Poetry
The New Year traditions are also a part of Japanese poetry, including haiku (17 syllable poems) and renga (linked poetry). All of the traditions above would be appropriate to include in haiku as kigo (season words). There are also haiku that celebrate many of the "first" of the New Year, such as the "first sun" (hatsuhi) or "first sunrise", "first laughter" (waraizome—starting the New Year with a smile is considered a good sign), and first dream (hatsuyume). Since the traditional New Year was later in the year than the current date, many of these mention the beginning of spring.
Along with the New Year's Day postcard, haiku might mention "first letter" (hatsudayori—meaning the first exchange of letters), "first calligraphy" (kakizome), and "first brush" (fude hajime).
Read more about this topic: Japanese New Year
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“That was a way of putting it not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“That’s why I quit and took up writing poetry instead.
It’s clean, it’s relaxing, it doesn’t squirt juice all over
Something you were certain of a minute ago and now your own face
Is a stranger and no one can tell you it’s true. Hey, stupid!”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)