It just doesn't translate well. Japanese poetry, for instance, was judged less on it's surface content (although that could be quite moving), but on word choice, the fitness, the fineness of fit, the flow of the language over the tongue. Then too, since both Chinese and Japanese are image-oriented languages, rather than word-oriented linear/recursive languages like most western languages, there's a fundamental difference in thought patterns. The closest parallel I can think of in English is Milton, who, because he was blind, found his expression in the spoken quality of his language. People who can't stand Milton have never heard it read out loud.
One key semantic point often overlooked (or considered the great fault of such poetry by westerners) is the use of nature, and particularly the nature found in common rural life, as a parallel, or path into emotional states. That the same things recur in so many poems seems repetitive to western ears, but they carry a great freight of connotative meaning in the Japanese culture. To put it in perspective, do you find the kennings of Old English or Old Norse verse irksome? Or the repetitive phrases of the Greek epics where seas are always "wine-dark," and so on? No. And all these usages arose from a common cause: the need of a bard to tell the same tales again and again, without remembering more than the events and emotions. With a full bag of such adjectival phrases, a good bard could recite for hours. And the Japanese didn't have a written language until sometime in the eight century, giving them plenty of time to develop their poetry along those lines.
And finally, the oriental languages, particularly Japanese, are much more terse. As an example, it just happens that I wrote my first poetry in a number of years last night, a haiku. What can be expressed in exceedingly short phrases in Japanese is impossible to replicate in English (and I hate to think of what a German translation of, say, the Man'yoshu would sound like. :barf:
In writing haiku in English, I find myself continually fighting get rid of just one last syllable in each line. It starts to be tempting to rework the haiku as a tanka, or perhaps the older sedoka folk form. But I was using haiku precisely for its brevity, and the longer forms, while roughly twice as long, would overwhelm the primary work I intend to couple them with.
For those of you who don't believe me, I challenge you to write a single worthwhile haiku; it's one of the hardest verse forms you'll ever attempt. Seventeen syllables, divided into three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively. It's pretty easy to find lots of single words that take up five syllables in English, and there are even a few (more than you'd suspect) that can fill out the seven syllable line. (hint, get the two books of Jim Morrison's surviving notebooks, as he had a remarkable affinity for verse as terse (sorry for the internal rhyme...I'll be doing Anglo-Saxon Long Line if I don't watch out :foot: ). Or Morrison's favorite poet, Arthur Rimbaud, who has much of the same quality, albeit in more regular verse forms.
Incidentally, nice work. I particularly like the round plaque. I went through my collection of oriental literature, both Chinese and Japanese, trying to identify the text, but no luck; sorry.
