Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/143

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have a suggestive attitude of mind in reading it; I say that the star itself has almost no share in the creation of a condition even when your dream or vision is gained through its beauty. I am only pleased to know that the star had such an influence upon you; and I am willing to endorse you when you say the hokku poem is suggestive in the same sense that truth and humanity are suggestive. But I can say myself as a poet (am I too bold to claim that word?) that your poem would certainly end in artificiality if you start out to be suggestive from the beginning; I value the hokku poem, at least some of them, because of its own truth and humanity simple and plain. Let me say for once and all there is no word in so common use by Western critics as suggestive, which makes more mischief than enlightenment, although they mean it quite simply, of course, to be a new force or salvation; I apologise to you for my digression when I say that no critic is necessary for this world of poetry. Who will criticise Truth or Humanity? I always thought that the most beautiful flowers grow close to the ground, and they need no hundred

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