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Explore poems read by the two authors in conversation with each other, then follow your own fish to unlock your own creativity, and share it with us.
Hello. This is Deborah Backel Schmidt here with my friend and neighbor, Sue Boudreaux, and we are your hosts for Follow A Fish, the poetry conversation and podcast. This weekend's pair of episodes focuses on narrative poetry, a genre that was fairly unpopular, if you can believe it, in modern times but has recently been enjoying a real comeback. Human beings hunger endlessly for stories, and poetry has the gift of bringing to storytelling its many gifts. To mention just a few, heightened imagery, the multiple facets of symbolism, and the power of concision, not to mention music.
Deborah:Yesterday's episode featured Sue's poem Food Delivery, and today I will read my poem Cherry Blossoms. Before I read, I just want to extend an invitation to you to join us in person, if you aren't too far away, for our next open mic, Sunday, June 21, 03:30 at The Good Table here in El Sorento. For more information, check out our website at curiositycatpodcast.com, where you can also see our whole library of episodes and everything associated with them. And here is Cherry Blossoms. The old man sits calm, hands resting on the table before him.
Deborah:His eyes, wintry and knowing, are still the eyes of the boy he was, the kamikaze. He remembers everything, the gut clenching fear of waiting for his orders, his hair's breath escape from death. The girl who gave him the scarf of parachute silk that she embroidered in perfect satin stitches with falling cherry blossoms.
Sue:Oh, thank you, Deborah. That was lovely and sort of terrifyingly surprising as well. You know, the the twist from where you think, oh, cherry blossoms, how nice. That'll be, you know, like fluttery delicate petals floating down in springtime. And then the sudden mention of the kamikaze, as still the eyes of the boy he was the kamikaze, and it just twists the entire poem.
Sue:You've broken up the sentence in a way that makes the reveal quite surprising with just pause and punctuation of stanza breaks. And I think that this is a particular type of poem, which I think you're going to get. Would you tell us a little bit about what type of poem this is?
Deborah:Sure. This is a tonka. Actually, it's three tonka poems that are linked together into one story, which is kind of an unusual way of using thanca. Thanca is a form that goes back to seventh century Japan, the court. And very often, these were single stanza poems with this particular sequence of syllables, five lines of five syllables, seven, five, seven, seven.
Deborah:So very strict form. And in addition to being standalone poems, they were often in the court used as a way for lovers to communicate with each other. So they were sent back and forth, they became a dialogue, a conversation between poets, which is amazing. They weren't usually used in sequential stances in this way to tell a story, but I just wanted to use the tanka because it's a little longer than a haiku, but I wanted the concision and the syllabic quality of the Japanese poetry because it's a Japanese subject.
Sue:Right, right. I mean, I loved how you gave some insight as to the almost unimaginable mental state of suicide warriors. But I want to just go over the the beautiful aspects of this poem. The girl who gave him the scarf of parachute silk. And this this contrast and heartbreaking thing of this tiny telling detail, how young he was, how full of life and love, on his way to sacrifice.
Sue:And yet clearly not, as he's an old man now. So I'm very interested in the backstory to this surprising and very compact love story. And the irony of course of the parachute be of it being parachute silk. And I bet that the kamikaze pilots didn't have parachutes because it was supposed to be a, you know, a suicide mission. Yeah.
Sue:So I don't know for sure.
Deborah:I don't know. This was the end of the Right. Right.
Sue:And I really like the assonance of the s's in the perfect satin stitches at the end. So I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about kamikaze pilots and the culture that gave rise to them.
Deborah:Sure. So probably a lot of our listeners have heard about the kamikaze pilots during the second World War in Japan, that they were young men who were drafted straight out of school, sometimes barely trained at all as pilots, and expected to sacrifice their lives in battle because as a last ditch effort to save the Japanese empire in the face of the war, this was thought to be perhaps as a saving gesture, an effective way to win in battle. And on the right, in the conservative elements of Japanese culture after the war, they were considered to be a symbol of traditional virtues and to have embodied the spirit of self sacrifice. And the people on the right felt that that is just something that's terribly absent from modern Japan. But people on the left, the pacifists, the kamikaze pilots were part of this generation that was lost to the war and a really powerful reminder of how important it was to maintain pacifism.
Sue:Interesting. The
Deborah:cherry blossoms themselves were the symbol of the kanikaze because in Japanese culture, cherry blossoms, because they're beautiful and evanescent, they're alive for such a brief period of time, and then they're gone. This was the symbol of the lives of these young men. Oh, man. Yeah.
Sue:So there must have been a considerable I mean, I wonder how they sort of brought people into the idea of sacrificing their lives to the empire. And the fact that they targeted such young men. Yes.
Deborah:They were so vulnerable, and they were you know, like the Hitler youth, they were vulnerable to being drafted into this really restricted, dogmatic way of thinking, and they didn't have much choice. This idea was forced on them, and it was terrifying to them. But at the same time, they were trying to please the authority that they'd been brought up to please and to
Sue:I mean, I would argue that it's probably almost an instinctive wish of young people to be heroes. Yeah. And this gave them a real opportunity to be the shining hero.
Deborah:That's probably one way they were appealed to.
Sue:I would think so. Yeah.
Deborah:Yeah. This particular poem was a response to an article that we'll link to in the show notes. It's called he escaped death as a katlakazi. Pilot. And seventy years later, he told his story, and it's the picture that heads the article is what really got me going.
Deborah:The photograph of this man in his nineties now, I believe, during the time they Yeah. Almost 90 at the time the article was written, named Kazuo Odachi. He's one of the last surviving kamikaze patrons.
Sue:How did he survive? What happened?
Deborah:Well, he was very, very lucky for his first few missions. Just barely escaped. Barely escaped. And then the very last time he was set to fly out, he was on the tarmac dressed and ready to get into his plane, and the order came down telling him that the that war had been ended. They were not going to go out.
Sue:I wonder, were there lots and lots of kamikaze pilots? I have no idea of the numbers. The reason I'm asking is because after the First World War, there was a real echo of the sacrifice of a particular class of young men. The officers were the first over the top. Yeah.
Sue:And they got disproportionately killed. Oh. And it made a real hole in that generation.
Deborah:Right. I'm sure that
Sue:was So I'm wondering whether the same thing happened in Japan.
Deborah:I have heard that. Yeah. I don't know the numbers and how many of the young men lost were specific with kamikaze, and how many were lost in other ways during the war, but it was a huge impact. Yeah.
Sue:Both our poems this week speak to the possibly lethal effects of tribalism in very, very different ways, kamikaze culture and the rise of the Mago right wing populism. I wonder if you wanted to comment on that. Is tribalism something you're particularly interested in?
Deborah:It is. It fascinates me. The word itself fascinates me because I think that so much about traditional tribal culture is actually really valuable and something that we can learn from. But the way that it's used in the sense that you brought it up is referring to a very limited and limiting worldview, where you define yourself in relation to the people who are just like you and define everyone else who's different from you as being other, and potentially dangerous, or evil. So it does fascinate me, and I think that wars would have a hard time being fought without some manifestation of that
Sue:Right, kind of for good and ill, Yeah. You've talked a little bit about the type of poem that this is, and you've told us a bit about why you chose that format. Was it difficult to write in such a specified form? It is challenging, and you always run up against these lines that have one syllable more
Deborah:than they're supposed to have, and you really, really like them, and you can't see how to change those
Sue:words. Right.
Deborah:But it's fun to play with it. It's like a crossword puzzle. It's just Uh-huh. Trying to trying to find a word that fits in those squares, you know, the right word, and it has to interact with all the other words that cross crisscross it. So it's kind of like that.
Deborah:It's a puzzle. But, also, I think because of the bareness that is a necessary component of it, the results when you hit it, right, are so satisfying. Because you have to leave out a lot. You have to figure out what to leave in, what's important to leave in. And when you choose the right things to leave in, end up with a lot of implications and tangents that touch each other and create storylines that are not necessarily fleshed out, but are there by implication.
Deborah:So that part is really fun.
Sue:I love that. That's a beautiful explanation. And there is something quite fun about having to do something within boundaries, but within those boundaries there's freedom. Because a totally blank page is terrifying. But where you have a little bit of structure, I think it can actually sometimes help unleash your imagination.
Deborah:Absolutely. Yes, I think structure is a good thing. And, you know, I suppose we're always free to take of it what we wish and ignore other parts if we wish. I should say that my version of Danca is not a very traditional version. And if you read more about it, we're going to link in the show notes to the articles at poets.org, which is from American Economy of Poets.
Deborah:And there's an excerpt there from the Poets Glossary as well. There's a great article on Tonka, and Jane Hirschfield has written extensively on it. In fact, she was the one who introduced it to American audiences and writers through her book The Ink Dark Moon, which is a translation with Mariko Aratami of love poems from this early court era into men by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu. So in the original Tanga form, you can read more about it, the first couplet was considered one section, and then there was a turn in the third line, and the the last second, three lines were something else entirely. I wasn't really following that form.
Deborah:I was just following the sequence of syllables.
Sue:So when you talk about turn, you mean it's talking about one thing, and then it turns to talk about something surprisingly different, but that's still linked.
Deborah:Yep, in the way that our sonnets do.
Sue:Oh, that's interesting.
Deborah:Yeah. It's been compared to the sonnet.
Sue:I did not know that, and yet it makes complete sense and I find that I naturally tend to do that when I'm writing, much more instinctively, that a turn in something and it's the same with a really good short story. Yeah. Where it's got dum di dum di dum and then something happens that is plausible, but really unexpected. Yeah. That's what makes you remember it forever.
Sue:Yeah. Yeah, if you can get it right. Yes. Thank you very much, I'd love to re read it. Cherry Blossoms by Deborah Backel Schmidt.
Sue:The old man sits calm, hands resting on the table before him, his eyes wintry and knowing are still the eyes of the boy he was, the kamikaze. He remembers everything, the gut clenching fear of waiting for his orders, his hair's breadth escape from death, the girl who gave him the scarf of parachute silk that she embroidered in perfect satin stitches with falling cherry blossoms.
Deborah:And here's the prompt for this episode, Try a Tanka. You will see a link in our show notes to the articles on tanka at poets.org. It is five lines of five and seven syllables each. Five, seven, five, seven, seven. You could write a standalone single tonka or try alternating stanzas in conversation with another poet.
Deborah:Send your poem to curiositycatpodcastgmail dot com. You will read out the first two or three at our next open mic on Sunday afternoon, June twenty first, at the Good Table Cafe. Come at three to get your tea or coffee for the 03:30 start.
Sue:I hope that you might also share a poem with a friend and talk about what it means to you and be curious about their take, or maybe go to a museum together and be curious about how your friend responds to a painting compared to yours. Both poems and visual arts are wonderful ways of wandering down the dusty corridors of other people's minds, to deepen conversations and friendships over a bit of tea and a cream slice, perhaps instead of shared banana split at Fenton's or fancy cocktails with a sprig of rosemary at the ramen shop bar. I'm doing it. As ever, we'd love to hear from you. See our show notes for more details from the two narrative poems and for the written versions of our poems with artwork.
Sue:Don't forget to share, subscribe, and tell your friends, good things, of course, about our podcast. The music for season two is Emile Pessard's Andalus, played by Deborah Schmidt on flute, accompanied by Brian Baker on piano, production and editing by me in El Sobrante, California. Thank you so much for listening.