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[A frail hepatica]

Jun Fujita

A frail hepatica
Shyly holds its fragrance
Beneath the fresh morning dew.
So, Elizabeth.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 7, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

Jun Fujita, born Junnosuke Fujita on December 13, 1888, near Hiroshima, Japan, was a Japanese American photojournalist, photographer, actor, and poet.

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About this Poem

Jun Fujita’s poem “[A frail hepatica]” appears in Poetry, vol. 15, no. 2 (November 1919). The poem is one of many tankas composed by Fujita, who typically composed his tankas in four lines. In “These Images with Words: The Poetry of Jun Fujita,” collected in The Tanka Prose Anthology (Modern English Tanka Press, 2008), poet Marjorie Buettner writes, “Though in his exile [in the wilderness of Minnesota] Fujita wanted to leave his camera behind, his poetry captures, just as a camera would, this light-filled and fragile world; and with his word-images he colors beautifully those things that are translucent and transient; at this point his poetry becomes a metaphor for life [. . .]. His exile did not stop him from creating by utilizing what he has called that ‘illusive mood’ so important in tanka, haiku and photography. His minimalist poetry gives little away and yet, like a passing fragrance, we are enveloped in the mystery of its scent wanting more as soon as it has faded.”

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