the whistling sound from afar
breaks this moonless night
Unrecounted...
page after page I see those
peering eyes in words
World Kigo Database (W. G. Sebald)
Note: Although best known as one of the exemplary novelists of the late 20th century, W. G. Sebald also wrote poetry. For Years Now is a book of 23 poems with images provided by visual artist, Tess Jaray. Unrecounted is a book of 33 poems juxtaposed with Jan Peter Tripp's thirty-three lithographs, which could pass for black-and-white photographs of the human eyes. The whole book is viewed by literary critic Andrea Köhler as a poem of gazes.
The poems in both book are extremely short, haiku-like -- as few as five words (including the title that is constantly utilized as the first line of the poem), rarely more than fifteen words -- micropoems, Sebald called them, writes translator Michael Hamburger.
In a letter to Hamburger, Tess Jaray mentioned that " [Sebald] carried a book of Japanese haiku when he brought her the first of these texts – one possible clue to the model that Sebald may have had in mind for [his poems], only to play variations on the model in his own fashion" (Unrecounted, p. 8)
In my first haiku, I allude to Sebald's title poem,
For years now
I've had this
whistling
sound in
my ears
The poems in both book are extremely short, haiku-like -- as few as five words (including the title that is constantly utilized as the first line of the poem), rarely more than fifteen words -- micropoems, Sebald called them, writes translator Michael Hamburger.
In a letter to Hamburger, Tess Jaray mentioned that " [Sebald] carried a book of Japanese haiku when he brought her the first of these texts – one possible clue to the model that Sebald may have had in mind for [his poems], only to play variations on the model in his own fashion" (Unrecounted, p. 8)
In my first haiku, I allude to Sebald's title poem,
For years now
I've had this
whistling
sound in
my ears
