spring skies
even the crow's caw
full of light
Kris Lindbeck
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
春天的天空
就連烏鴉的叫聲
都充滿明亮
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
春天的天空
就连乌鸦的叫声
都充满明亮
Bio Sketch
Kris Lindbeck has been writing Japanese short form poetry since 2009. She can be found on Twitter @krislindbeck and tumblr. She has published in Prune Juice, Haiku News, Bones, and Skylark.. She is also working on a book of poems about biblical women.
L1 sets the scene and establishes the seasonal context while the mood and feel of the poem is greatly enhanced through the excellent combined use of oxymoronic hyperbole and synaesthesia in Ls 2&3.
ReplyDeleteIn this haiku, oxymoron is generated not by any particular linguistic structure or form of expression but mainly through the meanings and associations of the words themselves by the creation of an opposition or contrast between elevated ("ga," represented by spring skies) and unrefined ("zoku," represented by the crow and its caw) registers (Kawamoto, Ibid., 112).
In order to enhance the mood and feel evoked by the warm and joyful scene, "spring skies," the auditory image, "the crow's caw" (the hoarse raucous sound), is beautified and described with the visual phrase, "full of light" in a hyperbolic manner as indicated by the use of even ("the force of hyperbole is frequently borne by the appearance of the particle "mo" ("even;" for more examples, see Kawamoto, Ibid., pp. 79-82)
For more info. about oxymoron, see "To the Lighthouse: A Rhetorical Device, Oxymoron," accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2015/04/to-lighthouse-rhetorical-device-oxymoron.html