Saturday, July 13, 2013

One Man's Maple Moon: Family Album Tanka by Diana Teneva

English Original

looking at
the family album
my daughter says hello
to herself and the girl
I used to be

Diana Teneva


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

看著
家庭相冊
我女兒
給自己和年輕的我
打招呼

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

看著
家庭相册
我女儿
给自己和年轻的我
打招呼


Bio Sketch

Diana Teneva is a Bulgarian writer. Her poems have been published in many journals, including Sketchbook, World Haiku Review, The Heron’s Nest, The Mainichi, Asahi Haikuist Network, A Hundred Gourds, Shamrock, and Chrysanthemum. Some of them have been translated into Russian, French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Croatian. 

2 comments:

  1. The use of a first person perspective and the multilayered L5 make this poem thematically and emotionally effective.

    "the girl/ I used to be" is layered with multiple meanings,at least temporal ( "I'm getting old") and emotive ("I used to be a young and beautiful girl like my daughter")

    Unlike Maxianne Berger's tanka below, Diana's well-crafted tanka provokes the reader to see beyond its text horizon: the description of a "like mother, like daughter" Kodak moment.

    look! look!
    happy she recognizes
    her younger self
    in these old photos
    look! it's my mother

    Ribbons, 9:1, Spring/Summer 2013 (p. 37)

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  2. Two more things:

    In Diana's tanka, the use of "family album" allows the reader to examine this "moment" in the framework of familial remembrance while the phrase, "these old photos," seems to imply that it's personal remembrance. By the way, "old" is implied in the thematic context of the poem.

    Most importantly, I think Maxianne Berger's third person perspective "weakens" a sense of intimacy conveyed in this "like mother, like daughter" moment.

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