Taken in summer 2011.
DAILY PHOTO: Szent János Plébániatemplom in Szentendre
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Author Archives: B Gourley
DAILY PHOTO: The Wat Chana Songkhram Complex
Taken October 2012 from atop the Rambuttri Village Inn.
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DAILY PHOTO: Ray Charles Plaza in Albany, Georgia
Taken in December 2012.
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DAILY PHOTO: Town Square at Mollepata, Peru
This is where the hike to Machu Picchu by way of the Salkantay Pass begins. Taken in 2010.
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DAILY PHOTO: Atlanta’s Flatiron Building
Taken in the summer of 2012
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BOOK REVIEW: The Classic Tradition of Haiku Edited by Faubion Bowers
The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology by Faubion Bowers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The other haiku anthology I reviewed is Classic Haiku, located here.
This is the second haiku anthology that I’ve reviewed on my site. While they’re both thin volumes of traditional haiku, each has its distinct flavor. The previous volume was organized by season. This one is organized by author. The two books share several authors (e.g. the greats Bashō, Issa, and Buson), but diverge on many of the lesser known poets.
One nice feature of this book is that it offers multiple translations of many of the haiku. Poetry is notoriously tricky to translate as literal translations can be meaningless. Multiple translations can give one a better opportunity to hone in on what the author meant to convey. This volume does give the original Japanese poem in romanized transcription (for those who enjoy the sound the author conveyed as well as meaning), but–unlike the other volume–it does not include the kanji. (This doesn’t matter for me, as I don’t read Japanese, but I’m sure the kanji is a nice feature for readers of Japanese.)
Some favorites are:
clouds occasionally
make a fellow relax
moon-viewing
Matsuo Bashō
islands
shattered into a thousand pieces
in the summer sea
Matsuo Bashō
you’re the butterfly
and I the dreaming heart
of Sōshi
Matsuo Bashō
[Note: Sōshi is the Japanese name of the Taoist thinker Chuang Tze, and this references his famous statement about having dreamt he was a butterfly.]
that dream I had
of being stabbed–was true
bitten by a flea
Takarai Kikaku
oh, won’t some orphaned sparrow
come
and play with me
Kobayashi Issa
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DAILY PHOTO: It’s Time to Mow the Clock… Wait, What?
The clock at Wat Phnom in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Taken in October of 2012.
Wat Phnom is Phnom Penh’s temple on the hill. I say “the hill” because Phnom Penh is not rife with topography, and there is just the one hill.
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DAILY PHOTO: The Lynchburg General Store
Taken Spring 2012
During Prohibition this general store is how the Daniel family made their living. It sits on the Lynchburg town square and is now mostly a souvenir shop. The distillers proudly proclaim that they only use each barrel once because by then the peak of it’s color and flavor attributes are used up. So there are a lot of barrels to pile up. Some of them are sold to a Canadian whisky maker that is not so finicky. A few are included in the shipment to people who buy a whole barrel’s worth of whisky. Others get turned into anything imaginable and sold. They appear as garbage cans, decorative walls, containers, etc. The one thing they don’t sell in the shop is whiskey, because–ironically–it’s a dry county.
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DAILY PHOTO: Hua Lamphong Rail Station
Taken October 2012
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DAILY PHOTO: Oktoberfest in Helen, Georgia
Taken at Oktoberfest 2011
Why an Oktoberfest pic in May? I don’t know. Maybe it’s Friday and I’m thinking of cold beer.
