Tuesday, March 12, 2013

One Man’s Maple Moon: Breakfast Tanka by J. Zimmerman

English Original

thirty years later
holding hands at breakfast    
coffee weaker
pancakes smaller
but the grasp still strong

Eucalypt,  11, 2011         

J. Zimmerman


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

三十年後
手牽手在用早餐
咖啡較淡
煎餅較小
但是緊握彼此雙手

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

叁十年後
手牵手在用早餐
咖啡较淡
煎饼较小
但是紧握彼此双手


Bio Sketch

J. Zimmerman's tanka have been published in North America, Australia, and Europe. She wrote The Tanka Revision Workbook for her tanka revision workshop. Her haiku and haibun have been widely published and her haiku will appear in New Resonances 8 (2013), a Red Moon Press anthology of selected haiku poets. A winner of the Mary Lonnberg Smith Poetry Prize, she co-edits Ariadne's Poetry Web

2 comments:

  1. A Woolfian moment of being is keenly captured! Within such a short narrative space, Joan successfully makes this poem, especially L5, transformative out of the mundane materials found in the everyday experience.

    A heartfelt tanka!

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  2. I'm drawn to this poignant "daily life" poem - and I read it several times in Eucalypt.

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