rained out --
the coos of pigeons
in the empty stadium
Baseball Haiku, 2007
Sylvia Forges-Ryan
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
下雨停賽 --
在空蕩盪球場中
的鴿子咕咕聲
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
下雨停赛 --
在空荡盪球场中
的鸽子咕咕声
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.
There is a natural affinity of haiku and baseball: they both require the readers and baseball fans to be in the moment.
ReplyDeleteA moment of pathos is keenly captured through an empty stadium scene where the coos of pigeons is echoing. Sylvia's well crafted haiku reminds me of the first American baseball haiku, by the Beat poet Jack Kerouac (recorded with jazz and other haiku on Blues and Haikus in 1959):
Empty baseball field
A robin,
Hops along the bench (p. 9)
For an in-depth analysis of Jack's haiku, see my "Poetic Musings" post, titled First Baseball Haiku by Jack Kerouac, which can be accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2014/03/poetic-musings-first-baseball-haiku-by.html