Keiko Imaoka

Beginner\'s Mind (Keiko Imaoka - Tucson, Arizona) I cannot be sure when I first became aware of haiku and tanka in my childhood in Japan. They seemed to have existed for a long time in the perimeter of my awareness, undifferentiated from proverbs, mottoes, aphorisms, and song lyrics that were phrased in similar forms. Sometime during my grade school years, \"Ogura Hyakunin-Isshu\" (\"Ogura Collection of One Hundred Tanka\", edited by Teika Fujiwara around 1235) became known to me as a New Year\'s card game, in which players compete to capture shimonoku cards (100 cards on each of which the last half of a verse is printed, spread out on the floor in front of the players) that finish the verses being read aloud. At abacus school, where we played this game at every new year\'s party, my prowess in the game improved dramatically when I was in the sixth grade, after I had memorized all the poems with my tenth-grade sister who was required to do so in her archaic grammar course in school. I...

1 poezii, 0 proze