Monday, July 22, 2013

Butterfly Dream: War Haiku by Sylvia Forges-Ryan

English Original

Rereading The Iliad
another corpse dragged
through Fallujah

Grand Prix, 39th A-Bomb Contest

Sylvia Forges-Ryan


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

重讀伊利亞特
拖著另一具屍體
穿過費盧杰

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

重读伊利亚特
拖著另一具屍体
穿过费卢杰


Bio Sketch

Sylvia Forges-Ryan is internationally known for her poetry in Japanese forms, including haiku, senryu, tanka and renku, which have been translated into numerous languages. Her awards include a Grand Prix Poetry Prize from the Atomic Bomb Memorial Committee, Kyoto, Japan, The R.H. Blyth Award from the World Haiku Society, the Harold G. Henderson Award, and First Place in both the Ukiah Haiku Festival Contest and in the Robert Frost Haiku Competition. She is   co-author of Take a Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace, published in hardcover by Kodansha International, with a Russian translation published by Sophia Press. and a paperback edition from Apocryphile Press. From 1991 through 1993 she was the Editor of Frogpond, the international journal of the Haiku Society of America. 

1 comment:

  1. The shift in time and place (not in theme) is sociopolitically poignant. The common narrative thread running through the juxtaposed parts of the poem is war and its devastating consequences. In the "literary Trojan War" of the Iliad, the Olympic gods, goddesses, and demigods fight and play great roles in human warfare while in the "live-broadcast" Iraq War, "Western" greed, hubris, and fear of the other are some of the main factors that influence to launch war on Iraq.

    The opening word, rereading, is one of the key words, provoking the reader to think over the following question:

    Do we ever learn from history?

    or

    "The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."

    ReplyDelete