Frequenting the Fragment

Amy Vladeck Heinrich notes in Fragments of Rainbows: The Life and Poetry of Saitō Mokichi 1882-1953 that in one specific instance "The verb 'echoing' is added to the translation because English is not as comfortable with sentence fragments and their implied conclusions as is Japanese" (p. 84). Here then is the poem.

otōto to
aimukai ite
mono o iu
katami no koe wa
chichi haha no koe

My brother and I
sit facing one another,
speaking of things;
our voices to each other's ears
echoing our parents' voices …

Let's see what happens when the explicit reference to echoing is removed.

My brother and I
sit facing one another,
speaking of things;
our voices to each other's ears
our parents' voices …

And a further tweak carrying over into English the gendered "chichi haha"

My brother and I
sit facing one another,
speaking of things;
our voices to each other's ears
mother's and father's voices …

And so these considerations of fragments led us to

SENTENCE FRAGMENT A group of words that ends with a period but lacks either a subject or a main verb; a subordinate clause or a phrase or a single word standing by itself. Here are some examples of fragments (in one line of Geoffrey Hill's "Mercian Hymns"):

A pet-name, a common name. Best-selling brand, curt graffito. A laugh; a cough. A syndicate. A specious gift. Scoffed-at horned phonograph.

A sentence fragment is a mistake, if used carelessly, but a valuable device if used expressively or rhythmically (See FRAGMENT and FRAGMENTATION.)

John Drury. Poetry Dictionary.

And so for day 1562
24.03.2011