Monday, June 30, 2014

One Man's Maple Moon: Chick Tanka by Joyce S. Greene

English Original

a chick
pecking at its shell
breaks through --
at Grandma's nursing home
my son makes a friend

Eucalypt, 14,  May 2013

Joyce S. Greene


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

小雞正在
啄它的蛋殼
嘗試破殼而出--
在奶奶的養老院
我的兒子交一個朋友

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

小鸡正在
啄它的蛋壳
尝试破壳而出--
在奶奶的养老院
我的儿子交一个朋友


Bio Sketch

Joyce S. Greene lives with her husband in Poughkeepsie, New York.  A number of her poems have been published in various tanka journals and tanka anthologies.  She works as a Senior Accountant for an insurance company.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

To the Lighthouse: The Art of Translation

                                                                                                        scent of sunlight ...
                                                                                                        the tattered edges
                                                                                                       of One Man's Moon
                                                                                                       (for Cid Corman)

For me words have color, form, character; they have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations; they are mood, humors, eccentricities; -- they have tints, tones, personalities …

-- Cid Corman, At Their Word, 156


Part I: Jon LaCure's Review of One Man's Moon

On the title page of both this book [One Man’s Moon: Poems by Basho & Other Japanese Poets, English translation by Cid Corman] and the earlier edition the author statement is: “Versions by Cid Corman.” There is nothing in the introduction to indicate why Corman uses “versions” rather than “translations” to describe his book. Perhaps he intends to produce his own “poems” in English that take their inspiration from the Japanese rather than producing a technically accurate translation.

“For me words have color, form, character; they have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations; they are mood, humors, eccentricities;—they have tints, tones, personalities …” (Corman, At Their Word, 156). A sense of this comes through in Corman’s translations in this volume.

An example is the second poem by Basho that Corman translates. His version reads:

Morning-dewed                         asatsuyu ni
streaked cool                            yogorete suzushi
muddy melon.                           uri no doro

[Editor's Note: another translation by Makoto Ueda,  Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary, p.388

in the morning dew
spotted with mud, and how cool --
melons on the soil]

There are actually three versions of this haiku by Basho. The Japanese that I have supplied above is from the last version found in Oi nikki (“The Satchel Diary”). I am guessing that Corman may have used this version because of the word “muddy.” The two earlier versions end with the word tsuchi or “soil” (Imoto, 257). The grammar of the poem is relatively simple. “Covered with morning dew, mud on a cool melon.”

Corman’s translation is remarkable for the economy of words. It is a line-by-line and practically word-for-word translation. This kind of translation makes for fractured English grammar. “Morning-dewed,” and “streaked cool” both modify melon. The sound of the poem is also worth noting with multiple words beginning with “m.” Overall this seems a somewhat eccentric but very pleasant and effective translation of what most commentators agree is a simple descriptive poem.

-- reviewed by Jon LaCure (Modern Haiku, 35:1, Spring 2004)

most commentators agree [that it] is a simple descriptive poem.

Like most commentators, Jon LaCure missed one key phrase, "streaked cool/how cool," in the above-mentioned haiku by Basho.This "simple descriptive poem," which shows Basho's art in its maturity, asks the reader to exercise some poetic imagination and see that "melons look appealing precisely because they are spotted with mud. Clean melons are a common sight, with no appeal to the imagination." (Ueda, p. 388). This "misreading" of Basho's haiku reminds me of one of the insightful remarks by Cid Corman:

Each word is a matter of life and death.


Part II: Cid Corman with Philip Rowland: The Conversation Continues

ROWLAND: Coming back to the Japanese context, I was reading recently in a few of your books published by Gnomon Press, translations of haiku mostly by the old masters. [One Man's Moon, 1984; Born of a Dream, 1988; Little Enough, 1991.] You call them "versions": it says on the front of the books, "Versions by Cid Corman." I wondered whether your choice of word there indicates an attitude to translation, an individualistic approach, or --

CORMAN: I have no rules in translating, so... I've done a lot of translation -- am still doing -- from the ancient Chinese. Every time I do a translation I do it in a different way, so I don't have any one way of doing. And I've done some of the Basho in many different versions. There are two versions of many of the poems in my... Oku no Hosomichi has been reprinted a number of times; and the one that White Pine Press did has different versions of the poem -- many of them. But the newest version, that Ecco Press did, more recently, a couple of years ago [1996], goes back to my original version. OK with me -- both versions are OK. But different ways of working the stuff. I'm trying to get -- not to add words, but to keep to the minimal structure of haiku, usually (where haiku is concerned). I've done Chinese translations different from anybody else: I follow the exact syllabic structure of the Chinese, in many of the versions -- not always -- but I indicated in one way or another in any event, because usually it's in very rigorous form, Chinese poetry, the ancient Chinese stuff.

ROWLAND: In what other ways would you say your translations of Chinese or Japanese are different from most others?

CORMAN: So this one here is, what is it, Issa, I think. I've done many versions of this particular piece: "a dewdrop world ay / a dewdrop world but even / so -- but even so"

ROWLAND: Can you remember another version?

CORMAN: I'd have to look. Not so different: just a few word-placements different. But some of the poems... So now, my version of the famous frog poem is:

            THE
            old pond
                                       frog leaping
                           splash

It's nicer, because you don't need so many words, you don't need so many syllables to say; but it's word for word the Japanese. But I also point out by the structure that it's one phrase that's really all modifying the word "splash." [Reads the poem again.] And that deepens the poem -- if people read. But, of course, many people don't. There's far more happening than is on the surface; and you have to read the poems over and over again; and you must say them aloud, if you want to understand the work: My poems are meant to be voiced -- all of them; and you won't get the layout of the poems without feeling that. I don't know when I start a poem what it's going to say: I have no idea. I'm always surprised...

Butterfly Dream: Summer Squall Haiku by Ignatius Fay

English Original

summer squall
my smart phone asks me
to repeat myself

Ignatius Fay


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

突然的夏季暴風
我的智能手機要求我
重複我自己的話

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

突然的夏季暴风
我的智能手机要求我
重複我自己的话


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

Saturday, June 28, 2014

One Man's Maple Moon: Wind & Pebble Tanka by Susan Constable

English Original

once I was the wind
whistling down valleys
singing through trees…
now just a pebble in the creek
where music runs off my back

Second Place, 2013 HPNC Haiku, Tanka, and Senryu contest

Susan Constable


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

我曾經是風
在山谷中呼嘯
歌聲穿越樹木 ...
現在只是小溪中的鵝卵石
音樂從我的背上流過

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

我曾经是风
在山谷中呼啸
歌声穿越树木 ...
现在只是小溪中的鹅卵石
音乐从我的背上流过


Bio Sketch

Susan Constable’s tanka appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Take Five. Her tanka collection, The Eternity of Waves, was 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.

Friday, June 27, 2014

A Room of My Own: Why Believe You Can Write Verse in English?

morning mist rising ...
I paint a yellow daisy
on the wall
and sign it
with my Romanized name

To write verse in English is not like growing ideograms inside your heart, reaping the sentences matured by the muse of desire, taking your clothes off with words, exposing yourself in the rhythm of the stanzas so that you can hold your passport and cross the borders of linguistic solitudes, emigrating from the ideographic to the alphabetic.

English still remains an unmastered means of deciphering the musings of your heart and mind, it is constantly intruded upon and twisted by inflections from the old language. Often, you are not able to connect emotions to words, to feel the weight of their syllables. Without emotional vocabulary, everything becomes elusion, confusion. The fear of things you needn’t be afraid of.

Even if you can find the right words to reflect your feelings, you are not skilled at weaving these into sentences. They simply become isolated cries clinging desperately to your heart. Even when you can find a way to weave words together into an artistic whole, the poem often fails to conform to the texture mandated by poetry editors. Why believe you can write verse in English, whose music is not natural to you? 1

I skip
a stone of words
across the lake
of another time
another place


Note: The concluding sentence is taken from the last two lines of “An Exchange,” a poem written by Nan Wu, the poet who is the protagonist of A Free Life, Ha Jin’s fifth novel.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Cool Announcement: Call for 2014 Anthology Submissions

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. -- Anaïs Nin


No more than 20 haiku/tanka per submission and no simultaneous submissions. And please wait for at least three months for another new submission. Deadline: November 1, 2014.

For more information about haiku submissions, see 2014 Butterfly Dream: Call for Haiku Submissions

For more information about tanka submissions, see 2014 One Man’s Maple Moon: Call for Tanka Submissions 

Please help me spread the word about the 2014 anthology submissions via your poetry blogs, websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts.

Many thanks.

Chen-ou

Butterfly Dream: Fifth Spring Haiku by David McMurray

English Original

Our fifth spring
again in my dream
the sapling maple

Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 8, 2013

David McMurray


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

我們的第五個春天
又出現在我的夢中
幼小修長的楓樹

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

我们的第五个春天
又出现在我的梦中
幼小修长的枫树


Bio Sketch

David McMurray, professor of haiku in the graduate school at The International University of Kagoshima in Japan, editor of the Asahi Haikuist Network since 1995, and winner of The R.H. Blyth Award 2013.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

One Man's Maple Moon: New Pond Tanka by Robert Annis

English Original

A new pond
placid for sunset
a fish leaps out --
the same splash
as Basho's frog ?

Robert Annis


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

平靜的日落
一條魚飛躍出
新的池塘 --
同樣的水濺聲
如同芭蕉的青蛙所做的?

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

平静的日落
一条鱼飞跃出
新的池塘 --
同样的水溅声
如同芭蕉的青蛙所做的?


Bio Sketch

Robert Annis is a Florida born Tampa resident who teaches at the University of South Florida. He has been nominated for the 2013 and 2014 AWP Intro Journals Project and won the Bettye Newman Poetry Award in 2014. His poetry has appeared in Lingerpost, Lynx, Gusts, Ribbons and is forthcoming in the summer issue of Atlas Poetica and Bright Stars, An Organic Tanka Anthology.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Butterfly Dream: Binoculars Haiku by Munira Judith Avinger

English Original

lost
in my binoculars
a bird calls

Modern Haiku, 8:2, summer 2010

Munira Judith Avinger


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

迷失
在我的望遠鏡中
鳥的叫聲

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

迷失
在我的望远镜中
鸟的叫声


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.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, XXXIII

for Dionne Brand, Author of  No Language Is Neutral

the look
on my professor's face
a red stain
on the title of my poem:
Language, I/anguish

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

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

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Butterfly Dream: Moon Haiku by Simon Hanson

English Original

filling this cup
the moon rises
to the brim

World Haiku Review, August 2013

Simon Hanson


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

正在倒茶
月亮向上升起
到達杯緣

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

正在倒茶
月亮向上升起
到达杯缘


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: Rainstorm Tanka by Luminita Suse

English Original

my umbrella
blown inside out
follows him
into the rainstorm
with a heart of its own

Moonbathing, 5, 2011

Luminita Suse


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

我的傘
被風吹得內外翻轉
按照自己心意
跟隨他
進入暴風雨

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

我的伞
被风吹得内外翻转
按照自己心意
跟随他
进入暴风雨


Bio Sketch

Luminita Suse is the author of the tanka collection, A Thousand Fireflies, 2011, Editions des petits nuages. Her poetry appeared in Moonbathing: A Journal of Women's Tanka, Gusts, Atlas Poetica, Red Lights, Ribbons, A Hundred Gourds, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka 2010-2011, and Skylark. She got a honourable mention in the The 7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Butterfly Dream: Wine Haiku by Neal Whitman

English Original

two cognacs
the afternoon light
dwindling

Frogpond, Winter 2013

Neal Whitman


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

兩杯干邑
下午的光線
減弱
  
Chinese Translation (Simplified)

两杯干邑
下午的光线
减弱


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.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Cool Announcement: My Simply Haiku, a Freebie at Scribd

My Dear Readers:

I just uploaded My Simply Haiku to Scribd. The haiku included in this document were published in Simply Haiku (8:2 Autumn 2010 – 10:3 Spring/Summer 2013). I was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue ("An Interview with Chen-ou Liu"), and my work was reviewed by Robert Wilson, Co-Editor in Chief, in the Autumn issue of the same year (“An Evaluation and Introspective Look at the Haiku of Chen-ou Liu”). Furthermore, I was listed as one of the top ten haiku poets for 2011 (9:3,4, Autumn/Winter 2011).

moonlit pond...
a frog penetrates
itself
(Summer 2011)

holding
winter moonlight in my hand
length of the night
(Autumn 2011)

winter dawn
a butterfly wakes up
in my dream
(Summer 2011)


Selected Haiku

moonlight
on withered grasses
the night whiter

this urge
to look back on my life ...
a wedge of geese

snow on snow...
the depth of night
in this attic

the melting clock
on my attic wall
shifting shadows
(for Dali)

the cold moon...
I want to touch her
into words        

winter light
in a room of mirrors
my dog and I

autumn twilight
zig-zag flight of a heron
from the marsh

not a word
since our last moonlit kiss
yet autumn...

the Siren sings
to me from the other shore…
midsummer dream

dying embers...
reciting Neruda
to myself

his gun...
fascinated with
snowflakes

You can read the full text here

Enjoy your reading

Chen-ou


Note: I started writing haiku in late 2009, and my work was featured in New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, which was edited by Jim Kacian and published in 2011. Below is my 2010 Simply Haiku interview: 

An Interview with Chen-ou Liu
by Robert D. Wilson

“My mind, which was yearning after some indescribable thing from morning to night, could find an outlet to some extent only by making poems.”

– Ishikawa Takuboku

“I feel the pain and I see the beauty.”

– Masaoka Shiki

RDW:  Seemingly, out of nowhere you appear in the haiku world like a jack-in-the-box, your haiku is getting attention.  Most people writing good haiku today have been at it a long time, some for decades, and are, of course, well known.  Few, however, are Chinese, and fewer are those who were born and raised in Taiwan and come to North America to earn a living, and compose quality haiku in a language, like Chinese, that is considered one of the hardest languages to learn.  And as I learn more about you, I see that you’re an individual who puts his all into everything he does, some call it perfectionism. You literally become one with your art while composing.

What brought you to North America? ... Read the full text here

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

English Original

you raise a toast,
a glass of champagne,
the drink of love --
but mine is always
laced with autumn rain

GUSTS, 14, Fall/Winter 2011

Joyce Wong


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

你高舉酒杯,
一杯香檳代表
愛情之酒 --
但是我的酒杯總是
被秋雨蘸染

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

你高举酒杯,
一杯香槟代表
爱情之酒 --
但是我的酒杯总是
被秋雨蘸染


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.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Butterfly Dream: Flower Moon Haiku by Andrzej Dembonczyk

English Original

flower moon --
through the telescope
girl next door

Asahi, September 30 2011

Andrzej Dembonczyk


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

花月 --
望遠鏡中
的鄰家女孩

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

花月 --
望远镜中
的邻家女孩


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.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, XXXII

the memory
of our body conversations...
the white trail
from her Air Japan flight
splitting my spring sky

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

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

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

One Man's Maple Moon: Clouds and Smoke Tanka by Jari Thymian

English Original

a tail of clouds
skims the Dragoon Mountains
in the river valley,
a plume of smoke rises
from the dynamite factory

Jari Thymian


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一抹雲彩
翩翩地飄過
河谷的龍山,
一縷輕煙
從炸藥廠升起

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一抹云彩
翩翩地飘过
河谷的龙山,
一缕轻烟
从炸药厂升起


Bio Sketch

Jari Thymian volunteers full-time in state and national parks across the United States. She and her husband live and travel in a 20-foot RV trailer with minimal possessions. Her haiku and tanka have appeared in American Tanka, Simply Haiku, Modern Haiku, Matrix Magazine, Prune Juice, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Butterfly Dream: Fern Haiku by Branka Vojinović-Jegdić

English Original

darkened room --
curly leaves of a fern
adorn the window

Cattails,1, January 2014       

Branka Vojinović-Jegdić


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

陰暗的房間 --
羊齒植物捲曲的樹葉
裝飾著窗戶

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

阴暗的房间 --
羊齿植物捲曲的树叶
装饰著窗户


Bio Sketch

Branka Vojinović-Jegdić started writing haiku in 1991 and has published them in many print magazines and on the Internet. Besides haiku and senryu, she also writes modern poetry, poetry for children, prose, satire, aphorisms and book reviews. She has received several awards, and her poems have been anthologized and translated into many languages.

One Man's Maple Moon: Fog Tanka by Margaret Chula

English Original

November morning
I help Mother
write her obituary
wisps of fog
shroud the maple leaves  

Just This, 2013

Margaret Chula


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

十一月的早晨
我幫媽媽
撰寫她的訃聞
縷縷薄霧
籠罩著楓葉

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

十一月的早晨
我帮妈妈
撰写她的讣闻
缕缕薄雾
笼罩著枫叶


Bio Sketch

Margaret Chula has published two collections of tanka: Always Filling, Always Full and Just This. She has promoted tanka through her one-woman dramatization, “Three Women Who Loved Love”, which traveled to Krakow, New York, Boston, Portland, Ottawa, and Ogaki, Japan. Maggie currently serves as president of the Tanka Society of America.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Butterfly Dream: Milky Way Haiku by Rebecca Drouilhet

English Original

Milky Way...
wondering where my place is
in this world

Rebecca Drouilhet


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

凝視著銀河 ...
想知道在這個世上
我的棲身之處

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

凝视著银河 ...
想知道在这个世上
我的栖身之处


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.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Cool Announcement: My Journey into the Land of Fado

                                                                                          a crescent moon
                                                                                          in the Tagus River
                                                                                          her sultry voice
                                                                                          wailing out a song
                                                                                          tinged with passion and regret

My Dear Friends:

In the back of my mind echo his words, "Every day is a journey, and the journey itself home."

In a few hours, I'll embark on a journey into the land of fado (a form of Portuguese music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics) and hopefully I'll be back in shape on June 15th.

The following is the 2-week poetic food supply:

Editor's Choice Haiku/Tanka

Haibun Poetics: "Make Haibun New through the Chinese Poetic Past: Basho's Transformation of Haikai Prose" (first published in Simply Haiku, Vol.8. No. 1, Summer 2010 and reprinted in Haibun today, 6:1 March 20120), an in-depth analysis (structural and stylistic) of Basho's travel journal, The Narrow Road to the Interior , "What Happens in [David Cobb’s Conception of] Haibun: A Critical Study for Readers Who Want More" (first published in Haibun Today, 7:3, September 2013), a 30-page thematic, textual, and perspectival analysis of David Cobb's What Happens in Haibun: A Critical Study of an Innovative Literary Form, and my "To the Lighthouse" posts about haibun poetics (such as titling, haibun structure, and the relationship between the prose and haiku, ...) (Note: In a conference paper, titled "The Narrow Road to a Deeper Understanding of Haibun," authored by Susie Utting (from the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia) and presented at the 2013 Asian Conference on Literature & Librarianship, I got recognized and noticed for my work studying haibun poetics in general and Basho's The Narrow Road to the Interior in particular)

And share with you the following poems that were written after my 2013 trip to the Netherlands and Belgium:

in De Wallen
the summer sunset sky
through a brothel window ...
one woman looks out
another looks in

Tanka 3rd place, Diogen Summer Haiku Contest, 2013

the full moon
over Memling Museum
twelve
unfinished black circles
in Verdier's wall painting

(Note: Fabienne Verdier is a contemporary French painter, known for her expertise with Chinese ink techniques)

Cattails, 1, December 2013

one mandarin duck
wanders back and forth
in the canal
sandwiched between
rows of window brothels

A Hundred Gourds, 2:4, September 2013

on his T-shirt
to hell with water
give me Belgian beer ...
hugging in Burg Square
we drink summer moonlight

A Handful of Stones, March 19th 2014

last pencil marks
on the wall
Anne Frank House at dusk

Per Diem, The Haiku Foundation, September 2013
to buy or not to buy
one more box of chocolates ...
Bruges in summer twilight

Senryu 3rd place, Diogen Summer Haiku Contest, 2013

A Room of My Own: Dead Man Thinking

for the author of The Pleasure of the Text


After Roland Barthes declared the death of the author, two poems, lined up side by side, look suspiciously over their shoulders at each other.

this cold night                           in spring breeze
shakes me by the collar            the painter captures
I avoid their gaze                      a migrant's smile
when they shout,                      under a banner that reads,
no more immigrants!                diversity is our strength