ON THE MATTER OF BEING A HUMAN


I,
Why?

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PS : This is one of the shortest and the most meaningful poems I have read and been impressed so far, unfortunately I don't know its author. If someone knows, please put down a note here. Actually the title of the poem tells the whole story and the rhym "I / why" adds an extra flavour in the form of the poem

Güzel ve komik bir şey. Paylaştığınız için teşekkür ederim.

Daha önce hiç görmediğim için yazarını bilmiyorum. Google'dan da baktığımda bir şey çıkmadı.

Daha az komik ama neredeyse aynı anlam veren bir şey İspanyol yazarı Pedro Calderón de la Barca'nın:

... pues el delito mayor
del hombre es haber nacido ...

... as the greatest crime
of man is to have been born ...

Alman felsefeci Arthur Schopenhauer bu mısraları acayıp sevmiş, hatta onlara takılmış, sonra da onların anlamına dayanarak kendi felsefesini kurmuş.

The poet's name is Eli Siegel.

PS: Equally, Mohammed Ali's poem is also argued to be the shortest:

Me,
We.
:).

... as the greatest crime
of man is to have been born ...


A witty synopsis! :)

The poet's name is Eli Siegel.

Apparently, its title is actually "One Question".

By the way, this sort of stuff is different from those of Japanese poetry, Haiku. What do you find with Haikus? Do they ever impress you?:confused:

By the way, this sort of stuff is different from those of Japanese poetry, Haiku. What do you find with Haikus? Do they ever impress you?:confused:

Yes, it's very different. In English poetry, the high point of haiku writing—in my opinion—was the one that came first and that wasn't, in fact, a haiku according to the strict rules of the form: Ezra Pound's

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

There are, of course, some good haiku here and there in English, but the form has become so popular—probably because it seems so easy and simple, when in fact a good haiku is a damn hard thing to write—that it's been cheapened somewhat.

Haiku in Japanese are an entirely different story, though. Basho, to name just the most well-known example, strikes me as one of the world's very best poets:

araumi ya
Sado ni yokotau
amanogawa

The rough sea
stretching out towards Sado:
the Milky Way.

———

tabi ni yande
yume wa kareno o
kakemeguru

On a journey, ill:
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields.

That second one's the poem he wrote just before he died, and there's lots more where that (and those) came from.

William Carlos Williams is also noted for his Haiku some of which I read at the university years ago..



The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

William Carlos Williams, Spring and All ([Paris]: Contact, 1923)

William Carlos Williams

I love that poem, too. It seems to me, though, to be more along the lines of the Eli Siegel poem than of the haiku style of Ezra Pound's (or Basho's, for that matter).

But whatever it is, it's a damn good poem.