On Burmese Poetry

My first introduction to Burmese poetry was through the children’s nursery rhymes and classic verses scattered throughout the government-prescribed school textbooks. These were usually in the traditional four-syllable rhyme scheme, called လေးလုံးစပ် (lay lone zat), often depicting the charm of pastoral life or the longing of royal courtiers. Later, I’d come across rhymeless or freeform modern poetry, in the front pages of popular lifestyle and literary magazines. 

In this episode, my guest Zue, the founder of Akkhaya Burmese Language Institute, and I recite and discuss our favorite poems, like ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (the Guest) by တင်မိုး (Tin Moe ), a succinct three-line poem open to many different interpretations, and သင်သေသွားသော် (When You’re Gone) by ဇော်ဂျီ (Zawgyi), a poem about the legacy we leave behind. We also highlight modern poetry’s symbolism, its use of everyday language and more relatable subjects, like conversations in teashops and housewives scouring the market for affordable fish or poultry, and the English words that make cameo appearances in the works of တာရာမင်းဝေ (Taya Min Wai) and မောင်ချောနွယ် (Maung Chaw Nwe). 

Vocabulary

တစေ့တစောင်း at a glance 
မီးတောက်ရစ်သမ် (တာရာမင်းဝေ) The Rhythm of the Flame by Taya Min Wai
ပြဋ္ဌာန်းတယ် to prescribe [a piece of writing] in a textbook
ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (တင်မိုး) "The Guest" by Tin Moe
ဘဝသရုပ်ဖေါ်  life-portrayal [literary genre]
ကံကုန်တယ် to pass away
ထင်ဟပ်တယ် to reflect, to mirror
စာပေဟောပြောပွဲ literary talk
သင်သေသွားသော် (ဇော်ဂျီ) "When You Are Gone" by Zaw Gyi
ဂန္ထဝင် classic
အဝဝအစစ everything, all-encompassing
ညှပ်ပြီးသုံးတယ် to interject [English words] 
ထောင့်ချိုးများ (မောင်ချောနွယ်) "Corners" by Maung Chaw Nwe
သင်္ကေတ symbols 
ဥရောပ Europe
မှီငြမ်းတယ် to be based on, to be inspired by 
အငွေ့အသက် signs, remnants, characteristics 
ပုံရိပ် image
ရူး (မြကျေး) "Crazy" by Mya Kyay
စီးမျောပြီးဖတ်တယ် to read with deep focus, to be swept up in reading
တစ်ကိုယ်တော် solo
ဖန်တီးမှု creation
ခေါင်းပါးတယ် / ချို့တဲ့တယ် to diminish, to decline