sun notes db compare/contrast

The Pan, The Pot, The Fire I Have Before Me

Ishigaki Rin (Japan)

https://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/3781/auto/0/IN-FRONT-OF-ME-THE-POT-AND-RICEPOT-AND-BURNING-FLAMES-AND

Ishigaki Rin, known as “the bank clerk poet” because of her early employment, was an active trade unionist as well as essayist and poet. The latter is the class focus.

Her poetry was described as “contemptuous of arrogance and power” and she was not an advocate of women’s domestic roles. She knows dedication; she cared for her aging parents for 40 years while maintaining her same job.

In the same way that you are asked to “make every word count” she “weighs carefully every word and phrase.” This means that she thinks attentively and uses the most accurate words possible within the most compelling positioning possible. Somewhat like America’s Emily Dickinson, she use simple language to communicate expansive thinking. Diction implicitly selects a value for such words as “reasonable,” “convenient,” “shine,” “unflagging”

Feminism: Within this unit we also examine “Late Chrysanthemum.” This short story is harsh reality versus what can be construed as a gentle sense of tradition in creating and maintaining a home. In opposition, if the reader is not so inclined, the poem might be interpreted as generational entrapment. Remember the poem when we begin work on the novel, “Farming of Bones.”

Certainly, after World War II, traditional behaviors were bombarded by change from acknowledging that the country’s ruler, the Emperor, was not a God to opening the cultural “windows” from music to employment to what was an acceptable role for women.