[Subject: Unitarian Fellowship of Tokyo Sept 13 CHANGED TIME
start at 1:00]
Dear members and friends of the Fellowship,
Our speaker for Sunday September 13, 2020 is joining us on
ZOOM from California and has requested an earlier start of 13:00 (that is 1:00
Tokyo time).
We plan to meet 1:00 to 3:30 on ZOOM.
With extended time for discussion and friendly sharing.
All are welcome to join us-- please send a
request for the ZOOM link which will be sent out a few days
before September 13.
Bonnie McClure-- Japanese Medieval Linked Verse: Renga
anthologies for the modern reader.
This month is a cultural topic steeped in Japanese history: renga, or long linked sequences of short verses that were typically composed by multiple poets at all-day parties of the noble and warrior elites. Renga as a poetic form flourished in the 14th through 16th centuries (the Nanbokuchō and Muromachi periods). Navigating these sequences can be quite difficult for the modern reader (let alone anyone translating them into English), as they are built around many now-obscure conventions and allusions. But there were also anthologies of renga anthologies, which collected particularly skillful examples of individual renga links, categorized by topic. Reading these anthologies (in English translation) is an easy way for us to enjoy renga as a modern reader, and to see the best of the fun twists and turns that skillful poets liked to use. Renga give us an entry into a very different world but one with concerns and emotions that are often remarkable resonant for contemporary readers.
Bonnie
McClure has been a Fellowship member at various times, and has spoken to
us before. A native of Georgia, she is a fine pianist. She
worked in Kanagawa and then studied Japanese literature at
the University of Washington, coming back to Aoyama Gakuin for graduate
work , and is now in the Ph.d program at UC Berkeley.
I
trust you and all your loved ones are well in this time of the Covid19 pandemic
and the extreme heat and rains this summer.
Your
moderator,
Peggy
Kanada
