ZUIHITSUS AGAIN

PLUS A POEM BY JEFFREY MORGAN

My thanks to the editors of Marrow Magazine for including two of my zuihitsus in the current issue. Here’s a link: https://marrowmagazine.com/the-torn-key-on-weeping/

A note on the zuihitsu:

We tend to think of Japanese forms as tight, syllable-counting, and focused on nature, but the zuihitsu is a kind of anti-haiku—a long prose poem that brings in personal issues and can reflect on the social world. My own tend to run one or two pages, but there’s no limit to the length. I number my sections, but numbering is optional. I was introduced to the form by my poet friend, Peter Cooley, who has two of them in his book World without Finishing.

It’s a form that allows for—even demands—free association. Many zuihitsus read like notebook jottings. They can include quotations, sections in verse, confessional passages, philosophical ruminations, and whatever else comes to mind. The zuihitsu has room for it all. Mental leaps are part of the fun. But once I have a draft, I try to organize the randomness and make something that works as a single, somewhat unified (but not too unified) statement. I try to limit each one to three or four subjects, so they’re not totally chaotic.

In her book The Narrow Road to the Interior (2006), Kimiko Hahn writes: “I love the zuihitsu as a kind of air current: and what arises is very subjective, intuitive and spontaneous—qualities I trust. It is by its own nature a fragmented anything. I love long erratic pieces into which I can thrash around—make a mess.” She notes that the zuihitsu was invented by Japanese women writers a thousand years ago, then adopted by some male poets because it allows for a wider emotional range. She calls it, “A portion of chaos set loose on the page.”

*

Yesterday my poet son Jeffrey turned 50. So in honor of his birthday here’s a poem of his. It originally appeared in Rattle Magazine, and is included in his collection The Last Note Becomes Its Listener, winner of the Minds on Fire Open Book Prize. Jeff grew up in Fairbanks and now lives in Bellingham, Washington. He’s written two books of poetry, the first, Crying Shame, was published by BlazeVOX Books. His work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review Online, and Poetry Northwest, among many other journals. He teaches literature and creative writing for American Public University and serves as a Poet-in-the Schools in Washington state.

(Despite its title, this is an original poem by Jeff, not a translation.)

		TRANSLATION
		By Jeffrey Morgan

During sleep paralysis, the mind wakes up inside the frozen body,
as if to ask again the question from an unusual perspective:
Why is there something and not nothing?
I find it comforting to focus on something I love,
which I have no power to change.
I think about Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew.
The burst of light in that painting 
enters through the window
as epiphany, but even more specifically
the darkness is lavish and pools like heavy velvet
around the announcement. Inside of what we cannot see, we are free
to imagine ourselves. I have stood before this painting
in the Contarelli Chapel in Rome
as the coin-operated spotlight wound down,
just before the chapel closed for the night: light inside light inside light.
There’s also this thing called Stendhal syndrome,
in which people become physically ill in the presence
of great works of art. Maybe the body is not always ready
to recognize the authority of the mind,
or perhaps the mind even with the body at its disposal
is always and only waiting 
for what may or may not be a sign.

Again, here’s a link to my pair of zuihitsus in Marrow Magazine: https://marrowmagazine.com/the-torn-key-on-weeping/