Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, XXV

a crescent moon
in the attic window
at three a.m.
my tanka drifting
with first snowflakes

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

Note:You can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here.

Butterfly Dream: Summer Sale Haiku by Ignatius Fay

English Original

summer sale
adjusting her bra
in the shop window

Ignatius Fay


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

夏季拍賣
在商店的櫥窗前
調整她的胸罩

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

夏季拍卖
在商店的橱窗前
调整她的胸罩


Bio Sketch

Ignatius Fay is a retired invertebrate paleontologist. His poems have appeared in many of the most respected online and print journals, including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Ars Poetica, Gusts, Chrysanthemum and Eucalypt. Books: Breccia (2012), a collaboration with fellow haiku poet, Irene Golas; Points In Between (2011), an anecdotal history of his first 23 years. He is the new editor of the Haiku Society of America Bulletin. Ignatius resides in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

One Man's Maple Moon: Wild Horse Tanka by Sergio Ortiz

English Original

I was the sin,
a wild horse galloping
from the horizon --
everything I saw
was spoken into her ear

Cattails, 1, January 2014

Sergio Ortiz


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

我有罪，
像是脫韁野馬從地平線
奔騰而來 --
我所看到的一切
都在她耳邊訴說
   
Chinese Translation (Simplified)

我有罪，
像是脱韁野马从地平线
奔腾而来--
我所看到的一切
都在她耳边诉说


Bio Sketch

Sergio Ortiz is a retired educator. Flutter Press released his first two chapbooks, At the Tail End of Dusk, and Bedbugs in My Mattress. Ronin Press released his third chapbook:  topography of a desire.  Avanticular Press released his first photographic chapbook: The Sugarcane Harvest. He is a three-time nominee for the Sundress Best of the Web Anthology and a two-time Pushcart nominee.

Poetic Musings: Morning Glory Haiku by Basho

[Basho] also set precedents for subject matter by writing verses on unexpected topics and seeking to bring a sense of poetical refinement to the most commonplace of occurrences. In Basho's hands, the act of having an early meal in the garden becomes a many-layered poem:

I break my fast

amidst the morning glory

[ with morning glories

  a man eats breakfast

  -- that is what I am

 translated by Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters, p.81]

The haiku not only moves the reader's eye away from the simple meal to a pretty view but also reminds us to seize the day. As in English, morning glory has a double meaning since these flowers only bloom for a few hours. Basho wrote the poem for a pupil whom he feared was ruining his health through overindulgence.

-- Jonathan Clements, Zen Haiku, p.9

[Basho] also set precedents for subject matter by writing verses on unexpected topics and seeking to bring a sense of poetical refinement to the most commonplace of occurrences. 

One of the poetic characteristics the haikai masters had advocated was to create a haikai twist, and its creation was dependent on the poet’s “skillful balancing of  the conventional meaning, i.e., the honi, of a topic with whatever new and startling insight [he/she was] able to add to it, typically creating a clash between the worlds of ga [the elegant and refined] and zoku [the mundane or commonplace].” 22

-- Excerpted from my essay, titled "Reviving Japanese Haikai through Chinese Classics: Yosa Buson and the Basho Revival," which was first published in Haijinx, 4:1, March 2011 and reprinted

Basho wrote the poem for a pupil whom he feared was ruining his health through overindulgence.

Basho's haiku was written in response to Kikaku's firefly poem, which was based on the proverb, "Some worms eat nettles:" (Ueda, p.81)

within the grassy gate

a firefly eats nettles

-- that is what I am

Basho's disciple, Kikaku, was a heavy drinker. Once, after drinking all night, he wrote his firefly haiku with artful wording at dawn. Wishing to warn against kikaku's dissipated living, Basho responded with his extremely plain haiku about having breakfast amidst morning glories (Ueda, p.81)

References:

Jonathan Clements (editor), Zen Haiku, Frances Lincoln, 2007

Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary, Stanford University Press, 1995

Butterfly Dream: Shifting Winds Haiku by Munira Judith Avinger

English Original

shifting winds
whose turn now
to say good-bye

Haiku Canada Review, 4:2, October 2010

Munira Judith Avinger


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

風向轉移
現在輪到誰
說再見

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

风向转移
现在轮到谁
说再见


Bio Sketch

Munira Judith Avinger was born in the US and moved to the Eastern Townships of Quebec in 1993 where she built a little cabin in the forest. She has published five books, the latest of which is a memoir called The Cabin.

A Room of My Own: A Set of Tanka for Emily Dickinson

clad in lily-white
she sweeps into each room
and out again . . . .
the woman in my vision
remains a winter dream

loneliness ...
the thing with feathers
perches on my heartstrings
singing there is no there there
throughout this snowy night

Hot News: 66 Tanka Selected for 2013 One Man's Maple Moon Anthology

Poetry is a new experience every time. Every time I read a poem, the experience happens to occur  -- Jorge Luis Borges, "This Craft of Verse"

My Dear Fellow Poets and Readers:

I'm pleased to announce the following 66 tanka selected for One Man's Maple Moon, 2013: Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Tanka. The anthology is scheduled to be published in July. Each poet whose tanka is/are included in the anthology will receive a copy of  its e-book edition.

 Please post to all appropriate venues. Your time and help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks for your support of my project. And look forward to reading your new work (see 2014 anthology submission guidelines)

Chen-ou

Note: The 2013 One Man's Maple Moon Prize winner will be announced later.


Updated, October 5:

Cool Announcement : In the Company of Good Poems

Updated, November:

I am pleased to announce that One Man's Maple Moon: 66 Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Tanka, Volume One 2014 is now available online for your reading pleasure.

For more information about this good news, see Hot News:One Man's Maple Moon Volume One 2014 

Selected Tanka:

no abacus
for the task
ahead
where the mists part
I begin counting stars

Excellent Tanka, 7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012

Brian Zimmer


on the edge
of the birdbath
a mudlark
sinks into his reflection
i turn into my shadow

Atlas Poetica, 14, Spring 2013

Marilyn Humbert


as always,
the echoless flight
of owls...
slicing what’s left
of sanity

Selected Tanka, Gusts, 15, Spring/Summer 2012

Robert D. Wilson


back and forth
a dredger in the harbor
clears the clogged channel
my sister's confession:
he hits her

Atlas Poetica, Spring 2012

Neal Whitman


I still remember
the way he called
my name
but don't remember now
the way he betrayed me

Selected Tanka, Gusts, 8, Fall/Winter 2008

Kozue Uzawa


not sure
the man at the door
is Death
until he pulls out
the bible

Presence, 47, December 2012

LeRoy Gorman


a river view
between the vee of trees
smaller each year;
what I could have seen
in an earlier life

Simply Haiku, 6:1, Spring 2008

Adelaide B. Shaw


a lightning strike
splits our old apple tree --
I never dreamed
the death that parted us
would not be one of ours

First Place, 2006 TSA International Tanka Contest

Beverley George


rip-tide --
slowly I return
an occupied shell
to the surging sea
between us

Second Place, 2005 TSA International Tanka Contest

Beverley George


you say you know me
better than I know myself ...
still waters
the willow bends
to touch the sky

Multiverses, 1:1, 2012

Claire Everett


after the journey
there’s always the laundry --
the rattle
of a foreign coin
in the tumble dryer                                 

Ribbons, 5.3, Fall 2009, Tanka Café

Bob Lucky


the way it looks
like a dragon fallen
from the sky,
this uprooted tree
alone on the moor

Presence, 31, 2007

Michael McClintock


silence
seeks the center
of every tree and rock,
that thing we hold closest --
the end of songs

Letters in Time: Sixty Short Poems, 2005

Michael McClintock


old memories
like tangled fish hooks
impossible
to pick up only one
without all the others

First Place, 2008 Tanka Society of America  International Contest

an'ya


driving away
from the ancestral home
this thought . . .
tomorrow the early sun
will slant into my empty room

Eucalypt, 10, 2011

Sonam Chhoki


offering chrysanthemums
to the Buddha...
the only sacrifice
i ever made
was letting you go

First Place, Kokako Tanka Contest  2007

Pamela A. Babusci


the intense white
of chrysanthemums
while making love
i become
a thousand petals

Ribbons,  5:3,  Fall 2009

Pamela A. Babusci


he tells me
why the character for "spring"
is upside down
still the snowflakes
drift between us

GUSTS, 15, Spring/Summer 2012

Christina Nguyen


January gale
another roof slate   
cracks off --
I can't stand it
that you're gone

American Tanka, 18, 2009

J. Zimmerman


the crackle and pop
of my breakfast cereal --
more news
about car bomb blasts
somewhere else in the world

Wisteria, July 2006

Janet Lynn Davis


a stone
next to a frozen pond
I long to skip
to another time
another place

tinywords, 9:1, March 2010

Don Miller


as a child
I thought I'd never grow up
now it seems
I've wandered forever
in this redwood forest                                   

The Tanka Journal, 39, 2011

Peggy Heinrich


under a half moon
and the gaze of Orion
the night’s hunters:
owls, rabbits, deer mice
unaware of satellites

Scifaikuest, August 2011

Pat Tompkins


every room a different sound
soccer, hip hop
non-stop washing machine...
the guy downstairs
playing Chopin

Little Purple Universes

Helen Buckingham


believe as you look
deeper, deeper, and yet deeper
into my eyes
your (love) history does
not matter to me

NeverEnding Story, April 4, 2013

Ernesto P. Santiago


undecided
about which dress to wear
I remember Dad
whistling as he buttoned
his only suit

red lights, 9:1, Jan. 2013

Joyce S. Greene


lying awake
on the night of a storm
even when I close my eyes
especially when I close my eyes
I see snow  

Chrysalis, 1:1, 2007

Barry George


on the morning
of her death, I sit
searching
for the small differences
between these wild finches

Simply Haiku, 10:1, Spring/Summer 2012

Kirsten Cliff


sitting
with my friend at dusk
hearing
the diagnosis
and the unrelenting rain
                 
Moonbathing, Winter 2010

Beverly Acuff Momoi


Father
in the nursing home
    ever smaller
         the circles he walks
         the circles of his thoughts

Tanka Splendor, 2006

Irene Golas


I rest my paddle
let the canoe drift awhile
rocks     trees     sky
the lake and I
are an empty mirror

terra north/nord, 3, Summer 2011

Irene Golas


braiding
her sister’s hair
after the rape
so many
long dark strands

Honorable Mention, 2012 Tanka Society of America International Contest

Jenny Ward Angyal


I lay your sad ghost
in the west room
of my heart ...
the mockingbird sings
what he doesn’t know

Second Place, 2013 Tanka Society of America International Contest

Jenny Ward Angyal


the self
I’ve clung to
all these years
moonlight
on water

Skylark, 1:1, summer 2013

Jenny Ward Angyal


the question I couldn’t ask
the answer you wouldn’t give
walking in snowlight
somehow we find
the way home     

Ribbons, 2008

Sylvia Forges-Ryan


autumn afternoon
we keep our distance
in dappled light
talking about the life
we haven’t shared   

Honorable Mention, SFIT, Mariposa 2008

Sylvia Forges-Ryan


in twilight
by the beach fire
I shiver
thinking of the last time
you turned to wave goodbye

3rd place, 2010 Tanka Society of America Contest

Susan Constable


a large bruise
deep inside the mango
unexpected
the way you turned away
when I needed you most

Simply Haiku, 8:3, Autumn 2011

Susan Constable


as a child
she found it difficult
to say goodbye
now bone-thin hands
clutch the blanket's edge

Honorable Mention, TSA Contest, 2013

Susan Constable


learning
to say goodbye…
a fraction
of me touching you
in secret places

Breath and Shadows

Sergio Ortiz


halving fruit
my second husband's
way of love --
hard to change habits
so late in life

2nd Place, 2000 Tanka Society of America International Tanka Contest

Amelia Fielden


my ex-husband
calls his new child the name
we had chosen
for our son,whose heart
stopped in my womb

Eucalypt, 14, 2013
                                      
Amelia Fielden


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

NeverEnding Story, July 13, 2013

Diana Teneva


young summer
at nine years old
foreign fingers
tracing my sister's
before-woman curves

NeverEnding Story, November 21, 2014

Matsukaze


now Muslims
and immigrants but
-- the same white faces
-- the same white words
they used to point at me

NeverEnding Story, August 19, 2013

M. Kei


new moon or full moon
the tides are fullest
why is there no tide
that pulls him to me
this autumn night?

NeverEnding Story, January 8, 2014

M. Kei


Mailing packages
to the one who won't be home
a fragrance of pine
all the way to the post office
I weigh his absence

Featured Tanka Poet, Moonset, Autumn/Winter 2007

Carol Purington


The staccato of fireworks
from the neighbor's field
      we sit in coolness
             emerging stars punctuate
             the words we haven't said

June 2003 Poem of the Month, Christian Science Monitor Online

Carol Purington


alone
for too long
(again)
I ask a fly
to fly silently

NeverEnding Story, September 13, 2013

Johannes S. H. Bjerg


this night too
a red rose's fragrance
seducing the Moon
my thoughts rush toward you
in the dying dream

25 Croatian Tanka Poets, Atlas Poetica

Djurdja Vukelic Rozic


her face blurs
into a dozen others ...
I tighten my grip
around all that remains
of what was

A Hundred Gourds, 2:2, March 2013

S.M. Abeles


that Li Po, drunk,
leaned over the boat’s side
to embrace the moon
and drowned . . . ?
sure, I believe it

Red Lights, 3:1, January 2007

Larry Kimmel


I've come again
to this oak-gripped bank,
who knows why?—
recalling our last time here,
I watch a red leaf drift out of sight

American Tanka, 8, Spring 2000

Larry Kimmel


with my child
on my shoulder,
i walk in the rain
carrying the weight
of shattered dreams

Tinywords, 13:2, 2013

Ramesh Anand


on father's coffin
the cowboy hat and polished boots
of a prairie Gael
the skirling pipes
that sing him home

Skylark, 2, Winter 2013

Debbie Strange


the way her hand
rests on his palm like
moon on water
mirrors words of love
never spoken

Moonbathing, 8, June 2013

Alegria Imperial


after the earthquake --
the arch bridge
drops its shadow
onto the water
more distinctly

Eucalypt, 15, 2013

Aya Yuhki


Yesterday, I thought
my new poem was brilliant
today, it seems confused—
the morning sun in a haze
over the marsh reeds 

Modern English Tanka, Winter 2006, 1:2

George Swede


A snow cap
on the statue of
the dictator…
it tumbles from an
insurgence of air

American Tanka, 21, 2012

George Swede


black and white
paintings on the pot
the transgender
searches the streak of colors
to fill the gap of the emptiness

Special Features:Chiaroscuro LGBT Tanka, Atlas Poetica, August 2012

Pravat Kumar Padhy


the pub spits out
a final gobful of drunks
halfway home
I hear the moonlight laughing
in a stream of piss

NeverEnding Story,  January 19, 2013

Liam Wilkinson


country town...
sheep and cattle
roam the hills
I wind back
my father's watch

Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol. 4

Merle Connolly


holding tight
to a spider’s thread
I drift
from one tanka
to another

Gusts, 14,  fall/winter 2011

Keitha Keyes


my neighbour
tells me to hold
someone close ...
clenching my fist, I let
the sky hold my thoughts

Eucalypt, 13, 2012

Anne Curran


the others
off to midnight Mass
in the dark
Basil Rathbone reads
Masque of the Red Death

Breccia, 2012

Ignatius Fay

Butterfly Dream: Winter Rain Haiku by Rebecca Drouilhet

English Original

all day winter rain...
scenes from the passing year
reflected in the pane

Rebecca Drouilhet


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一整天的冬雨 ...
過去一年的情景逐一
反映在窗格上

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一整天的冬雨 ...
过去一年的情景逐一
反映在窗格上


Bio Sketch

Rebecca Drouilhet is a 58-year old retired registered nurse.  In 2012, she won a Sakura award in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku International.  Her haiku and tanka have appeared in A Hundred Gourds, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, World Haiku Review, Prune Juice, The Heron's Nest, and the Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Art.

One Man's Maple Moon: Moonlight Tanka by Joyce Wong

English Original

moonlight
upon the water --
why do we
give ourselves over to
beautiful illusions?

Selected Tanka, GUSTS, 15, Spring/Summer 2012

Joyce Wong


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

月光
在水面上 --
為什麼我們
將自己交付給
美麗的幻想？

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

月光
在水面上 --
为什麽我们
将自己交付给
美丽的幻想？


Bio Sketch

Joyce Wong is a quiet artistic soul who loves reading, writing, music, and poetry. She began writing tanka in 2010, inspired by Machi Tawara’s Salad Anniversary. Her tanka have been published in GUSTS, Moonbathing, and Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4. One of her tanka was honored with a Certificate of Merit from the Japan Tanka Poets' Society in the 7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012. She lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Butterfly Dream: Old Map Haiku by LeRoy Gorman

English Original

where forest was
the old map is thick
with dust

Tinywords, January 10, 2014

LeRoy Gorman


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

舊森林所在之處
老地圖沾滿
灰塵

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

旧森林所在之处
老地图沾满
灰尘


Bio Sketch

LeRoy Gorman writes mostly minimalist and visual poetry.  His most recent book, fast enough to leave this world, is one of tanka published by Inkling Press, Edmonton.  More information on his writing can be found at the American Haiku Archives where he served as the Honorary Curator for 2012-2013.

One Man's Maple Moon: Heart Tanka by Roary Williams

English Original

my cardiologist
tells me my heart
is clogged
with a little bit of bacon
and a little bit of you ...

Roary Williams


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

心臟科醫生
告訴我我的心臟
堵塞:
有一點點的培根
和一點點的你 ...

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

心脏科医生
告诉我我的心脏
堵塞:
有一点点的培根
和一点点的你 ...


Bio Sketch

Roary Williams lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is fifty-five years old and has been writing micropoetry in the Japanese forms for almost five years, writing almost exclusively on Twitter as @CoyoteSings. He studies zen, loves animals, and keeps several ferrets.

(Editor's Note: This is the first tanka accepted for the 2014 translation project. The best 66 tanka selected for One Man's Maple Moon, 2013: Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Tanka will be announced next week)

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, XXIV

new immigrant
to the land of hungry ghosts
of the Muse
I write love tanka
in crimson red 

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

Notes:

1 You can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here.

Poetic Musings: First Baseball Haiku by Jack Kerouac

Empty baseball field --

A robin,

Hops along the bench

According to Allan Burns, Kerouac’s haiku above is accredited as "the first baseball haiku and a classic" ("Gallery Fifteen: Play Ball”).

L1 sets the context, seasonal, thematic and emotive, while allusive Ls 2 &3 make a shift in theme and imagery, thus establishing a contrasting relationship with their preceding line through Kerouac’s skillful use of the zoom-in technique. This contrasting relationship fully embodies the “principle of internal comparison,” which is well articulated by Harold G. Henderson in his study of Japanese haiku (p. 18); therefore, it  gains added poignancy. Kerouac’s two-axis, cinematic haiku is beautifully crafted and serves well as a starting point for many thoughts and emotions.

Note: Kerouac’s haiku alludes to the following haiku by Shiki

The sparrow hops

Along the verandah,

With wet feet

In his 1952 influential book, Haiku, Blyth viewed the haiku above as “the model for all haiku” (p. 517). For more information, read my critique of Blyth's view, "To the Lighthouse: The Model for All Haiku !?"


References:

Reginald Horace Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, The Hokuseido Press, 1952.

Allan Burns, Montage: The Book, The Haiku Foundation, 2010.

Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Basho and Shiki, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958.

One Man's Maple Moon: Deeper Blue Tanka by Susan Constable

English Original

a deeper blue                                   
this ocean, sky, and me
all these stones
worn smooth by waves
rain, and a thousand tears

Red Lights, 9:1, 2013

Susan Constable


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

更深的藍
這個海洋，天空和我
所有這些石頭
被海浪，雨，和眼淚
磨得光滑

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

更深的蓝
这个海洋，天空和我
所有这些石头
被海浪，雨，和眼泪
磨得光滑


Bio Sketch

Susan Constable’s tanka appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Take Five. She placed third in the 2010 Tanka Society of America Contest and her tanka collection, The Eternity of Waves, is one of the winning entries in the eChapbook Awards for 2012. She is currently the tanka editor for the international on-line journal, A Hundred Gourds. Susan lives with her husband on Canada’s beautiful west coast.

(Editor's Note: This is the last tanka accepted for the 2013 translation project)

Butterfly Dream: Veil Haiku by Asni Amin

English Original

crescent moon ...
lifting her veil just
enough

Simply Haiku, 10:3, Spring/Summer 2013

Asni Amin


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

彎月...
掀起她的面紗
恰到好處

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

弯月...
掀起她的面纱
恰到好处


Bio Sketch

Asni Amin lives in Singapore and works as a librarian in a school.  She started writing haiku in 2012 and has her works published in Simply Haiku and various other ebooks online. 

One Man's Maple Moon: Baby Brother Tanka by Carol Purington

English Original

Weeks isolated
      from those without the virus
My baby brother
      learning to take steps
My body learning not to walk 

Wind Five Folded: An Anthology of English-Language Tanka

Carol Purington


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

幾個星期
      與那些沒有病毒的人隔離
我的小弟弟
      開始學習走路
然而我的身體學習不走路

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

几个星期
      与那些没有病毒的人隔离
我的小弟弟
      开始学习走路
然而我的身体学习不走路


Bio Sketch

Carol Purington is at home in the hills of western Massachusetts. She writes about seasonal and emotional rhythms, exploring connections between the worlds inside us and the worlds our bodies interpret. Her works have appeared in English-language haiku/tanka publications, both print and online, and they have won recognition in international contests. She has published three books of tanka: The Trees Bleed Sweetness, A Pattern for This Place, and Gathering Peace.

Butterfly Dream: Wedding Haiku by Tatiana Debeljacki

English Original

the wedding
in the Old Town
murmur of the river

Asahi Haikuist Network, January 6, 2012

Tatiana Debeljacki


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

在舊城
舉行的婚禮
河流私語
   
Chinese Translation (Simplified)

在旧城
举行的婚礼
河流私语


Bio Sketch

Tatjana Debeljacki writes poetry, short stories, and haiku. She is a member of the Association of Writers of Serbia -UKS (since 2004) and the Haiku Society of Serbia. She is the deputy editor of Diogen and the editor of Poeta. She has four books of poetry published by Hammer & Anvil Books.

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, XXIII

not so-called news
another Chinese jumps
off the roof...
on the nightstand, his dog-eared
Lament for a Nation

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

Notes:

1 You can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here.

One Man's Maple Moon: Black and White Paintings Tanka by Pravat Kumar Padhy

English Original

black and white
paintings on the pot
the transgender
searches the streak of colors
to fill the gap of the emptiness

Special Features:Chiaroscuro LGBT Tanka, Atlas Poetica, August 2012

Pravat Kumar Padhy


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

有關鍋子
的黑白畫
一個變性人
搜索色彩的條紋
來填補空白的間隙

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

有关锅子
的黑白画
一个变性人
搜索色彩的条纹
来填补空白的间隙


Bio Sketch

Born in India, poems widely published and anthologized. Works referred in Spectrum History of Indian Literature in English, Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Poetry etc. Poems awarded high acclamations by Writer’s Guild of India and Editors’ Choice awards. Pravat Kumar Padhy's Japanese short form of poetry appeared in many international journals and anthologies. Songs of Love: A celebration is his third collection of verse by Writers Workshop, Calcutta. Featured in The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India, to be published by Hidden Brook Press, Canada, 2014

Butterfly Dream: Winter Solitude Haiku by Neal Whitman

English Original

talking to myself
out loud ...
winter solitude

Neal Whitman


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

大聲地
自言自語 ...
冬日孤寂

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

大声地
自言自语 ...
冬日孤寂


Bio Sketch

Neal Whitman began to write general poetry in 2005, haiku in 2008, and tanka in 2011. He writes to be read and believes that the reader is never wrong. With his wife, Elaine, he combines his poetry with her Native American flute and photography in free public recitals with the aim of their hearts speaking to other hearts.

One Man's Maple Moon: A Tanka about Writing by George Swede

English Original

Yesterday, I thought
my new poem was brilliant
today, it seems confused --
the morning sun in a haze
over the marsh reeds 

Modern English Tanka, 1:2, Winter 2006

George Swede


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

昨天，我認為
我的新詩卓越非凡
今天，它似乎顛三倒四 --
早晨的太陽浮現在
陰霾的蘆葦沼澤之中

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

昨天，我认为
我的新诗卓越非凡
今天，它似乎颠叁倒四 --
早晨的太阳浮现在
阴霾的芦苇沼泽之中


Bio Sketch

George Swede has published two collections of tanka: First Light, First Shadows (Liverpool: Snapshot Press, 2006) and White Thoughts, Blue Mind (Edmonton: Inkling Press, 2010). His tanka have also appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Tanka Anthology (Red Moon Press, 2003) and a number of journals, including Ribbons and Gusts.

To the Lighthouse: Orthodox Style of Haibun Based on That of Basho?

The critic is beneath the maker, but is his needed friend. What tongue could speak but to an intelligible ear, and every noble work demands its critic... Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty.
--Margaret Fuller

Below is excerpt from my review essay, What Happens in [David Cobb’s Conception of] Haibun: A Critical Study for Readers Who Want More, a 30-page thematic, textual, and perspectival analysis of David Cobb's What Happens in Haibun: A Critical Study of an Innovative Literary Form, which was first published in Haibun Today, 7:3, September 2013

......

Renowned poet and a founding member of the British Haiku Society, David Cobb, has recently published two books, Marching with Tulips and What Happens in Haibun: A Critical Study of an Innovative Literary Form, simultaneously. The second one uses the subtitle “A Critical Study for Use in Tandem with the Haibun Collection, Marching with Tulips” on its front cover, different from the one on its inside cover, which I think is mainly for a practical as well as an advertising purpose.

Thematically speaking, What Happens in Haibun is divided into two parts; the first one consists of Introduction (pp. 5-15) and Conclusions (pp. 75-83), which provide Cobb’s reflections on the literary genre, haibun, practiced in Japan and in the West and his thoughts on the craft of haibun writing, and the second one Commentaries on Marching with Tulips (pp. 16-74), which is made up of detailed comments made by the critic David Cobb on each and every haibun included in Marching with Tulips written by the poet David Cobb...

......

In addition to failing to correctly understand the “various roles haiku may perform in haibun” (as the prime focus of his study) (p. 6) and to offer well-defined and structured material to support his thesis (that “adventitious haiku may sometimes enliven a haibun”) (p. 7), the most disappointing thing about Cobb’s so-called “critical study” is his complete misrepresentations of two key issues related to the stylistics of haibun: “haibun as a derivative of haiku” and the so-called “orthodox style of haibun prose based on that of Basho” (pp. 8-9).

When Cobb discontinues the discussion of his thesis, he not only jumps to the irrelevant topic, “The Japanese experience of haibun as it has come down to us in the West,” the fourth section of Introduction, but also changes the point of view, from “I” (individual voice to make one’s own comments) to “we” (collective voice to convey communal opinions or concerns), starting from this section, through the fifth section, “Is haibun a derivative of haiku?,” and ending at the middle of the first fourth of the sixth section, “Is there an orthodox style of haibun prose, perhaps based on that of Basho?” (pp. 7-9).

After pointing out that poets in the West had received a “very few, mainly ancient examples in translation” (p. 7), such as those of Basho’s work, as the main source for studying haibun, and that many of them “[started] by writing haiku and only later [graduated] to haibun” (p. 8), Cobb stresses that “it may be easy to fall into the way of thinking that haibun is a derivative of haiku” (p. 8). Suddenly, he shifts the focus from discussing the pitfall that many of the poets in the West might experience to expressing the communal concern that “we sense (emphasis mine) that Makoto Ueda (the scholar known for his study of Basho’s work and haiku-related literature) is thinking along these lines when he writes, ‘A haibun has the same sort of brevity and conciseness as haiku. There is a further hint when he continues, ‘Another characteristic of haibun is the extent of its dependence on imagery. Abstract, general, conceptual words are shunned in favor of concrete visual images” (p. 8).

The two quotes, both of which are not given page numbers, come from the passages regarding the stylistics of haibun (pp. 121-124) in Chapter 4, titled “Prose,” of Makoto Ueda’s well-known book, Matsuo Basho. In these passages, Ueda gives an in-depth analysis of the stylistics of Basho’s haibun. He outlines the following four characteristics: the “same sort of brevity and conciseness as a haiku" (p. 121), a "deliberately ambiguous use of certain particles and verb forms in places where the conjunction ‘and’ would be used in English” (p. 122), the “extent of its dependence on imagery” (p. 122), and the “writer’s detachment” (p. 123), all of which are used to prove that “the haibun is a prose equivalent of haiku” (emphasis mine, p. 124). In terms of stylistics, what Ueda emphasizes here in Section 1, titled “The Haibun: Haiku in Prose” (pp. 113-24), is that in the context of literary Japanese prose (“to be sure, literary Japanese prose has always tended to be imagistic rather than logical in all genres”) (p. 122), a haibun is prose with a haiku spirit, the same conclusion reached by scholars such as Haruo Shirane (Traces of Dreams, p. 212) and Lawrence Rogers (p. 280). Furthermore, Ueda points out that Basho’s prose is known for “its poetic beauty” (p. 112) and “Basho’s haibun carry that [imagistic] tendency to an extreme” (p. 123), and most importantly that “for one thing, Basho apparently thought of prose and poetry as complementary, as two modes of writing serving a single aim” (p. 112). Ueda never says anything about “haibun is a derivative of haiku” (p. 8) as Cobb claims through a collective voice (“we sense that Makoto Ueda is thinking along these lines . . .”) (p. 8).

What comes after the section “Is haibun a derivative of haiku?” is another surprise: “Is there an orthodox style of haibun prose, perhaps based on that of Basho?” Under this rhetorically problematic heading, Cobb begins with the following three passages replete with glaring instances of misunderstanding and misrepresentations of his references:

    Shirane 8 quotes Basho as saying that “haibun should have, in accordance with the Chinese model, an even and balanced rhythm, stressing paired words and parallel syntax.” He goes on to comment, “Basho’s new haikai prose (read for this haibun prose) was, at least in Kyorai’s opinion, graceful and gentle in expression.”

    Basho urged his disciples to write haibun, not only with Chinese prose as a model, but in the spirit or style of haikai (he did not himself use the term haiku, but may have intended his karumi style of haiku which he favoured in his mature style).

    Whichever translation we may prefer, we are able to see that Basho did not write consistently in a single style, but selected as appropriate to the context from a variety of styles. 9

Once again, there is no page number given to any of the quotes or references above. Cobb’s so-called “critical study” is poorly cited. And the two parenthesized statements above reveal that he is not familiar with the terminologies used in Japanese haikai literature: haikai prose means haibun (see Shirane’s General Index: “Haikai prose, see Haibun,” p. 365; “Haibun (haibun prose),” p. 364). Throughout Traces of Dreams, Shirane clearly points out that “haikai [is] . . . . Broadly used to refer to genres deriving from haikai such as the hokku [later called haiku, p.2], haiku, renku, haibun, haikai-related travel accounts and narrowly used to refer to haikai linked verse” (p. 294). Cobb’s misunderstanding of haikai-related terms is also revealed in the 10th statement of his “few bald statements about [his] own practice (p. 9): “In the unlikely event of being asked for a maxim, I shall not say that haibun should be written in the spirit and style of haikai. I might say, in the spirit and style of English haiku and English senryu” (p. 10). Historically and aesthetically speaking, based on the broad definition of haikai Shirane describes above, which is also adopted by other scholars, such as Peipei Qiu, 3 Cobb’s statement doesn’t make any sense.

In the beginning of Chapter 8, titled “Remapping the Past: Narrow Road to the Interior,” Shirane emphasizes that Basho wrote haikai prose throughout his life but “consciously strove to develop haibun or prose with a haikai spirit” only shortly after his journey to Oku (p. 212), and that he began to use the word haibun after the journey, which first appeared in his 1690 letter to his disciple Kyorai (p. 212). And there is no textual evidence or scholarly reference offered by Cobb to support his own claim that “[Basho] may have intended his karumi style of haiku which he favoured in his mature style” (p. 9); most importantly, according to his own description given in Glossary of Japanese Terms (p. 84), Cobb misunderstands what the karumi style really is, which will be fully explained below in the passages regarding misunderstood Japanese literary terms.

The second quote (with no note given) in the opening paragraph comes first (p. 216), and its meaning should be understood in the context of the stylistic comparisons between Saikaku’s and Basho’s work: “In contrast to Saikaku’s haibun, which combined classical prose and vernacular Japanese but which Basho considered coarse or vulgar in both content and expression, Basho’s new haikai prose was, at least in Kyorai’s opinion, graceful and gentle in expression, it had the flow of classical prose even as it incorporated the words and rhythms of vernacular Japanese and Chinese” (p. 216). And the first quote should also be understood in the context of the stylistic comparisons between classical poetry or classical prose and Basho’s haibun: “In contrast to classical poetry or classical prose, which was based on an alternating 5/7 syllabic rhythm, haibun should have, in accordance with the Chinese model, an even or (not “and” in Cobb’s quote) balanced rhythm (such as 4/4, 6/6) (this part omitted by Cobb), stressing paired words and parallel syntax, as in the following passage on the Tsubo Stone Inscription (Tsubo no ishibumi) in Narrow Road to the Interior” (pp. 217-8). This Chinese-influenced style (Six Dynasties parallel prose, “p’ien-wen”) is just one of the Chinese models explored by Basho. Most importantly, the thesis statement of Shirane’s in-depth analysis of Basho’s Narrow Road to the Interior is clearly written at the beginning of Chapter 8: “Basho remapped the cultural landscape of the Interior, or the northern region of Japan, through haibun, or haikai prose, a new genre that combined, in unprecedented fashion, Chinese prose genres, Japanese classical prototypes, and vernacular language and subject matter, thereby bringing together at least three major cultural axes . . . Oku no hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Interior), which may best be understood as an attempt to reveal the different possibilities of haibun in the form of travel literature” (emphasis mine, p. 212). Shirane never says anything about or hints at the so-called “orthodox style of haibun prose based on that of Basho” (p. 9) as Cobb claims.

Read in the context of Basho’s attempt to “reveal the different possibilities of haibun in the form of travel literature” (p. 212), the first quote above merely indicates the first stop of Basho’s journey into this literary territory: new haibun, not old haikai prose. As his journey continues, the Chinese model in the quote evolves into models: a variety of different Chinese expository genres, “among them, rhapsody (fu), preface (hsu, J. jo), eulogy (sung, J. sho), record (chi, J. ki), biography (chuan, J. den), essay (wen, J.bun), treatise (lun, J. ron), inscription (pei, J. ishibumi), encomium (tsan, J. san), admonitions (chen, J. shin), lamentation (tiao-wen, J. chobun)—which became models for many of Basho’s haibun, including travel diaries” (p. 219). And most importantly, Basho’s creatively interweaving Chinese poetic motifs and stylistic techniques with haikai humor, and vernacular or classical Japanese transformed old haikai prose into new haibun (pp. 213-23). As Shirane emphasizes at the end of the first section, titled “Haikai Prose,” of Chapter 8, “the end result is that the reader journeys from one type of language and prose genre to another, exploring the diverse possibilities of haibun” (p. 223).

Strategically speaking, Cobb first reverses the order, chronological and logical, of the two quotes from Shirane’s Chapter 8, then uses the second paragraph to enhance the reader’s impression of Basho’s “orthodox style of haibun prose” as perceived by Shirane, and finally in the third paragraph, he offers the scholarly support for the textual evidence from Donald Keene as indicated in his note 9, which is the same conclusion reached by Shirane. And at the beginning of the following paragraph, the fourth of the section, he cries out that “No! Don’t let’s go any further down that winding path. After some thirty drafts arguing this way and that what relevance Basho’s dicta might still have for us, 300 years and a totally different culture later, I give up” (p. 9). After this crying out, the first-person singular is resumed, and through a “rather symbolic act” (he “went out into the garden . . . clipped twenty yards of overgrown hedge . . . [he] came in again”) (p.9), he offers “a few bald statements about [his] own practices” (p. 9), the aim of which is “to make haibun prose and haiku companionable, responsive to each other like bedfellows, and not to reduce both to any kind of common denominator” (p. 11).

Strategically speaking, Cobb first uses the first-person plural to misrepresent Ueda’s and Shirane’s studies of Basho’s haibun, especially of the stylistics of the prose of haibun, then he resumes his first-person singular to offer 10 statements about his own writing practice, which reveals his true agenda, one that is at least intended for one of his goals: offering “sufficient criteria for selecting haibun to publish” (p. 5). Most importantly, in his statements (pp. 9-11), he discusses only the stylistics of the prose of haibun, and shows no interest in exploring any structural aspect of a haibun, such as the different placements of haiku and prose paragraphs that can have influences on the quality of a haibun as discussed in Jeffrey Woodward’s thoughtful essay, titled “Form in Haibun: An Outline,” 4 and none of these statements mentions the possibilities of using different types of prose or any mixture of them in an innovative way as Basho did in Narrow Road to the Interior. As a critic, David Cobb fails to take readers beyond the text horizon inscribed by the poet David Cobb as clearly indicated not only by his own statement—a “few bald statements about my (the poet’s) own practices” (p. 9)—but also by my comments mentioned above.....


Editor's Note: For  an in-depth analysis (structural and stylistic) of Basho's travel journal, The Narrow Road to the Interior, see A Poet's Roving Thoughts: The Narrow Road to the Interior by Basho

One Man's Maple Moon: Bone-Thin Hands Tanka by Susan Constable

English Original

as a child
she found it difficult
to say goodbye
now bone-thin hands
clutch the blanket's edge

Honorable Mention, TSA Contest, 2013

Susan Constable


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

小時候
她覺得很難
說再見
現在瘦骨嶙嶙的手
緊抓毯子的邊緣

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

小时候
她觉得很难
说再见
现在瘦骨嶙嶙的手
紧抓毯子的边缘


Bio Sketch

Susan Constable’s tanka appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Take Five. She placed third in the 2010 Tanka Society of America Contest and her tanka collection, The Eternity of Waves, is one of the winning entries in the eChapbook Awards for 2012. She is currently the tanka editor for the international on-line journal, A Hundred Gourds. Susan lives with her husband on Canada’s beautiful west coast.

A Room of My Own: Ilha Formosa?

Sendai earthquake ...

the darkness pierced

only by flashlights

At night, I toss and turn, worrying about the long-term health risks for Japan and its neighbors. My homeland, Taiwan, is one of the closest.

Fukushima at dawn --

one vending machine

still glowing

I remember during the late 1990s at the height of the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan, someone handed me a flyer on the street. It listed important instructions on how to survive a nuclear disaster. The last one on the list said: "When driving away in the rescue convoy, please remember to look back, because that will be your last sight of Taipei."

radioactive scare

this a world of dew

and yet ...

Notes:

1 In 1544, a Portuguese ship sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it "Ilha Formosa," which means “Beautiful Island.” Taipei is its capital.

2 This poem is a revision of  Ilha Formosa?, which was first published in Sketchbook, 6:3, May/June 2011

One Man's Maple Moon: Earthquake Tanka by Aya Yuhki

English Original

after the earthquake --
the arch bridge
drops its shadow
onto the water
more distinctly

Eucalypt, 15, 2013

Aya Yuhki


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

地震之後 --
拱橋
投射在水面上
的影子
更為明顯

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

地震之後 --
拱桥
投射在水面上
的影子
更为明显


Bio Sketch

Aya Yuhki was born and now lives in Tokyo. She started writing tanka more than thirty years ago and has expanded her interests to include free verse poetry, essay writing, and literary criticism. Aya Yuhki is Editor-in-Chief of The Tanka Journal published by the Japan Poets’ Society. Her works are featured on the homepage of the Japan Pen Club’s Electronic Library.

Butterfly Dream: Holding Hands Haiku by Simon Hanson

English Original

hand in hand
our shadows
do the same

A Hundred Gourds,2:3, June 2013

Simon Hanson


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

手牽手
我們的影子也做
同樣的動作

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

手牵手
我们的影子也做
同样的动作


Bio Sketch

Simon Hanson lives in country South Australia enjoying the open spaces and nearby coastal environments.  He is excited by the natural world and relishes moments of the numinous in ordinary things. He is published in various journals and anthologies and never realised how much the moon meant to him until he started writing haiku.

One Man's Maple Moon: Fireworks Tanka by Carol Purington

English Original

The staccato of fireworks
from the neighbor's field
      we sit in coolness
             emerging stars punctuate
             the words we haven't said

June 2003 Poem of the Month, Christian Science Monitor Online

Carol Purington


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

來自鄰居田地
的斷續煙花聲響
坐在陰涼中
逐漸浮現的星星標示
我們尚未說過的話

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

来自邻居田地
的断续烟花声响
坐在阴凉中
逐渐浮现的星星标示
我们尚未说过的话


Bio Sketch

Carol Purington is at home in the hills of western Massachusetts. She writes about seasonal and emotional rhythms, exploring connections between the worlds inside us and the worlds our bodies interpret. Her works have appeared in English-language haiku/tanka publications, both print and online, and they have won recognition in international contests. She has published three books of tanka: The Trees Bleed Sweetness, A Pattern for This Place, and Gathering Peace.

Butterfly Dream: Winter Drizzle Haiku by Tzod Earf

English Original

winter drizzle ...
the voice
in my mind

Tzod Earf


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

冬天毛毛雨 ...
在我腦海裡
的聲音

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

冬天毛毛雨 ...
在我脑海里
的声音


Bio Sketch

Tzod Earf lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.  He is a beginning haiku poet.

One Man's Maple Moon: Words of Love Tanka by Alegria Imperial

English Original

the way her hand
rests on his palm like
moon on water
mirrors words of love
never spoken

Moonbathing, 8, June 2013

Alegria Imperial


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

她的手
放在他手掌的樣子像是
月亮在水面上
反映從未說過
的情話

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

她的手
放在他手掌的样子像是
月亮在水面上
反映从未说过
的情话


Bio Sketch

Alegria Imperial’s haiku for Haiku Foundation’s 2012 Haiku Competition was Commended in the traditional category. She has also won honorable mentions in the 2007 Vancouver Cherry Blossoms Festival Invitational Haiku and her tanka adjudged Excellent, 7th International Tanka Festival Competition 2012. Her poetry have been published in international journals among them A Hundred Gourds, The Heron’s Nest, LYNX, Notes from the Gean, eucalypt and GUSTS. Formerly of Manila Philippines, she now lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

A Room of My Own: Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job

debris scattered

here and there

an old man playing blues

It is not just the levees that break... the smell breaks away... from the skin when a boy is pulled out of the waters. The waters that come and stand ... still with the bodies of black people, of my people... she says, her voice breaking.

a green doghouse

with FEMA on its roof

lower ninth ward at dusk

Note: The title comes from George W. Bush's comment on Katrina relief work done by Michael DeWayne Brown, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director. My haibun is inspired by Spike Lee's 2006 award-winning documentary, titled When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.

Hot News: 66 Haiku Selected for 2013 Butterfly Dream Anthology

Haiku is a new experience every time.... And that is poetry.
-- paraphrasing Jorge Luis Borges

My Dear Fellow Poets and Readers:

I'm pleased to announce the following 66 haiku selected for Butterfly Dream, 2013: Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Haiku. The anthology is scheduled to be published in July. Each poet whose haiku is/are included in the anthology will receive a copy of  its e-book edition.

 Please post to all appropriate venues. Your time and help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks for your support of my project. And look forward to reading your new work (see 2014 anthology submission guidelines)

Chen-ou

Note: The 2013 Butterfly Dream Prize winner will be announced later.

Updated, October 5:

Cool Announcement : In the Company of Good Poems

Updated,  October 28:

Butterfly Dream: 66 Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Haiku, Volume One 2014 is now available online for your reading pleasure.

  
For more information about this good news, see Hot News: Butterfly Dream, Volume One 2014


Selected Haiku


evening drizzle
notes from his guitar
perfume the air

Haigaonline, 12:2, December 2011

Christine L. Villa


morning mist
texturing the canvas
of a dream

Haiku Reality, 9:16

Angelo B. Ancheta


where soldiers
once slept and died --
a spider's home

Ambrosia, 3, 2009

Dick Whyte


blogging…
my random thoughts
yellow as lemon

Mainichi Daily News, Oct. 23, 2012

Ernesto P. Santiago


reading obituaries
the here and there
of fireflies

Frogpond, 35:3,  Winter 2012

Ben Moeller-Gaa


snow falling…
a darker silence
in my father’s room

Simply Haiku, 3:4, Winter 2005

Irene Golas


over my thoughts the hush of pines

Tinywords, August 2010

Peter Newton


crayon map
my son shows me the way
to Neverland

The Heron's Nest, 16:1, March 2012

John McManus


shooting stars…
the fizz of champagne
on my tongue

2nd place, Shiki Kukai February 2012

Stella Pierides


Spring evening --
the wheel of a troop carrier
crushes a lizard

Konts: The Anthology of Southeastern European Haiku Poetry

Dimitar Anakiev


first summer rose
in each drop of dew
a new thorn

Honorable Mention, 2011 Mainichi Haiku Contest

Sonam Chhoki


low winter moon
just beyond the reach
of my chopsticks

Beyond the Reach of My Chopsticks

Fay Aoyagi


a grass snake
escaping into
my thought of it

Honorable Mention, 2010 Haiku Now! International Haiku Contest

Anatoly Kudryavitsky


my father's footsteps the size of every morning

World Haiku Review, December 2012

S.M. Abeles


November cherry blossom --
what was I thinking?

Past All Traps

Don Wentworth


concert under the stars --
a drop of sweat lost
in her décolletage

Lishanu, 2, 2011

Djurdja Vukelić-Rožić


eyes of the ancestors
the twinkle
in winter stars

NeverEnding Story, February 21, 2013

Rebecca Drouilhet


first sunrise ...
avoiding eye contact
with his gay brother

Haiku of Merit, World Haiku Review, August, 2010

Ignatius Fay


the night he left ...
many sounds
of summer rain

DailyHaiku,  Cycle 12, November 02, 2011

Kirsten Cliff


skinny dipping --
one small step to land
on the moon

Winner of the Every Day Poets Great Big Little Poems Competition 2012

Marion Clarke


breezy morning
the gliding yellow bird
turns into a leaf

Peeling an Orange

Peggy Heinrich


hazy moon
all the shapes
of a hangover

Notes From the Gean, 2:4, March 2011

Polona Oblak


lengthening shadow ...
above her eggs the hen's heart
beats against my arm

First Place, British Haiku Society James W Hackett International Haiku Award 2003

Beverley George


train tunnel --
the sudden intimacy
of mirrored faces

Best of Issue Haiku, Presence, #22, 2004

Beverley George


the snow melted --
fences reappear
between neighbors

Heron’s Nest, 13:2,  June 2011

Adelaide B. Shaw


bedroom mirror --
the coldness of that dangling
single breast

Third prize, Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest

Rita Odeh


white lie
the mirror doubles
the white chrysanthemum

The Unworn Necklace

Roberta Beary


winter moonlight …
full lips pout
from a billboard

bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com, Feb 2013

Anne Curran


Winter sunshine
The smell of sprouted potatoes
in the cellar

Second Prize, Mainichi Haiku Contest 2005

Rajna Begović


full moon
returning
to an empty house

Full Moon

Ed Baker


moving into the sun
the pony takes with him
some mountain shadow

American Haiku in Four Seasons

Jane Reichhold


holding the day
between my hands
a clay pot

Frogpond, 23:3, Autumn, 2000

Jane Reichhold


            a poppy . . .
        a field of poppies!
the hills blowing with poppies!

Haiku Magazine, V.5, N1, 1971

Michael McClintock


to each other
in the dark --
waving lanterns

Second Prize, San Francisco International Haiku Competition 2009

Michael McClintock


slipping through my fingers ...
a school of fish
and summer sunset

NeverEnding Story, June 13, 2013

Anna Yin


harvest moon ...
a child wades in the pond
full of it

2nd place , 2012 Maple Moon Haiku Contest

Brian Robertson


Rereading The Iliad
another corpse dragged
through Fallujah

Grand Prix, 39th A-Bomb Contest

Sylvia Forges-Ryan


scattering his ashes           
the moon             
in bits and pieces

First Prize, 1993 Harold G. Henderson Award

Sylvia Forges-Ryan


june breeze
a hole in the cloud
mends itself

Third Runner-Up, The Heron's Nest Readers' Choice Popular Poets Award (2001)

an'ya


when my gendai world was flat I kept falling off
                                             
                                                                                          the text horizon

Notes from the Gean,  19,  May 2013

kjmunro


a chrysalis
waits for spring
autistic son
  
Windfall 1 2013

Marilyn Humbert


after the divorce
a tattered moon
in every window

Distinguished Work Prize, 5th Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum Haiku Contest

Pamela A. Babusci


winter stars…
only the sound of the neighbor
wheeling his trash  

Modern Haiku, 36.1, 2005

Barry George


morning mist…
disconnected thoughts search
for conjunctions  

Modern Haiku, 2013, 44.2

George Swede


alone at twilight...
sound of a mosquito
and unfinished dream

NeverEnding Story, August 29, 2013

Asni Amin


autumn nap --
sunlight
combs my hair

FreeXpression, August 2010

Keitha Keyes


graveyard visit
a spider's web glitters
in a broken vase

Sketchbook, 2012

Máire Morrissey-Cummins


two light beams shining
where there were once twin towers --
my son, my daughter

Grand Prize, 15th International “Kusamakura” Haiku Competition

Jack Galmitz


in Bryant Park
2,753 empty chairs


not a breath of air

yards & lots

Jack Galmitz


night storm
her waters
                        break

Commended,  NZPS International Haiku Contest 2008

Nola Borrell


fading light
dad tells the only story
he remembers 
                                            
Modern Haiku, 41.2, Summer 2010

Bob Lucky


on the porch
a chair rocking
the waning moon 
           
A Hundred Gourds, 2:3, June 2013

Diana Teneva


autumn twilight
my parents in silence
on the swing

The Mainichi Daily, 2012

Ramesh Anand


harvest moon
the horizon between here
and hereafter

First Prize, Katikati Haiku Competition 2012

Lorin Ford


shades of winter --
my mother in the passage
between dreams

Frogpond, 35:3, Autumn 2012

Lorin Ford


spring breeze --
the pull of her hand
as we near the pet store

Into the Open: Poems from Poets of the Sixth Skagit River Poetry Festival

Michael Dylan Welch


first rain
the paper boat carries
my childhood

Asahi Haikuist Network, May 31 2013

Pravat Kumar Padhy


in five-seven-five
I compact confusing thoughts ...
New Year's morning dew

Simply Haiku, 10:3, Spring/Summer 2013

Damir Janjalija


hurricane near
she gets her nails done
the color of the sea

South by Southeast, 12:2, 2005

LeRoy Gorman


                           no
                          way
                        to see
                          the
                      mountain
(((((((((((((((((sombrero)))))))))))))))))

Modern Haiku, 38:3, Autumn 2007

LeRoy Gorman


buds on the apple tree
my daughter trying on
her first bra

NeverEnding Story, January 10, 2014

Hristina Pandjaridis


worn-out stairs
up to my old mother’s home -
an owl hooting

The Heron’s Nest, 2007

Saša Važić


rest home garden
tomatoes rotting
on the vine

Modern Haiku, 44:2, Summer 2013

Erik Linzbach


somehow
our shrinking shadows touch --
harvest moon

Dottie Dot Awards, Haiku Bandit Society, September 2011

Alegria Imperial


golden hills
turkey vultures circle the remains
of summer

First Place, UkiaHaiku Contest (2013)

Annette Makino


cold day at the beach
a man casts his line
only twice

Simply Haiku, 7:2, Summer 2009

Neal Whitman

Butterfly Dream: Destroyed Tank Haiku by Andrzej Dembonczyk

English Original

war over --
destroyed tank
overgrown with ivy

Asahi Haikuist Network, 16 August 2013

Andrzej Dembonczyk


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

戰爭結束 --
摧毀的坦克
長滿了常春藤

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

战争结束 --
摧毁的坦克
长满了常春藤


Bio Sketch

Andrzej Dembonczyk lives in Zbroslawice, Silesia, Poland. He is a  local government employee. His hobby is Aquaristics. he writes haiku, haiga, tanka and from time to time a short story or theatrical script.

One Man's Maple Moon: Purple Flowers Tanka by Jenny Ward Angyal

English Original

purple flowers
carpet the orchard
each spring
I try again to learn
their names and mine

red lights, 9:2, June 2013

Jenny Ward Angyal


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

紫色花朵
鋪蓋著果園
每年春天
我再次嘗試學習
他們的和我的名字

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

紫色花朵
铺盖著果园
每年春天
我再次尝试学习
他们的和我的名字


Bio Sketch

Jenny Ward Angyal lives with her husband and one Abyssinian cat on a small organic farm in Gibsonville, NC, USA.  She composed her first poem at the age of five. Her tanka and other poems have appeared in various print and online journals and may also be found on her blog, The Grass Minstrel 

Butterfly Dream: Hospice Window Haiku by Djurdja Vukelic Rozic

English Original

hospice window
the moon
in a puddle

Djurdja Vukelic Rozic


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

安寧院窗口
月亮
在水坑中

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

安宁院窗口
月亮
在水坑中


Bio Sketch

Djurdja Vukelic Rozic  was born on April 6, 1956, and now lives in Ivanić Grad, Croatia.  Editor in chief of bilingual haiku magazine IRIS, and deputy editor for haiku at Diogen pro cultura magazine, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She publishes humorous sketches, short stories, and poetry. For her work she received a number of awards and commendations in Croatia and abroad.

One Man's Maple Moon: Wedding Tanka by Ramesh Anand

English Original

father poses
in his first suit
of lifelong desire --
lightness of being him
in my wedding

Bamboo Hut, 1, Summer 2013.

Ramesh Anand


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

身穿一生願望
的第一件西裝
父親裝模作樣 --
在我的婚禮中
做為他自己之輕微
   
Chinese Translation (Simplified)

身穿一生愿望
的第一件西装
父亲装模作样 --
在我的婚礼中
做为他自己之轻微


Bio Sketch

Ramesh Anand authored Newborn Smiles, a book of haiku poetry published by Cyberwit.Net Press. His haiku has appeared in many publications, across 14 countries, including Bottle Rockets Press, ACORN, Magnapoets, The Heron's Nest, South by Southeast and Frogpond. His haiku has been translated in German, Serbian, Japanese, Croatian, Romanian, Telugu and Tamil. His tanka has been published in Tinywords, Kernels Online and Bamboo Hut and also forthcoming in many print journals. He blogs at Ramesh-inflame.blogspot.com.

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, XXII

he whispers
life is best understood
backwards …
side by side two engineers
working at Tim Hortons

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

Notes:

1 You can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here.

2 Tim Hortons' prevalence in the coffee and doughnut market has led to its branding as a Canadian cultural icon. For more information, see Double Double: How Tim Hortons Became a Canadian Way of Life, One Cup at a Time by Douglas Hunter.

Butterfly Dream: Rabbit Prints Haiku by Kay L. Tracy

English Original

a swath of moonlight
rabbit prints in the snowy path
and the owl's shadow

Kay L. Tracy


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一大片月光
兔子腳印在白雪皚皚的路徑
和貓頭鷹的影子

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一大片月光
兔子脚印在白雪皑皑的路径
和猫头鹰的影子


Bio Sketch

Kay L. Tracy is inspired by the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. She has poetry published in Four and Twenty, Haibun Today, Magnapoets, Daily Haiga, A Hundred Gourds, Gusts, Moonbathing, and other online journals. Her email address is k_writes@comcast.net.

(Editor's Note: This is the first haiku selected for the 2014 translation project. The best 66 haiku selected for Butterfly Dream 2013: Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Haiku will be announced next week)

A Poet's Roving Thoughts: The Narrow Road to the Interior by Basho

Below is excerpted from my essay, titled, "Make Haibun New through the Chinese Poetic Past: Basho's Transformation of Haikai Prose," which was first published in Simply Haiku, 8:1, Summer 2010, and reprinted in Haibun Today, 6:1, March 2012, and in which I give an in-depth analysis (structural and stylistic) of Basho's travel journal, The Narrow Road to the Interior:

....As Haruo Shirane demonstrates in his groundbreaking book Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, Basho believed that "the poet had to work along both axes: to work only in the present would result in poetry that was fleeting; to work just in the past, on the other hand, would be to fall out of touch with the fundamental nature of haikai, which was rooted in the everyday world."16 Viewed as a key figure who elevated haikai from an entertaining pastime to a respected poetic form, Basho had developed a set of related poetic ideals widely utilized by his disciples, fellow poets, and successive followers since the mid-1680s.17 These new ideals were their sincere efforts to deal with the fundamental paradox of the late-seventeenth-century haikai, one "which looked to the past for inspiration and authority and yet rejected it, which parodied the classical (and Chinese) tradition even as they sought to become part of it, and which paid homage to the 'ancients' and yet stressed newness."18

The haikai Basho envisioned was marked for its newness, for "both new perspectives and new sociolinguistic frontiers in contemporary Japan as well as in reconstructed versions of the Japanese and Chinese past."19 In what follows, I will discuss how Basho re-established and refined a mixed genre of verse and prose called haibun (haikai prose), which is exemplified, through his incorporation and recontextualization of the Chinese poetic past in his masterpiece, The Narrow Road to the Interior.

First of all, broadly speaking, haibun was developed before Basho and written in the form of short essays, prefaces or headnotes to hokku, such as Kigin's Mountain Well (1648). Its prose style resembled that of classical prose.20 In 1671, a well-known Teimon poet Yamaoka Genrin (1631-1672) published his experimental work of haibun, entitled Takaragura (The Treasure House), and in it, he "[emulated] Zhuangzi's gugen [(Chinese, yuyan)]21 by revealing beauty and virtue in ordinary household apparatus."22 His work was "highly metaphorical and allegorical,"23 it didn't have great influences on the way haikai poets at the time wrote their haibun.

It was not until shortly after Basho returned from his journey to Oku that he became more focused on developing a different style of prose, which was infused with a haikai spirit. Around 1690, in a letter to Kyorai, he named this new haikai prose haibun, which was characterized by the "prominent inclusion of haikai words (haigon), particularly a combination of vernacular Japanese (zokugo) and Chinese words (kango)."24 After the publication the first anthology of the new haibun, entitled Prose Collection of Japan, Basho was recognized as "the first to create such a model [for haikai prose] and breathe elegance and life in it."25

Secondly, as Haruo Shirane stresses, Basho's The Narrow Road to the Interior, "may best be understood as an attempt to reveal the different possibilities of haibun in the form of travel literature."26 A lot of commentators also point out that Basho's work is less a factual record of a travel journal account, where haiku commemorate real but isolated moments keenly perceived on the journey, than it is a highly related set of about fifty haibun structured to convey a specific literary effect.27

For example, Basho's travelling companion, Sora, recorded in his diary that on their visit to Nikko, they first visited the temples and shrine on the mountain and then rested at Hotoke Gozaemon's inn on their last night. Basho rearranged this series of events – resting first and visiting later – in separate Nikko haibun in order to dramatize their stay with Hotoke Gozaemon. In doing so, he was able to compare/contrast three schools of thought: 1. Shinto (the shrine and its history); 2. Confucian (Hotoke Gozaemon reminded Basho of one important passage from The Analects of Confucius); 3. Buddhist (describing in two passages Sora's religious preparations for the journey and their improvised Buddhist "summer purification retreat").28

Furthermore, it is "best considered a long prose poem, which gives vernacular and Chinese phrases the cadence and tonality of poetry."29 That is because many commentators observe that Basho's prose conveys poetic beauty through concise imagery, making the boundary between prose and verse disappear.30

Therefore, there is no general agreement on exactly where the haibun breaks occur. The majority of English translations do not indicate them. As a result, most readers will look upon The Narrow Road to the Interior as a travel journal infused with haiku.31 Nonetheless, the haibun is used to divide the text into subsections, indicating a "discrete passage which characteristically ends in one or more haiku."32 This is such a non-linear text, freely mixing prose with verse in a way as to demand a relational reading. Significant meaning of a work of this sort is embedded with the interaction of text and context.33

Thirdly, as is well known, Basho made use in his prose of the associative techniques utilized in haikai composition. "To create associations is to set up correspondence (taio) . . . that [novelist and literary essayist, Atsushi Mori,] sees as characterizing the work's movement and source of energy."34 He describes taio as "something akin to fields of tension and balance between all manner of concrete and abstract things: between words, phrases, or images, between motifs or themes, between human beings, ideas, places, poems, and most importantly between Basho's text, the Oku no Hosomichi itself, and other literary texts of the past . . . States of tension and balance are achieved and then broken against a background of newly formed balances."35 According to Mori, the balance Basho had in his mind was "balance as antithesis,"36 a notion that is more in line with the Chinese cosmological concept of yoking yin and yang and being transformed. In his The Narrow Road to the Interior, attentive readers can see Basho's constant employment of the interplay of opposites (yin and yang) that brings about transformation.

From a structuralist perspective, Mori claims that this law of change is embodied in the following four-part pattern as a structural principle at work in The Narrow Road to the Interior: First, there is a beginning (Japanese, ki ), and it is matched with an apt response (Japanese, sho); later, ki and sho, one after the other, are matched by transformation (Japanese, ten), the newly-formed element(s), and finally all three are matched by a ending (Japanese, ketsu).37 This ki-sho-ten-ketsu- structure mirrors that of Chinese short verse, jue ju. A jue ju is composed of four lines, with each line containing five or seven Chinese characters and carrying two or more parallels of content and phonetic tone. The structural function of each line is described as follows: line 1 sets the theme (Chinese, qi), line 2 develops the theme (Chinese, cheng) through expanding imagery and mood, line 3 transforms the theme (Chinese, zhuan) by comparing/contrasting with line 1, and line 4 resolves all into an ending (Chinese, he).

Mori argues that the ki-sho-ten-ketsu principle shapes Basho's work as follows: the ki part not only includes the opening passage but also extends to the Shirakawa Barrier crossing, the sho part is made up of the sections between the Shirakawa Barrier crossing and the visit with the painter Kaemon in Sendai, the ten part includes the sections describing the travelers' passage along a portion of the road from Sedai en route to the Tsubo no Ishibumi, and finally the ketsu part corresponds with the sections portraying the often hurried walk down the Echigo-Echizen road along the Japan Sea coast and into Ogaki.38 Mori's reading of Basho's work is heavily dependent on his conception of taio, and in his view, the most numerous correspondences are those between verses: between waka and Chinese verses, for instance, of the type discussed in the Kurobane passage or between two hokku in the same, or in contiguous, or in widely separate haibun."39

Fourthly, in terms of writing style, The Narrow Road to the Interior is characterized by a "highly elliptical, rhythmic, Chinese style of parallel words (tsuigo) and parallel phrases (tsuiku)."40 Unlike classical Japanese prose which was based on an alternating 5/7 syllabic rhythm, Basho's haibun was accorded with "Chinese prose models, particularly Six Dynasties parallel prose (p'ien-wen) – which used four- and six-word parallel phrases, emphasized verbal parallelism, and stressed tonal euphony and allusion – and the Ancient Style (ku-wen), which emerged in the Tang period in reaction to the p'ien-wen style and which often generated a rhythm based on the four-character line."41

Chinese parallel prose is marked for its parallel phrases, tending toward rhyming and frequent allusion. Part of the reason is because of the monosyllabic structure of its language "represented by discrete symbols of uniform size and vocally expressed through a phonological structure capable of sophisticated rhyming."42 Due to linguistic differences, literary Japanese is not disposed to tonal parallelism. However, a kind of parallelism, such as syntactical and semantic ones, is possible through stressing paired words or phrases, parallel syntax, parallels of content or theme.

Take the passage on the Tsubo Stone Inscription for example:

    Mountains disappear, rivers flow,

    roads change;

    rocks are buried, hidden in dirt,

    trees age, saplings replace them;

    the virtues of travel

    the joys of existence

    forgetting the labors of travel

    I shed only tears.43

The skillful use of parallel syntax and contrastive words – such as mountain and river, rock and tree, and travel and life – generates a "folksong type of rhythm and a Chinese poetic pattern."44

This renewed haibun style was widely adopted by haibun writers, such as Yokoi Yayu, one of the most famous literary triad in the second half of the eighteenth century, an era praised for the revival of haiku and haibun.45 From the open line of the haibun on tobacco in Yayu's well-known haibun collection entitled Uzuragoromo, we can see a striking example of syntactical parallelism:

    You may get drowsy journeying along a road at night,

    but you cannot dangle a teapot from your waist to refresh yourself.

    You may awake forlorn one autumn day,

    but you cannot feed yourself when you cannot reach the rice-cakes on the shelf.46

This passage is almost immediately followed by,

    It may well be that Tsai Yu looked for a firebrand in the kitchen stove

    so that he might light up after his afternoon nap,

    and that Kojiju craned her neck toward the lamp to light her tobacco

    as she waited through the night for her love.47

In addition to syntactical parallelism, an attentive reader can notice a semantic parallel: "'stove' in the first line is complemented by 'lamp' in the second, and '(day) nap's eye-opener' by 'nightwaiting.'"48

Besides parallelism, the frequent use of allusion is prominent in Chinese parallel prose; it can also be found in The Narrow Road to the Interior. As Shirane demonstrates in Traces of Dreams, Basho's prose and poetry is highly allusive.49 For example, the opening passage is the most important section of the work that determines the theme, tone, movement, and goals.50 It also describes multiple departures – "the hermit-poet's philosophical departure from a particular way of life and his actual physical departure from the hermitage, a symbol of life he abandons"51 – and it is a haibun written in a Li-esque style. In his book, Mori discusses the complexity and richness of Basho's allusion to Li Po's poem and his skilful use of parallelism.52

There has been a steady stream of collections of essays by major Japanese scholars on Basho's relationships to earlier literary traditions. Jiro Hirota's multiple studies on Basho and his Chinese and Japanese classical connections since 1968 began a new era of Basho scholarship. He first researched on Chinese Taoist, then Neo-Confucian and later Buddhist influences.53 Beacuse he "examines the primary and secondary sources to which Basho could have had access (popular poetic handbooks, collections, and commentaries, for instance) and documents possible Japanese and Chinese sources in each of the genres in which Basho and his disciples worked . . . his studies have become, among other things, one of the most reliable sources (reference works, really) on the process by which Basho mixed a variety of languages."54

Finally, in addition to modelling on Chinese parallel prose, Basho adopted his haikai approach to the Chinese fu, a dominant genre of Han Dynasty literature.55 It was a kind of rhymed prose poetry based on the ornate and extravagant style of Chu ci (Chu lyrics). The prose provides the necessary exposition written in the form of questions and answers for exploration of an object or natural phenomenon, and the verse its rhapsodic language. It employs complex rhyme patterns and balanced parallel phrases. Take one of Basho's haibun on Matsushima for example:

    Well, it has been said many times, but Matsushima is the most beautiful place in all of Japan. First of all, it can hold its head up to Tung-t'ing Lake or West Lake. Letting in the sea from the southeast, it fills the bay, three leagues wide, with the tide of Che-chiang. Matsushima has gathered countless islands: the high islands point their fingers to heaven, those lying down crawl over the waves. Some are piled two deep, some three deep. To the left, the islands are separated from each other, but to the right they are linked. Some islands seem to be carrying islands on their backs, others to be embracing them, like someone caressing a child. The green of the pine is dark and dense, the branches and leaves bent by the salty sea breeze – it seems as if the branches have been deliberately twisted. The landscape creates a tranquil, soft feeling, like a beautiful lady powdering her face. Did the god of the mountain create this long ago, in the age of the gods? Is this the work of the Creator? What words could a human being use to describe this?56

The language of the passage above is highly figurative and allusive. In the opening lines, Basho tried to elevate the beauty of Matsushima to an iconic status through comparison with and allusion to one of the Great Four Lakes of China, Tung-t'ing Lake, and the famous tidal bore on the Chien-tang River in Che-chiang province, two iconic scenes portrayed by numerous classical Chinese poems. Later, he employed the parallel, contrastive phrases – such as the high islands point their fingers to heaven, those lying down crawl over the waves – that resemble "the couplet structure of the Chinese fu while possessing haikai humor."57 At the end of the passage, he stirred emotions about and reflection upon the status of Matsushima in the reader through a series of heartfelt questions, which is another technique utilized in the Chinese fu. In the classical Japanese poetic tradition, Matsushima was used to be associated with hovels, beach shelters, boats of the fisherfolk, and Ojima island,58 and it was now transformed into the most beautiful place in Japan through Basho's fu-esque haibun. The same techniques were also utilized in his description of Kisagata, a "notable example of Chinese-Japanese hybrid style, interweaving Chinese, fu-esque motifs with classical Japanese prose."59

In The Narrow Road to the Interior, Basho explored a variety of prose styles by combining conventions of classical Japanese travel literature with Chinese prose models infused with socio-historic-literary references, opening up the diverse possibilities of haibun composition. Unlike the majority of the haibun we have read in the English language haiku-related and haibun journals that place an unbalanced emphasis on the principles of shasei ("sketch from life") and the here-and-now, Basho's haibun are allusive, figurative, and infused with parallels phrases and contrastive words, all of which are used to enhance literary effects and add aesthetic-historical depth to the poems. In my view, maybe it is time for anyone who is interested in writing haibun to re-think Basho's poetic ideal of "the unchanging and the ever-changing" situated in one's own socio-historic-cultural contexts, and to make haibun anew through the poetic past of one's own literary legacy and shared ones from the rest of the world.