Tag: Haiku

• The difference between the almost right word and the right word, is like a lightning bug and the lightning

    It’s rather easy for those of us who share a culture and language (such as English) to forget that the meanings of some of the expressions we use do not follow from their lexical makeup: the idioms. They can play unique havoc in translations: foreign poetry, for example. Metaphors may or may not cross…

  gozzter

  February 18, 2026

  Uncategorized

  cultural norms, Haiku, idioms, poetry, translatability, words

• A sorry sight?

  I am fascinated by liminality, intrigued by areas that exist on the edge of things, or in the space between them. I’m not sure when it all started, or why it has had such a hold on my imagination -but there you have it. Not everything has an owner, or for that matter even a…

  gozzter

  January 19, 2022

  Uncategorized

  boundaries, collectivism, edges, Gunter Nitschke, Haiku, Kyoto Journal, liminality, ma, Matsuo Basho, philosophy, spaces, things

• Is the thing translated still the thing?

  When I was a student at University, translated Japanese Haiku poetry was all the rage; it seemed to capture the Zeitgeist of the generation to which I had been assigned. I was swept along with others by the simple nature images, but -much like the sonnet, I suppose- I failed to realize how highly structured…

  gozzter

  December 9, 2020

  Uncategorized

  Alison Anderson, Haiku, literature, Mark Polizzotti, metaphrase, Muriel Barbery, paraphrase, poetry, Rilke, Rumi, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translation, translators