Thursday, February 19, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Floating World Haiku by Sylvia Forges-Ryan

English Original

This floating world --
how does it seem to you
dandelion puff

Sylvia Forges-Ryan


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

這個浮世 --
你如何看待它
蒲公英粉撲

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

这个浮世 --
你如何看待它
蒲公英粉撲


Bio Sketch

Sylvia Forges-Ryan recently won Third Prize in the 2014 Robert Frost Poetry Contest for her poem, "On a Berkshire Hill". Her book, Take a Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace, which won an R. H. Blyth Honorable Mention for Outstanding Books in Haiku Literature from the World Haiku Review in 2013, was selected for permanent inclusion in the American Literature Collection of the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

1 comment:

  1. This haiku is written in an Issaesque style: a non-human addressee and a Buddhism-influenced theme.

    don't cry, geese--
    everywhere, the same
    floating world

    Issa

    It could be read as a poetic reply to the following haiku by Issa:

    This dewdrop world --
    Is a dewdrop world,
    And yet, and yet ...

    Issa uses "floating world" or "dewdrop world" in the old Buddhist sense: the world is temporary and imperfect.

    Sylvia's juxtaposition of "floating world" and "dandelion puff" is thematically and emotionally effective.

    ReplyDelete