Photo of Shugaku-in Imperial Villa.‘Imperial Invitation’ by Margaret Coats The Society November 9, 2021 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 19 Comments . Imperial Invitation Fair neighbor, come, pass through entrancing gates I made to veil surprises and seclude My masterpiece of panoramic zest, Where autumns yet unreddened bear my mark. The servants disappear at my behest; Accept my personal solicitude: The nature of an emperor awaits. My simple first-built structure quells accrued Uneasiness. A tiny stream creates The pond where strangers can be friendliest While playing at the versifier’s art, Until I put my lute away to rest. And later, mottled moonlight understates The relish of a many-splendored mood. This pine-lined pebble pathway stimulates The mind and muscles learning unsubdued Potential forces in a hillside quest Of hairpin turns on stony steps. The charm Of sky alone descends as loftiest Thick hedges temporarily occlude A borrowed vista fit for potentates. Now look—my capital by mountains wooed! But here, tamed woodland richly decorates The dragon-bathing lake in glassiest Reflections. Quaint bridges or a rustic barque Let us approach the isles. May I suggest Fine tea where Cloud Pavilion concentrates Bold elegance? Enjoy the interlude. I call my aerie “Faraway” for traits Of bare plain space opposed to clamor crude. Nothing impedes our converse sprightliest When two are wrapped in keen poetic garb, For I’m flamboyant with a vibrant guest. This room looks outward to a dream imbued With mystery beyond familiar states. I’ll walk you home, but spirits need not part. My old delight in rice fields cultivates Fresh local vegetables as off we start Through fertile plots where taste accumulates: Your artistry and mine it mediates. . Poet’s note: Japanese Emperor Gomizuno-o (1596–1680) retired at age 33. The greatest achievement of his long life in cultured leisure is Shugaku-in Imperial Villa, begun in 1655 and initially completed in 1659, although modifications continued well after his death. My first home in Kyoto was a short walk from the entrance to the outer precincts where food is grown. The video here is a splendid six-minute visual and musical piece filmed in autumn. . . Margaret Coats lives in California. She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. 19 Responses Brian Yapko November 9, 2021 Margaret, what a splendidly imperial poem! I’m fascinated by the structure of the work. I see you describing Japanese tradition through a European lens. Please correct my analysis here if it’s wrong but I see five septets plus what I interpret to be an envoy. So the overarching structure appears to be a Rhyme Royal but with an entirely original but highly formal rhyme scheme (with an exemplar stanza being a–b-c-d-c-b-a.) So here’s what I love about all of this. I know of no more formal or mannered culture than traditional Japanese and so your very formal structure fully honors that tradition but reinterprets it for a Western audience. What I see in the rhyme scheme is a perfect symmetry in each stanza – almost like the mirror image in a crystal-clear pond – with the 4th line being the meeting point or fulcrum as it were. Again, this brilliantly and subtly supports the symmetry of your garden. As for the language – you really chose a daunting rhyme scheme of only four rhymes through the entire piece (with “d” being held by assonance rather than true rhyme) but which you deliver on admirably. I think your use of a first-person narrator (my favorite) gives the poem a whole extra dimension of welcoming us in but which also smoothly allows for the subjective explanation of the speaker’s entire aesthetic. Lastly, let me express delight in so much of the language here including the beautiful phrases “autumns yet unreddened” “mottled moonlight… many-splendored mood” and the room that looks “outward to a dream imbued with mystery…” All truly ravishing. Very well done. Thank you for a memorable read. Reply Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Brian, thank you for this very rich comment. While I love explaining form, I’ll go straight to the poem’s speaker. I did not plan the character I created, except that I needed to maintain the decorum of his high position. This was his own way, despite being constantly chafed by the manipulation of courtiers. In the poem, the emperor addresses me, someone of a different milieu and era. He doesn’t just explain his aesthetic vision, but seems to become exuberant in guiding a single new guest to enjoy it with him. In the last line, I am so bold as to have him compliment my poem, speaking of “Your artistry and mine.” As he is always the emperor, I wondered whether that should be, “My artistry and yours” (the superior first). Our common courtesy of mentioning the other person first does not fit Gomizuno-o’s time and status. But I am willing to think it indicates to him a happy freedom. Having done many tours of Shugaku-in, I know what it feels like to be hemmed in by the Imperial Household Agency. In the video, you see groups of the usual size–twenty to thirty persons, with three or four of them being imperial agents. They lead everyone on moderately strenuous trekking and climbing to finish the tour course in about an hour and a half. I really welcomed this invitation from the emperor himself to a guided tour at a thoroughly leisurely pace. Reply Brian Yapko November 10, 2021 The video makes Shugaku-in look absolutely enchanting. Thank you for sharing the visual as well as your wonderful poem. Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Since Cynthia below expressed interest in the form, that’s where I described what I did. I had rhyme royal as well as chant royal in mind. Chaucer’s seven-line stanza still shows its power. With the ababbcc rhyme scheme, however, it makes tightly closed stanzas. This is great in a long poem where diversion, description, and digression can be very useful. However, in our time, readers rarely have patience for that kind of poem. Sixteenth-century literary theorists said it was the premier English form for serious verse, but poets went in other directions shortly thereafter. Maybe someone at SCP can try a revival! Paul Freeman November 9, 2021 Yep, ‘autumns yet unreddened’ was my stand out phrase from a standout poem. The formality of the rhyme scheme matched the formality of the subject matter – just as Brian noted. Your poem took me back to a book I read some years ago called The Garden of Evening Mists which involves a Japanese gardener in Malaya, post WWII, building a garden from scratch. Thanks for the read, Margaret. Reply Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 The Garden of Evening Mists sounds like a fascinating story. Building peace out of the aftermath of war, and doing it all the way from site preparation to the meticulous details of daily maintenance. Not to mention working in a different climate with unfamiliar plants. Emperor Gomizuno-o surely had more help than the man in Malaya, but he did start from scratch, and I feel he was the designer of everything done in his lifetime. That includes building an immense earthen retaining wall to contain waters from a diverted stream flooding a ravine to form the lake at the Upper Villa. There was probably forest already there, but the retired emperor changed its autumn palette by his planting choices. And close to 400 years later we see the fabulously striking reds in the green and gold and bronze backdrop “yet unreddened” when he began. Reply Cynthia Erlandson November 9, 2021 This is so exquisitely put together, Margaret — I might say “built”, like an intricate garden! Reading through it, I had the same impressions as Brian and Paul above — “autumns yet unreddened” grabbed my attention immediately; and the structure is absolutely fascinating — it is impressive that you could follow through with it for so many beautiful verses! Reply Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Thank you, Cynthia! My building blocks were fives and sevens, as usual in Japanese poetry. I was planning a chant royal (five seven-line stanzas with five-line envoi), but when I decided on the abcdcba rhyme scheme, that would have meant a rhyming couplet on the “a” sound at every stanza transition. Too much! Therefore I rhymed alternate stanzas bacdcab–just as symmetrical, but no rhyming couplet until the last two lines of the poem. With differing stanza rhyme schemes, it is not a chant royal. However, I did keep the same rhyme sounds in every stanza, in accord with French practice, allowing the “ar” sound in the middle of each stanza to close with any additional consonant. And I took the chant royal poet’s privilege of choosing any two of the rhyme sounds for the envoi. The structure thus turned out to be unique. Glad to have your appreciation! Reply Yael November 9, 2021 This is a perfectly lovely and thoroughly enjoyable way to learn something about Japanese architecture and history, besides the amazing poem itself. Thank you Margaret, much appreciated! Reply Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Thank you, Yael! I hope you did get to see the video, which shows many of the buildings found on the villa grounds. “Borrowed scenery” is a classic garden technique; in the picture above, both mountains and much of the city of Kyoto are “borrowed.” But this can also be done on a minute scale. A sushi shop may have nothing but a tiny strip of gravel and a rock for garden, but if customers can see a bit of sky and a few branches of a tree next door, that is “borrowed scenery!” Reply Yael November 10, 2021 Yes, I sure did see the video and enjoyed the footage of the landscapes and the architecture. The link you posted worked fine for me, thank you. Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Thank you, commentors! Before I acknowledge each of you, let me say that the video mentioned at the end of the Poet’s Note does in fact exist, although apparently it may NOT be found even by clicking the unobtrusive words “video here.” If you do this and come up with nothing, or with advertisements only, please look for the video by going to YouTube and searching for “Shugakuin Shoko Nidegawa,” and selecting the one with 5:52 running time. The still picture heading this post illustrates the words, “Now look” in the poem. Beneath the spot where the viewer looks out, one can see the massive array of hedges hiding the magnificent “borrowed scenery” while visitors are climbing to the planned viewpoint. But please see the video! Shugaku-in is an absolutely unique work of art, and even the best picture is not enough to give an idea of the vast imperial treasure to which my poem is an invitation. Reply Peter Hartley November 10, 2021 Margaret – it was a great pleasure to read your poem, and the artistry was appreciated all the more after my reading Brian’s analysis of your verse. Having been to Japan many times (although my last visit was twenty years ago) it was good to read (and I have not read a sharper description of them) about Japanese gardens – the little bridges that apparently connect nowhere to nowhere, the exquisite topiary and the neatly raked gravelled spaces, the dendrolatry (particularly for the cherry blossom in season), and the almost precious peace with which these gardens are all imbued. Your poem, for a little time, transported me six thousand miles, through paper walls and crouched again on a tatami mat in the middle of a tea ceremony, and not many poems manage to do that for me Reply Margaret Coats November 11, 2021 Thanks, Peter. Brian Yapko is a superb critic, and he brought up several points crucial to the poem. You bring in even more, and your travel in Japan lets you recognize all the little things that combine to create the atmosphere I was hoping for. I’m delighted that you were able to make the trip to Shugaku-in and feel the peace and beauty of the location. Whether I contemplate the mountains surrounding Kyoto, or the agricultural fields that were so near my home there, many other pleasantly familiar pictures spring to mind. The retired emperor, in creating the villa, planted a focal point of beauty for countless minds over centuries. Reply Peter Hartley November 11, 2021 Margaret – I visited Japan ten times altogether between 1985-2000 in connection with my work, and because I was often visiting cities little known to the west (eg Takamatsu, Utsunomia, Mishima) I saw a great deal that most Europeans rarely encounter. I loved the people (remember seeing all those schoolchildren marching in crocodiles in their uniforms and school caps!), I loved the landscapes, particularly in the Japanese Alps: but I couldn’t stand the food!!! One of my enduring memories is trying to smile and laugh with my museum fraternity hosts while at the same time attempting to cram half a ton of wobbling shark’s entrails in my maw without bringing it all back up! Being a born linguist, like you, I managed to memorise four or five Japanese words during my ten visits, including knifu, foku and spun! Margaret Coats November 12, 2021 “Shojin ryori” or “monk’s cuisine” would have helped you avoid shark, octopus, and other less delectable creatures. There would still have been some seaweed, but it is quite palatable because usually well cooked. What I dream of, when recalling the vegetable gardens near Shugaku-in, is bright red Kansai carrots. The purple, white, yellow, and orange now sold as “Rainbow Carrots” in the West cannot compare. Peter Hartley November 12, 2021 Margaret – the seaweed bits were fine, and so, for the most part was tempura. The pale green wasabi sauce that nearly blows the roof of your mouth off wasn’t so good, the raw squid I simply couldn’t masticate at all, while I had an innate revulsion to the idea of picking my own shellfish from a writhing mass in a basket and roasting them alive on a hot-plate. But I DID keep out of the ubiquitous Macdonalds, though I’m sorry that I didn’t know about the monks’ cuisine. And I like the sound of those carrots! Reply Tom Rimer November 15, 2021 Margaret, my wife and I have visited Shugakuin several times on our visits to Japan, and like the Katsura villa, the site is one of the most beautiful sights in all of Kyoto. In my memory, the way in which the hill “becomes” the garden is a constant revelation. I know of nothing else quite like this effect in any garden site I have ever visited. The video is quite wonderful, although, as you suggest, the viewer is spared a description of the complicated bureaucratic process through which you have to go in order to pay a visit. Your poem captures so beautifully the sense of the place, and the word “zest” is altogether appropriate, particularly in the autumn. Every reader seeks something that captures an ability to respond when he or she reads a particular poem. I am always impressed by the remarks of Brian Yapko, because he points out issues and accomplishments in the formal design of the poem under scrutiny which I might well have missed. Between the two of you, you are training me to become increasingly aware of the pleasures to be found in the formal aspects of the particular form chosen by the poet. For all my eighty-odd years I realize that I have most often focused on the “content,” the emotional thrust of any particular work. You are slowly managing to train me to observe and respond to beauty of structure and verse forms as well. I now begin to see another level of satisfaction exists in reading great poetry. Thank you! Reply Margaret Coats November 24, 2021 Thank you, Tom, and sorry I took so long to get around to answering your comment. Of course I agree that the scope of Shugaku-in is beyond that of any Japanese garden, even if we consider only the Upper Villa as the great work of art. If we consider the entire complex and the approaches as well as the city of Kyoto which has its place in the picture, Shugaku-in takes its place among a very few grand urban parks created by some of the world’s greatest landscape designers. I think Emperor Gomizuno-o deserves to be on that list of artists, which is one reason I wanted him to be the speaker in the poem. He claimed the Mount Hiei slopes as the locale of his masterpiece, even if others finished it. None of the others did anything like creating the lake and the waterfall, or determining that rice fields would remain part of the beauty at the base. Thank you as well for taking time to learn about poetic form from Brian Yapko, who really is the best analyst of individual poems at this site. All of us who benefit from his attention gain from it, as do the other readers who hear what he says. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Brian Yapko November 9, 2021 Margaret, what a splendidly imperial poem! I’m fascinated by the structure of the work. I see you describing Japanese tradition through a European lens. Please correct my analysis here if it’s wrong but I see five septets plus what I interpret to be an envoy. So the overarching structure appears to be a Rhyme Royal but with an entirely original but highly formal rhyme scheme (with an exemplar stanza being a–b-c-d-c-b-a.) So here’s what I love about all of this. I know of no more formal or mannered culture than traditional Japanese and so your very formal structure fully honors that tradition but reinterprets it for a Western audience. What I see in the rhyme scheme is a perfect symmetry in each stanza – almost like the mirror image in a crystal-clear pond – with the 4th line being the meeting point or fulcrum as it were. Again, this brilliantly and subtly supports the symmetry of your garden. As for the language – you really chose a daunting rhyme scheme of only four rhymes through the entire piece (with “d” being held by assonance rather than true rhyme) but which you deliver on admirably. I think your use of a first-person narrator (my favorite) gives the poem a whole extra dimension of welcoming us in but which also smoothly allows for the subjective explanation of the speaker’s entire aesthetic. Lastly, let me express delight in so much of the language here including the beautiful phrases “autumns yet unreddened” “mottled moonlight… many-splendored mood” and the room that looks “outward to a dream imbued with mystery…” All truly ravishing. Very well done. Thank you for a memorable read. Reply
Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Brian, thank you for this very rich comment. While I love explaining form, I’ll go straight to the poem’s speaker. I did not plan the character I created, except that I needed to maintain the decorum of his high position. This was his own way, despite being constantly chafed by the manipulation of courtiers. In the poem, the emperor addresses me, someone of a different milieu and era. He doesn’t just explain his aesthetic vision, but seems to become exuberant in guiding a single new guest to enjoy it with him. In the last line, I am so bold as to have him compliment my poem, speaking of “Your artistry and mine.” As he is always the emperor, I wondered whether that should be, “My artistry and yours” (the superior first). Our common courtesy of mentioning the other person first does not fit Gomizuno-o’s time and status. But I am willing to think it indicates to him a happy freedom. Having done many tours of Shugaku-in, I know what it feels like to be hemmed in by the Imperial Household Agency. In the video, you see groups of the usual size–twenty to thirty persons, with three or four of them being imperial agents. They lead everyone on moderately strenuous trekking and climbing to finish the tour course in about an hour and a half. I really welcomed this invitation from the emperor himself to a guided tour at a thoroughly leisurely pace. Reply
Brian Yapko November 10, 2021 The video makes Shugaku-in look absolutely enchanting. Thank you for sharing the visual as well as your wonderful poem.
Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Since Cynthia below expressed interest in the form, that’s where I described what I did. I had rhyme royal as well as chant royal in mind. Chaucer’s seven-line stanza still shows its power. With the ababbcc rhyme scheme, however, it makes tightly closed stanzas. This is great in a long poem where diversion, description, and digression can be very useful. However, in our time, readers rarely have patience for that kind of poem. Sixteenth-century literary theorists said it was the premier English form for serious verse, but poets went in other directions shortly thereafter. Maybe someone at SCP can try a revival!
Paul Freeman November 9, 2021 Yep, ‘autumns yet unreddened’ was my stand out phrase from a standout poem. The formality of the rhyme scheme matched the formality of the subject matter – just as Brian noted. Your poem took me back to a book I read some years ago called The Garden of Evening Mists which involves a Japanese gardener in Malaya, post WWII, building a garden from scratch. Thanks for the read, Margaret. Reply
Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 The Garden of Evening Mists sounds like a fascinating story. Building peace out of the aftermath of war, and doing it all the way from site preparation to the meticulous details of daily maintenance. Not to mention working in a different climate with unfamiliar plants. Emperor Gomizuno-o surely had more help than the man in Malaya, but he did start from scratch, and I feel he was the designer of everything done in his lifetime. That includes building an immense earthen retaining wall to contain waters from a diverted stream flooding a ravine to form the lake at the Upper Villa. There was probably forest already there, but the retired emperor changed its autumn palette by his planting choices. And close to 400 years later we see the fabulously striking reds in the green and gold and bronze backdrop “yet unreddened” when he began. Reply
Cynthia Erlandson November 9, 2021 This is so exquisitely put together, Margaret — I might say “built”, like an intricate garden! Reading through it, I had the same impressions as Brian and Paul above — “autumns yet unreddened” grabbed my attention immediately; and the structure is absolutely fascinating — it is impressive that you could follow through with it for so many beautiful verses! Reply
Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Thank you, Cynthia! My building blocks were fives and sevens, as usual in Japanese poetry. I was planning a chant royal (five seven-line stanzas with five-line envoi), but when I decided on the abcdcba rhyme scheme, that would have meant a rhyming couplet on the “a” sound at every stanza transition. Too much! Therefore I rhymed alternate stanzas bacdcab–just as symmetrical, but no rhyming couplet until the last two lines of the poem. With differing stanza rhyme schemes, it is not a chant royal. However, I did keep the same rhyme sounds in every stanza, in accord with French practice, allowing the “ar” sound in the middle of each stanza to close with any additional consonant. And I took the chant royal poet’s privilege of choosing any two of the rhyme sounds for the envoi. The structure thus turned out to be unique. Glad to have your appreciation! Reply
Yael November 9, 2021 This is a perfectly lovely and thoroughly enjoyable way to learn something about Japanese architecture and history, besides the amazing poem itself. Thank you Margaret, much appreciated! Reply
Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Thank you, Yael! I hope you did get to see the video, which shows many of the buildings found on the villa grounds. “Borrowed scenery” is a classic garden technique; in the picture above, both mountains and much of the city of Kyoto are “borrowed.” But this can also be done on a minute scale. A sushi shop may have nothing but a tiny strip of gravel and a rock for garden, but if customers can see a bit of sky and a few branches of a tree next door, that is “borrowed scenery!” Reply
Yael November 10, 2021 Yes, I sure did see the video and enjoyed the footage of the landscapes and the architecture. The link you posted worked fine for me, thank you.
Margaret Coats November 10, 2021 Thank you, commentors! Before I acknowledge each of you, let me say that the video mentioned at the end of the Poet’s Note does in fact exist, although apparently it may NOT be found even by clicking the unobtrusive words “video here.” If you do this and come up with nothing, or with advertisements only, please look for the video by going to YouTube and searching for “Shugakuin Shoko Nidegawa,” and selecting the one with 5:52 running time. The still picture heading this post illustrates the words, “Now look” in the poem. Beneath the spot where the viewer looks out, one can see the massive array of hedges hiding the magnificent “borrowed scenery” while visitors are climbing to the planned viewpoint. But please see the video! Shugaku-in is an absolutely unique work of art, and even the best picture is not enough to give an idea of the vast imperial treasure to which my poem is an invitation. Reply
Peter Hartley November 10, 2021 Margaret – it was a great pleasure to read your poem, and the artistry was appreciated all the more after my reading Brian’s analysis of your verse. Having been to Japan many times (although my last visit was twenty years ago) it was good to read (and I have not read a sharper description of them) about Japanese gardens – the little bridges that apparently connect nowhere to nowhere, the exquisite topiary and the neatly raked gravelled spaces, the dendrolatry (particularly for the cherry blossom in season), and the almost precious peace with which these gardens are all imbued. Your poem, for a little time, transported me six thousand miles, through paper walls and crouched again on a tatami mat in the middle of a tea ceremony, and not many poems manage to do that for me Reply
Margaret Coats November 11, 2021 Thanks, Peter. Brian Yapko is a superb critic, and he brought up several points crucial to the poem. You bring in even more, and your travel in Japan lets you recognize all the little things that combine to create the atmosphere I was hoping for. I’m delighted that you were able to make the trip to Shugaku-in and feel the peace and beauty of the location. Whether I contemplate the mountains surrounding Kyoto, or the agricultural fields that were so near my home there, many other pleasantly familiar pictures spring to mind. The retired emperor, in creating the villa, planted a focal point of beauty for countless minds over centuries. Reply
Peter Hartley November 11, 2021 Margaret – I visited Japan ten times altogether between 1985-2000 in connection with my work, and because I was often visiting cities little known to the west (eg Takamatsu, Utsunomia, Mishima) I saw a great deal that most Europeans rarely encounter. I loved the people (remember seeing all those schoolchildren marching in crocodiles in their uniforms and school caps!), I loved the landscapes, particularly in the Japanese Alps: but I couldn’t stand the food!!! One of my enduring memories is trying to smile and laugh with my museum fraternity hosts while at the same time attempting to cram half a ton of wobbling shark’s entrails in my maw without bringing it all back up! Being a born linguist, like you, I managed to memorise four or five Japanese words during my ten visits, including knifu, foku and spun!
Margaret Coats November 12, 2021 “Shojin ryori” or “monk’s cuisine” would have helped you avoid shark, octopus, and other less delectable creatures. There would still have been some seaweed, but it is quite palatable because usually well cooked. What I dream of, when recalling the vegetable gardens near Shugaku-in, is bright red Kansai carrots. The purple, white, yellow, and orange now sold as “Rainbow Carrots” in the West cannot compare.
Peter Hartley November 12, 2021 Margaret – the seaweed bits were fine, and so, for the most part was tempura. The pale green wasabi sauce that nearly blows the roof of your mouth off wasn’t so good, the raw squid I simply couldn’t masticate at all, while I had an innate revulsion to the idea of picking my own shellfish from a writhing mass in a basket and roasting them alive on a hot-plate. But I DID keep out of the ubiquitous Macdonalds, though I’m sorry that I didn’t know about the monks’ cuisine. And I like the sound of those carrots! Reply
Tom Rimer November 15, 2021 Margaret, my wife and I have visited Shugakuin several times on our visits to Japan, and like the Katsura villa, the site is one of the most beautiful sights in all of Kyoto. In my memory, the way in which the hill “becomes” the garden is a constant revelation. I know of nothing else quite like this effect in any garden site I have ever visited. The video is quite wonderful, although, as you suggest, the viewer is spared a description of the complicated bureaucratic process through which you have to go in order to pay a visit. Your poem captures so beautifully the sense of the place, and the word “zest” is altogether appropriate, particularly in the autumn. Every reader seeks something that captures an ability to respond when he or she reads a particular poem. I am always impressed by the remarks of Brian Yapko, because he points out issues and accomplishments in the formal design of the poem under scrutiny which I might well have missed. Between the two of you, you are training me to become increasingly aware of the pleasures to be found in the formal aspects of the particular form chosen by the poet. For all my eighty-odd years I realize that I have most often focused on the “content,” the emotional thrust of any particular work. You are slowly managing to train me to observe and respond to beauty of structure and verse forms as well. I now begin to see another level of satisfaction exists in reading great poetry. Thank you! Reply
Margaret Coats November 24, 2021 Thank you, Tom, and sorry I took so long to get around to answering your comment. Of course I agree that the scope of Shugaku-in is beyond that of any Japanese garden, even if we consider only the Upper Villa as the great work of art. If we consider the entire complex and the approaches as well as the city of Kyoto which has its place in the picture, Shugaku-in takes its place among a very few grand urban parks created by some of the world’s greatest landscape designers. I think Emperor Gomizuno-o deserves to be on that list of artists, which is one reason I wanted him to be the speaker in the poem. He claimed the Mount Hiei slopes as the locale of his masterpiece, even if others finished it. None of the others did anything like creating the lake and the waterfall, or determining that rice fields would remain part of the beauty at the base. Thank you as well for taking time to learn about poetic form from Brian Yapko, who really is the best analyst of individual poems at this site. All of us who benefit from his attention gain from it, as do the other readers who hear what he says. Reply
