BI. Amy Lowell

5. Lacquer Prints. In Some Imagist Poets. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917.

		Reprinted in Pictures of the Floating World.

Reprints the earlier ‘Lacquer Prints’ (4), substituting for Desolation (4b) a poem that appears here for the first time in the series. Near Kioto is a hokku-like three lines in which a speaker crosses the ‘bridge of Ariwarano Narikira’ (Ariwara Narihira, Ap) and notices that the waters below have become ‘purple / With the floating leaves of maples’, allusion to a tanka by Narihira in which the waters of the Tatsuta River have become ‘dyed’ with maple leaves. Narihira’s poem appears both in the Kokinshû (Ap) and the Hyakunin isshu (Ap), a translation of the latter of which, given other Lowell poems derived from the collection (4e and 8v), would be her likely source. Narihira’s poem does not mention Kyoto, and in fact the Tatsuta River is nearer the older capital at Nara. Reprinted, along with other ‘Lacquer Prints’, in 8.