leaving the Tokyo subway
a hundred umbrellas
rise in unison
tinywords, 10:3, 2010
Sidney Bending
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
離開東京地鐵站
一百把雨傘
一齊打開
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
离开东京地铁站
一百把雨伞
一齐打开
Bio Sketch
Sidney Bending is a retired graphic artist living on the west coast of Canada. Her haiku have appeared in Frogpond, tinywords, and in the anthology Lifting the Sky. Work is upcoming with Modern Haiku and Haiku Canada Review. She won several awards with the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival haiku contest.
Sidney's subway haiku is written from a bird’s eye view and keenly captures an amazing moment ("a hundred umbrellas/[rising] in unison").
ReplyDeleteThematically and technically speaking, it might be interesting to make a comparative study of this haiku and the" first published hokku in English" ( William Higginson's famous phrase) by Ezra Pound:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Lustra, 1916
Ezra Pound
For more information about Pound's "metro poem," see the following posts;
1 To the Lighthouse: Haikuesque Reading of Ezra Pound’s “Metro Poem,” http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/03/to-lighthouse-haikuesque-reading-of.html
2 Poetic Musings: Ezra Pound’s "Metro Poem" as a Yugen Haiku,
http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/04/poetic-musings-ezra-pounds-metro-poem.html
3 To the Lighthouse: Haiku as a Form of Super-Position, http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/03/to-lighthouse-haiku-as-form-of-super.html