[News] Utada Hikaru named the most influencial artist of the decade by Japan Times

[Uemarasan]

^Yes, poetry is about the words, but the words have to make sense on a fundamental level before they are considered on a metaphorical plane. That is why I gave the most straightforward reading of that line in Colors. If something doesn't work on the basic level of sense, then I don't see any point in trying to locate some sort of profound meaning from them on some vague, mysterious, abstract level.

You said: "What if she was using the chessboard image to say that against all possibilities they just met by chance (as u said, chess isn't a game where u get things by chance)?" That's exactly what I said in my above post: "Someone may argue that Hikki is trying to subvert the prevailing idea that our lives are determined by fate, that we can move beyond the black and white demarcations of a chessboard". And then I argued that nothing else in her song says that she is trying to do that. There is no evidence that she is thinking that way. I disagree on the idea of multiple readings on a fundamental, basic, and grammatical level. It can be allowed when we're arguing metaphors, but we're talking about the most straightforward reading of a line, and the line is illogical.

Also, when reading poetry, I couldn't care less about the author's intentions. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that matters is the text before me. The text is only enriched further when considering intention, biography, etc; the true and core value of the work lies in itself alone.

I can read Japanese, and there are barely any nuances lost in translation when it comes to her lyrics (as Sunshine Slayer suggests). She composes at face value most of the time.

Show me a great Hikki neologism. I like her musical compositions. I am very fond her music until Ultra Blue and excepting her American work, but her lyrics remain mediocre.

You said: "As far as I know, poetry is not about what is being said, it's about how is it down on paper... it's the aesthetic use of the words..."

You can use that to describe effective advertising slogans. And that's why it's so easy to write faux poetry. Poetry is more than the aesthetic use of words. It is a heightened process of communication of meaning via literary tropes.

"Summer rain that began to fall
passed by beside the tears, quietly
The images overlapped with memories
A rerun of the autumn drama"

"Rain of summer has fallen
Passing through my tears in silence
Images weaving in my mind
Dramas of autumn have repeated"

Rain! Tears! Autumn! One after the other. Ew. Trite images, trite sentiment. She's basically saying "I am sad and crying. AGAIN." And it took her four damn lines to say the damn thing, using pretty words without a hint of nuance or subtext or even enriched meaning within the context of the rest of the song. This is not poetry.