Word: orientale
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"How about 'The pigeons on the grass, alas,'" said his roommate. "It gives you that Oriental-American flavor while still talking about Cambridge."
It was Professor MacLeish's third lecture on poetry that saved him. Like the Renaissance discovering the Greeks, like Goethe discovering Shakespeare, like the nineteenth century discovering nature, Harrison discovered Oriental poetry. He had run across the cryptic, ordered verses of the haiku before in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma...
"No," said Harrison, "that's Han Shan. I got it out of The Dharma Bums. The reason I quoted it was because you have to hear Oriental poems a couple of times before you get used to them. Listen: Red ivy on brown brick/spike heels catch on cobblestone walks/ pennants...
"Oh, that. I put that in there in order to give a hint of the Renaissance balled tradition without losing the basic Oriental structure--while still talking about Cambridge. Didn't you like that line about spike heels? I mean the way it brings you in touch with reality."
Harrison muttered an unhappy obscenity and proceeded to his room. Once there, he began grinding out haiku after haiku in an attempt to produce the Oriental poetry equivalent of three thousand words of fiction. "Window panes are crying raindrops/Bicycles skid on slippery streets/Who will sunbathe with me?" "Japanese beetles crawl...