Welcome to Poetry Friday! I'm so happy to be hosting you here today, especially on this last Friday of the month when my poetry sisters and I share the poems we've written to a new challenge. This month we wrote poems about wabi-sabi, with wabi-sabi as the title. In Andrew Juniper's book Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence, wabi-sabi is defined this way.
Wabi-sabi is an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi-sabi refers to an awareness of the transient nature of earthly things and a corresponding pleasure in the things that bear the mark of this impermanence.
In his book Wabi-Sabi Simple, Richard Powell described wabi-sabi as a philosophy that acknowledges a lifestyle that appreciates and accepts three simple truths: "Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."
We had a wonderful Zoom call on Sunday, during which we had a wide-ranging conversation about wabi-sabi. I really wanted to write in a form, so I decided to experiment with the tritina. The tritina is composed of 3 tercets and a final line (envoi) that stands alone. Similar to a sestina, though shorter, it uses a set of 3 alternating end words instead of six. The form is: ABC / CAB / BCA / A, B, and C (final line/envoi). As I was writing, it felt like I didn't have enough room to play, so I tried a sestina. That was disastrous, so the tritina is what I stuck with.
Wabi-Sabi
art and architecture value
the golden ratio, the perfection
of divine proportion, its pleasing beauty
but what is beauty?
what do our choices say about what we value?
does the circular bell tower lack perfection
because it leans? is perfection
solid, straight, and tall? beauty
lives in a cracked bell—liberty has value
why value perfection when there is beauty in what is broken?
Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2024. All rights reserved.
You can find the poems shared by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.
Would you like to try the next challenge? In July we’re writing haiku that resemble classified ads or Buy Nothing group posts. Are you in? Good! You have a month to craft your creation and share it on July 26th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!
Please join the Poetry Friday party by leaving your link below, and don't forget to leave a comment to let us know you're here. Happy poetry Friday, friends!
**NOTE**
Denise Krebs was kind enough to point out that Inlinkz doesn't work for everyone. If you click on a link and Inlinkz won't connect, go to the upper right-hand corner of the "refused to connect" page and click on the X. That should take you to the site. If that doesn't work, leave me a comment and I'll link those pages here.