:20:00 GMT

I just finished Beedle the Bard. It was so cozy. I just quit Grad School for a couple hours and had my Hogwarts time.
I have to say though I had a secret little hope there would be something about Dumbledore and Grindlewald.

The love story adds something really special and heartbreaking to Dumbledore's character, but sadly it isn't in the books at all, not really. Wouldn't one of these marginal endnotes be an appropriate place for a ghostly little hint of something? The Hairy Heart comes closest I suppose. Still, were it not for Rowling's many copious interviews, I would leave the Hogwarts world thinking Dumbledore's heart was still locked away somewhere, possibly getting a little stubbly.

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:38:11 GMT

I think I did a bad job organizing my time this week--I'm so behind in the novel I'm supposed to present on Thurs it just seems impossible. I think I will just fake it I guess. I hate doing that. Or maybe tell my adviser I can't present? He said in the email I didn't have to, but did he really mean that? I mean I know I don't have to if I have an emergency obviously, but is procrastination an emergency? Grad school is hard. Last week in this class we did poetry and I felt so smart and prepared, now it's back to normal I guess.

I'm crazy excited for Thanksgiving--seeing the Obama rally with the skyline in the background was so emotional. My cousin sent me this article in French about Hyde Park, it's pretty funny to think about French people pronouncing Valois, ohlala les prix ont augmenté.

Plus there was this really sad part where the dog died and the main character had to throw away his doggy bed. (This is Nagareru by Koda Aya). I teared up when she found his teethmarks on the girl's shoe. I don't know, obviously my brain is kind of overloaded and I'm very emotionally involved in all the Obama puppy speculation. Maybe I could say that--for emotional reasons I can't present about anything unless it is explicitly about the Obamas' puppy, not just something that reminds me of it?

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:50:30 GMT

Things I have seen in Berkeley:
-hummingbirds
-Lynn Hejinian at the supermarket
-a prince charles spaniel puppy
-a dulcimer
-Bande a Part, and then I looked up the dance on Youtube and thought, I should write in my Livejournal I haven't done that for a while.

Fri, 02 May 2008 20:38:27 GMT

Gov. of Tokyo Ishihara Shintaro's reaction to the death of Ueno zoo's giant panda Ling Ling : いてもいなくてもいいんじゃないか。("Who cares if she's alive or dead?" basically)
Hardly the most offensive thing he's said, but honestly, she's a panda for goodness sake, who says mean things about pandas. They say these comments might affect Japan's efforts to acquire another panda from China.
I am trying to read a newspaper article a day, one long one one day and one short one the next day, and this is my short one today.
When I saw Ling Ling at the Ueno zoo, she seemed kind of sluggish and sad. I don't know if that's normal panda in captivity behavior, but I hope she wasn't mistreated or anything.

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:45:00 GMT

Translations of Hiraide Takashi by Sawako Nakayasu in Poetry Magazine and Octopus. He seems like a really interesting poet, and Sawako Nakayasu's translations are always great. It says Hiraide has a book coming out in English (Nakayasu's translations)! I wonder when there will be another issue of Factorial, it seems like it's been a while.
(I don't know too much about Hiraide, but I think he's kInd of like Inagawa Masato, who is also very interesting and just won a prize I think).

Also here are two really interesting articles about stamp collecting: The Passion that Led Me Astray and In Praise of the Collecting Act. I was just telling somebody who was asking about how I got interested in Japan, how one of my first memories about Japan is I had a stamp collecting book with a Japan page, and one day my dad brought me home some Japanese stamps to put in it.

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:17:40 GMT

Well this is another current events-ish post, but here I am on the internet, so there we are. Today is the last official day to sign this petition protesting the recent rape of a young girl in Okinawa by a US serviceman. Even if you miss the official day, though, it's always worth sending a message of support (especially as an American citizen). Just copy and paste the text of the letter into an email to the address on the screen. Plus it was just Valentines day, no?, tis the season to protest sexual violence.

More info about the case here.

fight obama!

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:00:26 GMT

Hee to go with what I wrote about Hillary, there is a city called Obama,　小浜 , in Fukui prefecture! They are making manju with his face on them. Oh I miss Japan sometimes, so funny.

Japan Times, "For Fukui city of Obama, choice of U.S. candidate is a no-brainer"

the art of making possible

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:06:37 GMT

I'm supporting Obama, but I definitely respect Hillary. I saw her commencement speech online from Wellesley, though, and it was so well written and soulful I was kind of amazed. If only she projected more of this kind of emotion now.

"We're searching for more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating modes of living. And so our questions, our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government continue. ...

Every protest, every dissent, whether it's an individual academic paper, or Founder's parking lot demonstration, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age. That attempt at forging for many of us over the past four years has meant coming to terms with our humanness."

It was really powerful, I recommend it. Anyway, back to my head cold, my soup, things like that.

poetry kanto

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:59:22 GMT

Poetry Kanto updated with the new issue.

Why do such strange things happen, to you?

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:19:54 GMT

Well my grad school applications are almost done. I've mostly been hibernating. Here is a list of poems I have been reading lately, they are stark yet cozy like winter:

Escape at Bedtime, RL Stevenson
White Birds, Miyazawa Kenji
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
Subarashii Umi, Mure Keiko
Tsuchi, Kaneko Misuzu
Vagabonds, Rimbaud
Manuelzinho, Bishop
The Motion Picture Industry in Crisis, Frank O'Hara (topical!)
Kowai toki no Iruka, Kudo Naoko

P U P P E T S . . .

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:29:00 GMT

Here I am, back in Chicago. I've mostly been just biding my time and plotting my future plans, in a simmery mysterious way.

I saw the puppet play Dogugaeshi by Basil Twist. I wanted to see it back when it first came out, so it was so perfect and symbolic that it got revived just in time for me to come home and see it. It was so amazing and it's in some ways about what it's like for an outsider to critically and complicatedly love Japan and mourn the slow death of its traditional arts. So it was emotional and relateable to me.

Creatures frolicking, sliding screens of magical depth perception, amazing music.

Then the National Bunraku Theater came to Chicago. That doesn't happen too often. It was pretty great. They did two scenes from puppet plays and had a bilingual explanation of the elements of puppet theater. It was really fun.

Oshichi reads her letter! It's so neat to watch puppets read.

Then I saw Across the Universe. I really loved it, though it didn't get great reviews. I thought it was just so beautiful and exuberant. It transformed all the Beatles songs into archetypal puppet mythic rituals of the psyche. If it was in fact bad, (which I don't think it was, I think it was great), then more bad movies should be like that.

Also Redmoon is reviving its production of Hunchback, so hopefully I'll see that. Also I have been going to see the transformational masks they have at the Field Museum, which are pretty amazing things.

As for puppet-related experiences, that's all!

like remembering a little brother

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:59:23 GMT

Bye Japan I'll be back.

Packing my bags right now. I didn't realize how much stuff I accumulated, also how much of it involves pictures of puppies. So weird. The saddest thing you leave behind is always the version of yourself you turned into while living abroad--and apparently this person I am loves puppies. Who knew I had it in me, who knew.

Bonnie will take me to the airport tomorrow, so I'm in good hands.

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:21:34 GMT

Last night I had dinner with Sousou's friends. We took lots of sentimental pictures in front of a florist. I want to pack everybody up in a dubious box with my Potter books and mail them to my parents.

I just packed up the dubious Potter box actually and mailed it away by sea. I thought of Harry in Chapter Two, scraping the debris from his Hogwarts trunk and distilling his life into that rucksack. Except mine was a big overstuffed cardboard box I could barely even lift instead.

Adventures, problems! Such is life, such is life.

What else is there to do except stay? AND THAT WE CANNOT DO.

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 07:21:06 GMT

I am going home in two weeks.

Filled with poignant, melancholy tenderness, also wild panic. If you talk to me, including about Harry Potter, I probably will drop something or act weird like I have to throw up.

The visa extension won't happen it turns out, the dream is over, the dream is over I guess.

After all, Chicago is pretty okay, a chance to eat fruit and mayonaisse-less salads, mayonaisseless all kinds of things, family, friends, the lake. Is Harry Potter still playing in the 3D???

there is a cure in the house and not outside it no

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:47:39 GMT

I had such a great trip! Now I'm home, kind of disoriented as happens sometimes.

Keiko Ogura

I saw Keiko Ogura speak at the Peace Memorial Museum. It was a really amazing event. Every year on the anniversary of the bombing, survivors speak out about their experiences--in English. Though her story was really upsetting and intense, Keiko was so genki and cheerful, even a little slyly funny sometimes. Sometimes survivors' testimony has a kind of flatness to it, as if to tell such a harrowing story requires the speaker to distance herself from her own feelings. But Keiko was very warm and engaging, especially when speaking of her committment to the peace movement and her sense of mission as an activist. I wonder if speaking about her experience in a foreign language is somehow liberating for her--maybe that provides a certain emotional distance you sense sometimes in survivor accounts.

Tamiki Hara

I was so happy to meet Mr. Toyota and Mr. Ebine, who are active in Kagenki, a memorial organization for the poet Tamiki Hara. I looked for Hara's memorial stone, but I couldn't find it (Peace Memorial Park is pretty hectic on the sixth). We went to a poetry reading at sunset in the park. It was really great to be with such creative, open-hearted people after touring the museum and the park (which is kind of harrowing and overwhelming).

Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace (Japanese only)

Keiko Ogura's organization.

Poetry International Web Japan

Yasuhiro Yotsumoto edits this amazing site. Not totally related to My Trip To Hiroshima, but full of great translations of contemporary Japanese poetry. The new Ryuichi Tamura poems look great.

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:26:49 GMT

1.Happy ending: I honestly really think Harry, Ron, and Hermione will all survive and that good will win out over evil. This is the prediction that is most important to me, though it's true maybe I'm just whistling in the dark, I know, I know. It would be the first happy ending since Prisoner of Azkaban.

2. The motorcycle! I know there was that picture of the kids riding around on that dragon, but I still think there'll be an amazing getaway on Sirius's flying motorbike.

4. Remember at the end of Order of the Phoenix when Harry says he doesn't want to be human? Big existential questions like that will be a big part of the ending. What does death mean, what does it mean to have (or do violence to) a soul, where did Sirius go. The most important mysteries Harry has to solve are the ones in his heart, that's what I always say. The voices he hears beyond the veil. That enigmatic flicker of something in Dumbledore's eyes.

5. Harry is the last Horcrux, Snape's a free agent out for his own mysterious purposes, Draco is more interesting than he was before but he'll never be as interesting as the good guys or Snape, RAB is Regulus.

6. Harry and co. will break into Gringotts! To steal a Horcrux or something.

7. Harry will use an Unforgivable Curse, maybe on Snape, it'll be really upsetting.

8. I don't want to get into a who'll-die-who-won't-die discussion, but I really do think Lupin will be okay. Worried for Hagrid. Honestly, though, who knows, Rowling clearly capable of anything, has used the word bloodbath.

9. No Quidditch. Sad. But they will go back to Hogwarts for a little while, maybe to steal a Horcrux and also for highjinks. Maybe there will be Quidditch, who knows.

Potter for Poets

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:24:49 GMT

I was reading my friend's livejournal, and she was making the perennial complaint that the prose of the Harry Potter books is uninteresting and generic. Not the first time I've heard people say that, no. I had a really long, epic argument week after week with a guy in my poetry workshop class at U of C about it.

What is there, I ask you, in the Harry Potter books for poets? I'm pretty sure J.K. Rowling has referred to the Potter books in a couple of interviews as detective novels. The straightforwardness of her prose is so different from the lush lyricism people expect from fantasy novels that they often react like my friend did: they think it's boring and unsophisticated. Maybe people reading Harry Potter should think less about Tolkien and LeGuin and more about Hammett and Chandler.

Is it ridiculous to compare the writer of a giant sprawling monster like Order of the Phoenix to the great minimalists of times past? Chandler books are long and wordy and have a lot of detail about cars and furniture. Would you rather read about careworn leather upholstery or cozy squishy armchairs by the fire in Gryffie Tower?

J.K. Rowling's technical strengths as a writer: her dialogue, so close to the way real people speak except for a certain wit and instant familiarity that, for me, really sell the idea that she is a noir writer. And Number 2 would be the imagery, which is always iconic, elegant, memorable.

Anyway, I give you JK Rowling, the children's-fantasy-noir writer. I think the books are stylistically very innovative. She happened on a unique form that fits her content perfectly, and that is pretty much the definition of great art I say.

I thought I heard your dulcet tones

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 13:40:29 GMT

Tomorrow is the World Premier of Order of the Phoenix! In Tokyo, Roppongi Hills. Daniel Radcliffe will be there, as will I.

I entered two different contests to win tickets to the actual screening and appearances by the famous people. I entered them several times, entered all my friends too, but I didn't win. One of them I had to include a photo and impeccably handwritten if brief statement in Japanese about why I love Harry Potter, but I still lost. So I will be there in a purely gazing with longing sort of unofficial capacity. Honestly it's all for the best, I'm not ready to watch the movie yet, I'd just get upset and possibly explode.

SO CONFLICTED ABOUT EVERYTHING TO DO WITH HARRY POTTER. Also I have a job interview or something tomorrow, also something about the bank or I don't know possible rumored homework but none of these things carry much emotional weight around here these days. You know what I mean?

THE MADHOUSE CHUCKED ME OUT

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:28:06 GMT

So jittery. About Potter, mostly about Potter, but also about what's going to happen to me in the future, and even if someone happens to be telling the truth when he says things like Yoshimoto Ryumei and Mishima Yukio were best friends (because Mishima was SO SAD and mysterious you have to be a POET to understand his problems apparently) I don't care because I didn't like his tone I thought he was being kind of smug. Just b/c Yoshimoto liked Mishima doesn't mean I have to is all I'm trying to say.

and also I have a house guest coming and my apartment and indeed my life is an uninhabitable mess. How do I live in so much squalor. What's wrong with me. How will I get the olive oil off the floor.

Thu, 24 May 2007 05:03:23 GMT

review, Wakai Arechi by Tamura Ryuichi, poetrykanto

The birds are singing, it's nice, the cute boy in my English group started showing up again, off I go to said group, song in heart, etc.

Sat, 19 May 2007 13:53:16 GMT

Hehe, boy is my face red as they say. I had maybe one or two too many beers last night, and karaoke makes people emotional (power chords and what have you). It was the welcome party for the new kids in the dorm, but it ended kind of early, so I was all at loose ends and internet happy. And Gmail was freezing up my computer so the drunk mail/chat was out. The best thing about having roommates is probably that they gently discourage you from embarrassing internet antics.

I forgot my camera for karaoke, typical typical, but here's a picture from when Bonnie was here:

PS: Ordinarily I wouldn't just delete the post like that, but the spelling was too embarrassing. Thank you for your comments, they still exist somewhere out in the internet, plus in my heart obviously.

PPS: Done with Azkaban, very on top of things.

sometimes you have to be steady

Wed, 02 May 2007 13:30:12 GMT

My review of Palmer and Yoshimasu at the Tokyo Festival of Contemporary Poetry: poetrykanto.

I will tell you this, it was much much better than Spiderman 3. Which is sad, because my expectations for Spiderman 3 were very high, pretty much just as high as they were for Palmer/Yoshimasu I would say.

I can't believe Spiderman 3 wasn't good. I feel really disappointed and sad about it. It looked like it was going to be so good in the previews. If anything like this ever happens with Potter, that's it for me. Who knows anymore. The world is confusing.

Best New Words So Far

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:34:20 GMT

Best New Words So Far

kimo-kawaii: cute in an ugly way

kasane-gi: unique subtle Japanese style of layering

nui-gurumi: stuffed animal

kanata: over there

dekkai: thick? big? not sure exactly, has nuances

gyokan: space between the lines

rakuda: camel

sukina hito: the person you have a crush on

kebadatsu: get fluffy

te-ami: knitting