Friday, May 29, 2015

Cool Announcement: Away on Vacation and Poems to Eat

My Dear Friends:
                                             
In a few hours, I'll embark on a journey into the land of the Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman's homeland), and, hopefully, I'll be back in shape on June 16th.

The following is the 18-day poetic food supply:

                                            
                                           Butterfly Dream: 

                      66 Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Haiku 

                                          Volume One 2014


 

                                 One Man's Maple Moon: 

                    66 Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Tanka

                                       Volume One 2014



Below are  my haiku and tanka, which were inspired by my 2014 Portugal trip:

Journeys
for the country of my birth

Sintra at dawn
a carriage horse
clip-clop, clip-clops ...

Lisbon heat
taxis rattle and screech
through cobbled lanes

Belem in twilight
her sailor song tinged
with love and regret

Ilha Formosa ...
sailors and I cry out
in a fleeting dream
(Note: In 1544, a Portuguese ship sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it "Ilha Formosa," which means “Beautiful Island.”)

Cattails, 3, 2014

Alfama stroll
the air drips with laundry
and the smell of fish

Cattails, 3, 2014

laundry flapping
in the summer wind
a circle of men
at a communal meal
in the Alfama street

Atlas Poetica, 19, 2014

Roma boys
rummage through the dump site
for scrap metal
riverside fireworks
light the summer sky

Runner-Up, 2014 British Haiku Society Tanka Anthology Competition


Note: Below is my haibun,  "To Liv(e)," written for Ingmar Bergman and his beloved actress, Liv Ullmann ( first published in Frogpond, 34:3, Fall 2011)

To Liv(e)

My Dear:

Upon reading your ground-floor comment regarding my decision to emigrate to Canada, “you're a dreamer with your head in the clouds, paying little attention to the reality on the ground,” I laugh… to tears.

It reminds me that Ingmar Bergman once commented on Elliot Gould, “It was the impatience of a soul to find out things about reality and himself, and that is one thing that always makes me touched almost to tears, that impatience of the soul.”

I miss you, miss the conversations we used to have inside and outside the theater, and miss your favorite actress Liv Ullmann and our dream.

autumn twilight
a butterfly darts in and out
of my shadow

It’s true that my immigrant life here is much tougher than I thought. It can easily thrust me into troubling circumstances that threaten to undo my “mastery” over those things that matter most.

Thanks for your advice: “don't let life make your heart hard; sometimes, you need to keep one of your eyes open and the other closed.” You told me that you've long found yourself mesmerized by Pablo Picasso’s painting, “The Head of a Medical Student,” a face in the form of an African mask with one eye open, and the other closed. I can generalize about the provocative poignancy of this painting: most people live their lives with one of their eyes keenly open to the dangers of the world and the uncertainty of the human condition; their other eye is closed so they do not see or feel too many of these things, so they can get on with their lives.

fight after fight
against loneliness --
waning moon

I don’t want to drag you into our decade-old debate again. But, is this the kind of life we’re going to pursue after spending years together reading, seeing, and discussing so many artistic works on life and death?

Your Ullmann once quoted Bergman as saying, “Perhaps there’s no reality; reality exists only as a longing.” For me, my longing is reality.

falling off a dream I become a butterfly

Love,

Chen-ou

Oct. 22, 2003

Thursday, May 28, 2015

2015 Anthologies: Call for Haiku and Tanka Submissions

A haiku or a tanka without "rhetoric" was likely to be no more  than a brief observation without poetic tension or illumination.
-- Donald Keene, The Winter Sun Shines in: A Life of Masaoka Shiki, p 57.


My Dear Friends:

Send your best published haiku/tanka (please provide publication credits) or new work and a bio sketch (50 words max.). No more than twenty haiku per submission and no simultaneous submissions. And please wait for at least three months for another new submission. Deadline: December 1, 2015.

I look forward to reading your work (for more information about submissions, see 2015 anthology submission guidelines for haiku and tanka ).

Happy Writing!

Chen-ou

Note: For information about the effective use of rhetorical devices, see my "To the Lighthouse" posts on  Parallelism, Oxymoron, Hyperbole, Wordplay, Defamiliarization, Synaesthesia, Repetition, and Inversion . And for information about the effective use of punctuation, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, titled Strategic Placement of Punctuation Marks.

Butterfly Dream: Firefly Haiku by Angelee Deodhar

English Original

acres of darkness
outside, inside
then a firefly

Pail in Hand: 25 Haiku, 2000

Angelee Deodhar


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

外面一片黑暗,
然後屋內
出現一隻螢火蟲

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

外面一片黑暗,
然後屋内
出现一只萤火蟲


Bio Sketch

Angelee Deodhar of Chandigarh (India) is an eye surgeon by profession as well as a haiku poet, translator, and artist. Her haiku/haiga have been published internationally .She does not maintain her own website.To promote haiku in India, she has translated six books of haiku from English to Hindi.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Cool Announcement: Kaleidoscope: Selected Tanka of Shuji Terayama

Tanka is confessional fiction.
-- Chen-ou Liu

By “fiction of possibility,"  Terayama seems to claim the potential of fiction to create a legitimate reality.
-- S.Ridgely, Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shuji, p.30


My Dear Readers:

In celebration of  Tanka Poetry Month, I am pleased to introduce you to  Kaleidoscope: Selected Tanka of Shuji Terayama translated by Neverending Story contributors Kozue Uzawa and Amelia Fielden
                             
About the Author:

The avant-garde stage and film director, poet, critic, author and founder of the experimental theater group Tenjo Sajiki, Shuji Terayama was born in 1935 in Aomori, Japan. He started writing tanka in his late teens and received the Tanka Kenkyu Award for Emerging Poets. He published several tanka collections before he stopped writing at the age of 30. Many of his tanka read more like scenes from a movie scene or short story. He died in 1983. The first English language collection of his tanka, Kaleidoscope, was published by The Hokuseido Press in 2008 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of  his death.



Shuji Terayama was the most renown and thought-provoking Japanese artist of the sixties of the 20th century, and his work constantly incited scandal and outrage (for more info. see "Introduction: Global Counterculture, Visual Counter" and "Chapter 1: Poetic Kleptomania and Pseudo-Lyricism," Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shuji by  Steven C. Ridgely, University Of Minnesota Press, 2011). He began his artistic career writing haiku, tanka, and free verse in his junior high school days. After reading Fumiko Nakajo's award-winning tanka collection, titled Chibusa Soshitsu (The Loss of Breasts), next year he submitted a 50-tanka sequence to the same tanka contest and won first prize. At the age of 18, he made his official debut in the tanka world.

Terayama’s tanka are unique in that they are based mainly on his imagination, which is often colored by his complex feelings of being "abandoned" by his mother, and that they are interwoven with cultural memory and personal mythology, and the emotions he experienced in his dysfunctional life and inner turmoil. As the translator Kozue Uzawa emphasizes in her Simply Haiku article, titled "Tanka of Shuji Terayama (1936-1983)," he "writes tanka as if it is a scene from a movie, stage play, or novel... He himself plays a role of a Korean boy, mixed blood boy, P.O.W., actress, factory worker, etc. His mother dies many times in his tanka." Through his tanka, Terayama argues for a "rational acceptance of the reality of his fictionalized and fictionalizing poet self -- a loyalty (shared with his reader) to the veracity of imagination, which trumps the typical bindings of factual existence" (Ridgely, p. 30) (I'll further discuss Terayama's view of the "fiction of possibility" (kanohsai fukushon) --  the "potential of fiction to create a legitimate reality-- in my forthcoming "To the Lighthouse" post, titled "Neolyricism and Fiction of Possibility").


Selected Tanka: 

being of mixed blood
I feel lonely
even if I win --
I walk along chewing
a hot grass stalk

striking a match
momentarily
I see the foggy ocean--
is there a motherland
I can dedicate myself to?

submerging them
in the water
of a night-dark stream,
I wash my military shoes
from those captive days

failing even
to become an actress
I listen to
the sound of seagulls
shot in the winter marsh

in the end
there's no such thing as
exciting despair --
outside the factory,
pure green wheat

while an ant
toiled from the dahlia
to the ash tray
I was forming
a beautiful lie

fixed
with my cold gunshot
a sparrow on the roof
might be
my mother

having shot
a winter dove that
might be my god,
I go home
with smoking gun

for a small bird
to come back
after it's shot
there is a grassland
in my head

I was breathing
in unison
with a pregnant cow
waiting for her turn
to be slaughtered

when I smoke
a bitter bitter morning cigarette
the wings
of a seagull
skim my heart

in order to sew up
the horizon
my sister hid
a silk needle
in the sewing box

I gently comb
the turtledove
with my dead mother’s
scarlet comb --
its down keeps falling out 

birds banished
from the sky,
time, beasts
all collected here
in my arc-like toy box 

let’s sever
my stinky blood relationship --
the winter axe is placed
upside down
in a sunny spot 

when I was walking
through the dreary field,
under my arm
a wall clock for sale
abruptly chimed 

this wind
carrying carrot seeds
connects
the orphan,
sunset, and me

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

A Room of My Own: A Haiku Set about My Ex

A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there for the rest of your life. Jim Samuels

the zigzag flight
of a red butterfly …
thoughts of my ex

the faucet dripping ...
my ex three time zones
ahead of me

Monday, May 25, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Empty Stadium Haiku by Sylvia Forges-Ryan

English Original

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.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

One Man's Maple Moon: Rugged Moon Tanka by Kala Ramesh

English Original

an evening
of tangled thoughts . . .
through branches
even this rugged moon
looks tattered at the edges

American Tanka, 21, June 2012

Kala Ramesh


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一個晚上
糾結的思緒 ...
透過樹枝
即使是這個凹凸不平的月亮
看起來它的邊緣都是破破爛爛的

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一个晚上
纠结的思绪 ...
透过树枝
即使是这个凹凸不平的月亮
看起来它的边缘都是破破烂烂的


Bio Sketch

Kala Ramesh has published more than one thousand poems comprising haiku, tanka, haibun, & renku in reputed journals and anthologies in Japan, Europe, UK, Australia, USA and India. Her work can be read in two prestigious publications: Haiku 21: an anthology of contemporary English-language Haiku (Modern Haiku Press, 2012) and Haiku in English - the First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton 2013). She enjoys teaching haiku and allied genres at the Symbiosis International University, Pune.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Autumn Asters Haiku by Larry Kimmel

English Original

angry, but still . . .
asters
in an autumn breeze

bottle rockets,  Summer/Autumn 2007

Larry Kimmel


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

很生氣,但仍面對 ...
秋日微風中
的紫苑

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

很生气,但仍面对 ...
秋日微风中
的紫苑


Bio Sketch

Larry Kimmel is a US poet. He holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and Pittsburgh University, and has worked at everything from steel mills to libraries. Recent books are this hunger, tissue-thin, and shards and dust. He lives with his wife in the hills of Western Massachusetts.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Hot News: Featured Poet in hedgerow

My Dear Friends:

I'm happy to share the good news that I'm one of the four featured poets/artists in the Poet / Artist Spotlight section of hedgerow: a journal of small poems. Below are my featured haibun and tanka prose:


Silence of Abandonment

running to her
on the path of my dream --
her black cat
wanders back and forth
along the white fence

The last time we communicated with each other was her parting words printed in a bold, black type on the A4 paper under her wedding ring: feed the cat.


A Short Story about Love

at her window
two shadows entwine
in one embrace ...
like vampires sucking blood
from my memories

Sitting at my desk, swathed in darkness, I use the new telescope to zoom in on them – watch her rise and fall as the man guides her slow circular movements. His hands slide up from her hips to her breasts, continue to her shoulders, altering her rhythm, pulling her down onto him...

I open the drawer, take out a pocket knife, rush down to the basement parking lot, and find his piercing red Jaguar. Crouching, I plunge the tip of the knife into one of his tires with climactic fierceness; then I stab and I stab...the second, third, and fourth.

I rip out
each page of our life
this sultry night
the dream soaks my bed
with her moaning


Confession of a Photography Addict

Mary invites me over to her place for an interview. She has her strands dyed every color of the rainbow, and looks much younger than she is. On the wall facing the window, she tacks up a giant photo of herself, composed of many smaller pictures. After taking a sip of iced tea, she start talking in an unusually deep, husky voice, "I've spent ten years on a shrink's couch, but I still hear him through the wall whispering to me. Every day when I get up and look in the bedroom mirror, I see that man staring back at me. I want him carved off my face..."

Father's Day
blanked out on her calendar
morning chill


My First Canada Day

Sitting in my ESL teacher's living room with its wall-to-wall Persian rugs, I am enveloped by family stories and jokes. Although half the time I can only guess what's going on, I put a smile on my face and keep saying Yes, No, and I see in the right places. All of a sudden, a shriek breaks our laughter. My teacher's sons rush to the door. Slowly, we file out of the house toward the manicured front yard.

rainbow flowers
blooming in the night sky
my immigrant dream
(Note: ESL stands for English as a Second Language)


Exiled

Often, I yearn for things not lost; I go to sleep in Taipei, but wake up at midnight in Ajax. Like a black widow, loneliness wraps itself around my mind, spins a cocoon, and then squeezes until it stops moving.

early morning stillness ...
my heart wandering about
as in a haze


ALIENATION

At daybreak, I wake up from a recurring dream: I ride the Mongol horse through the snowy fields deeper into the unknown world of one color.

a bowl of congee
next to a cup of coffee...
exile and after

Can I find out now what A thought of me? Why did L stand before I, blocking the sky on Canada Day? And what did E want to be added to? At last…will my being mean anything for N and the rest of the word?


Note: Below are some of my well-received haiku and tanka published in hedgerow:

first spring
the east wind carries
the smell of home
(for new immigrants)

hedgerow, 28, 2015

tenth year in exile...
tinge of green on the maple
in my front yard

hedgerow, 28, 2015

for a week
no one but the wind
comes to call ...
the flames of self-doubt
envelop my body

hedgerow, 24, 2015

held by her words
You're a useless poet ...
I walk out,
slamming the door
behind my old self

hedgerow, 24, 2015

moving day ...
in her throwaway pile
my first chapbook

hedgerow, 23, 2015

a sea of blue uniforms
under the New York sun
a black man
holding up a placard
that reads I can't breathe
(for Eric Garner)

hedgerow, 22, 2015

at the cliff's edge
I wait
for the cold moon

hedgerow, 21, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Nature Haiku by Kanchan Chatterjee

English Original

grass waves,
birds chirp ...
nothing new

Kanchan Chatterjee


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

風吹草浪,
鳥兒啁啾 ...
沒有新鮮事

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

风吹草浪,
鸟儿啁啾 ...
没有新鲜事


Bio Sketch

Kanchan Chatterjee is a 46 year old executive, working in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He loves to write as and when he feels the urge, though he does not have a literary background. Some of his poems and haiku have been published in Mad Swirl, A Hundred Gourds, Under the Basho, Decanto, and Bare Hands Poetry. He was nominated for the Pushcart Award in 2012.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Acorn Haiku by Robert Epstein

English Original

lost in thought thud of an acorn

Modern Haiku, 40:1, Winter-Spring, 2009

Robert Epstein


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

陷入沉思一個橡子的跌落聲
  
Chinese Translation (Simplified)

陷入沉思一個橡子的跌落聲


Bio Sketch

Robert Epstein, a psychologist and haiku poet/anthologist, lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has edited four anthologies:  The Breath of Surrender; Dreams Wander On; The Temple Bell Stops; and Now This.  He has written two books of haiku:  A Walk Around Spring Lake; and Checkout Time is Noon, as well as a chapbook titled, What My Niece Said in His Head:  Haiku and Senryu.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

A Room of My Own: Foreclosure Haiku

green birdhouse
empty of seed ...
foreclosure sign

foreclosure sign
clanging in the wind ...
distant howls

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

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

English Original

another day
of collecting garbage
beside the road
a prisoner bends down
to pick a flower

red lights,  10:1,  January 2014

Joyce S. Greene


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

又一天
收集放在路邊
的垃圾
一名囚犯彎腰
採摘一朵花

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

又一天
收集放在路边
的垃圾
一名囚犯弯腰
采摘一朵花


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.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Bare Aspens Haiku by Carl Seguiban

English Original

bare aspens –
a jay's fading notes
stir the glade

Editor's Choice,  Cattails,  September 2014

Carl Seguiban


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

光禿的白楊樹 -
松鴉漸行漸遠的音符
擾亂了林間空地

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

光秃的白杨树 -
松鸦渐行渐远的音符
扰乱了林间空地


Bio Sketch

Carl Seguiban resides in British Columbia which inspires his haiku. His poems have been published in Mayfly, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Bottle Rockets, A Hundred Gourds, Moongarlic, Presence, Under the Basho, paper wasp, The Heron's Nest, Cattails, Prune Juice among others.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

One Man's Maple Moon: Digital Sea Tanka by Carol Purington

English Original

a heron hides
its legs in the shallow pond
I wonder
can a woman lose herself
in the digital sea

Gusts, 18, Fall/Winter 2013

Carol Purington


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

蒼鷺隱藏
它的腿在淺水塘
我想知道
女人會迷失
在數位大海裡嗎?

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

苍鹭隐藏
它的腿在浅水塘
我想知道
女人会迷失
在数位大海里吗?



Bio Sketch

Carol Purington belongs to a farm family whose routines are shaped by seasonal context, and her tanka, both their natural imagery and their emotional shadings, emerge from this lifelong grounding. Faces I Might Wear is her newest collection.

Butterfly Dream: Hometown Memories Haiku by Marilyn Humbert

English Original

the drip, drip, drip
of hometown memories ...
roof icicles

Marilyn Humbert


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

故鄉的回憶
像流水般潺潺不斷 ...
屋頂冰柱

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

故乡的回忆
像流水般潺潺不断 ...
屋顶冰柱


Bio Sketch

Marilyn Humbert lives in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney NSW surrounded by bush. Her pastimes include writing free verse poetry, tanka, tanka prose and related genre. She is the leader of Bottlebrush Tanka Group and member of the Huddle and Bowerbird Tanka Groups. Her tanka appears in Australian and international journals.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

To the Lighthouse: A Rhetorical Device, Inversion

Inversion, in literary style and rhetoric, refers to the practice of  changing the normal order of the words and phrases in a sentence. Inversion is most commonly used in poetry in which it is mainly employed to satisfy the demands of the meter or achieve emphasis that creates an effect on the reader. For example, John Milton is well known for his effective use of inversion. From beginning to end of "Paradise Lost," inversions are numerous, the beginning being a noted example:

Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse ...

Comment: Here the poet's suspended and inverted syntax -- the separation of the genitive objects ("Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit") at the beginning from the predicate by crucial subordinate clauses and other qualifying details elaborating the poem's major themes of disobedience, loss, woe, and restoration -- contributes to the rhetorically elevated style of Miltonic epic. By delaying the main verb, sing, until the beginning of line six, Milton creates a sense of suspension: the suspended syntax enables him to amplify the magnitude of his poem's sacred subject and the ambitious scope of his "advent'rous Song." (David Loewenstein, Milton: Paradise Lost, p. 47).


Selected Haiku/Tanka:

araumi | ya | Sado | ni | yokotau | amanogawa
wild-sea | - | Sado | to | lay | River-of-Heaven (the Milky Way)

a wild sea --
stretching to Sado Isle
the Milky Way

Basho

Comment: This haiku is framed by the natural landscape, a "wild sea" (L1) and the "Milky Way" (L3) through Basho's effective use of inversion (in both the Japanese original and the English translation). Sado Isle, known for its long history of political exiles, surrounded by a wild sea and lying under the Milky Way, comes to "embody the feeling of loneliness, both of the exiles at Sado and of the poet himself. The poem has a majestic, slow-moving rhythm, especially the drawn-out "o" sounds in the middle line (Sado ni yokotau), which suggests the vastness and scale of the landscape" (Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, pp. 242-3)


akibare no
hikari to narite
tanoshiku mo
minori ni iramu
kuri mo kurumi mo

the light is imbued
with autumn's brilliance;
how joyfully
they greet  their ripening!
the chestnuts and the walnuts

Saito Mokichi

Comment: The subject of Ls 3&4 who performs the action of greeting is unstated until L5 reveals its identity. The established image of the brilliant autumn light (Ls 1&2) is intensified by the contrast with the small dark-brown nuts (L5) gleaming in it, and the conjectured emotion (L3) is explained (L5) but not altered. Mokichi's  skillful use of  inversion provides retrospective significance to the images of the poem as well as  the visual contrast (Amy Vladeck Heinrich, Fragments of Rainbows: The Life and Poetry of Saito Mokichi, 1882-1953, p. 83).

Original:

white dawn
a seagull and I
at the ocean's edge
looking, waiting
for something to take form

Revision:

white dawn...
at the ocean's edge
looking, waiting
for something to take form
a seagull and I


Rebecca Drouilhet

Comment: The big difference between the revision and the original is that Rebecca effectively uses grammatical inversion to add a sense of suspense and of oneness with nature. In the revision, line 5, "a seagull and I" --  at the ocean's edge/ looking, waiting/ for something to take form -- carries the most weight for the poem.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Plovers Haiku by Simon Hanson

English Original

from the reeds
from the mist
the call of plovers

Commended, 2014 New Zealand Poetry Society International Haiku Competition

Simon Hanson


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

從蘆葦中
從霧中
來自千鳥的呼喚

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

从芦苇中
从雾中
来自千鸟的呼唤


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.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Blueline and Red Thread: Scream from the Shadows, IV

It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. -- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own


the diary
under a floorboard
in his room
the broken mirror reflects
her breast binder
(for Ru-nas; Ru-na literally means "be/act like (Ru) a man (Na)" in Chinese)

LGBT Tanka, Atlas Poetica, 2012

is life more
than the sum of its parts?
s/he stands
between the doors of
male and female restrooms

Bright Stars, IV, 2014


Note:  "Scream from the Shadows" is the first themed section of  Blueline and Red Thread, the first collection of sociopolitical tanka. And you can read the preceding tanka here.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Leaf-Littered Path Haiku by Ignatius Fay

English Original

leaf-littered path
trying to determine
where the blame lies

Ignatius Fay


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

滿是落葉的小徑
試圖確定
應該怪罪誰

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

满是落叶的小径
试图确定
应该怪罪谁


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.

One Man's Maple Moon: Storefront Tanka by Barry George

English Original

all dark
and boarded up
this year
the storefront where
the gypsy read my palm      

Gusts, 11, Spring/Summer 2010

Barry George


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一片漆黑
曾經為我看手相的吉卜賽人
今年她的店面
窗戶和大門
全都釘上木板

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一片漆黑
曾经为我看手相的吉卜赛人
今年她的店面
窗户和大门
全都钉上木板


Bio Sketch

Barry George’s tanka have appeared in journals including Gusts, Modern English Tanka, Chrysalis, and The Louisville Review, as well as the anthology, Streetlights. His essay, "Shiki the Tanka Poet," was published in The Writer's Chronicle. A tanka collection, The One That Flies Back, was published in 2015.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Swifts Haiku by John Kinory

English Original

between the cypress and the bell-tower
the cold blue sliced by swifts

Modern Haiku, 37:1, Winter/Spring 2006

John Kinory


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

柏樹和鐘樓之間的冷藍天空
被燕子切成一片片

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

柏树和钟楼之间的冷蓝天空
被燕子切成一片片


Bio Sketch

John Kinory is a translator and photographer, and former physics teacher. His work has been published extensively in haiku, tanka and general poetry journals worldwide. He is the founder and editor of Ardea, the multilingual short-form poetry journal. He lives in England.

Monday, May 11, 2015

One Man's Maple Moon: Mother Tanka by Sylvia Forges-Ryan

English Original

this cold morning
missing my mother
I set out to find her
by beginning to read
the novel she loved

Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, 3, 2011

Sylvia Forges-Ryan


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

這個寒冷的早晨
想念媽媽
我步上找尋她的旅程
由開始閱讀
她所喜歡的小說

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

这个寒冷的早晨
想念妈妈
我步上找寻她的旅程
由开始阅读
她所喜欢的小说


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.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Mother's Day Haiku by Elizabeth Nicholls

English Original

mother's day
white chrysanthemums
cover her name

Creatrix Anthology, 2008 - 2012

Elizabeth Nicholls


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

母親節
白菊花
掩蓋她的名字

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

母亲节
白菊花
掩盖她的名字


Bio Sketch

Elizabeth Nicholls lives on the shore of the Indian Ocean in Perth Western Australia.  She spends many hours walking along the rugged coastline, composing haiku in her head whilst keeping a lookout for dolphins and ocean birds. Elizabeth has been writing haiku for five years.

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Moss-Covered Rocks Haiku by Irene Golas

English Original

moss-covered rocks ...
mother never talks about
the one that died 

First Place, 2010 Haiku Pen Contest

Irene Golas


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

苔蘚覆蓋的岩石 ...
母親從來不談論
她已死的孩子

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

苔藓覆盖的岩石 ...
母亲从来不谈论
她已死的孩子


Bio Sketch

Irene Golas has been published in journals such as Acorn, Eucalypt, Frogpond, Heron’s Nest, Ribbons, and Simply Haiku. Her work has also appeared in Carpe Diem: Canadian Anthology of Haiku; Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka (2010) and other anthologies. She and Ignatius Fay are co-authors of Breccia, a collection of haiku and related forms.

Blueline and Red Thread: Scream from the Shadows, III

for Dionne Brand, author of No Language Is Neutral 

high noon sunlight
beats down on this rooming house...
the migrant
with a gap-toothed smile
says, I'm learning Inglish

the tongues
of a maple tree
are bare ...
my loss of home
speaks in Chinglish

Note:  "Scream from the Shadows" is the first themed section of  Blueline and Red Thread, the first collection of sociopolitical tanka. And you can read the preceding tanka here.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Frost Haiku by Neal Whitman

English Original

frost at midnight
the only sound
-- cracking boughs

Japanorama-Serbia, December 13, 2013

Neal Whitman


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

午夜結霜
唯一的聲音
-- 裂開的樹枝

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

午夜结霜
唯一的声音
-- 裂开的树枝


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.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

To the Lighthouse: A Rhetorical Device, Parallelism

Parallelsim is using phrases which are grammatically the same or similar in structure, sound, meaning or meter. It's usually used to reinforce the message by setting up patterns, and this  adds balance and rhythm to sentences that give ideas a smoother flow; thus it can be very persuasive because repetition is one of the best ways to convince someone of something. In political speeches, especially the ones that get a crowd excited, parallelism is one of the most used rhetorical devices. For example, in Barry Goldwater's injunction:

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. ...
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

In haiku, the use of parallelism would be difficult because of its incisive brevity, but it's still possible if done well. For example:

going over a bump
the car ahead
going over a bump

The Haiku Anthology, 3rd ed.

William J. Higginson

Comment: William's use of syntactical parallelism gives readers the concrete description of a residential street, a private sideway, or most likely, a parking lot. Aesthetically speaking, it enhances the "hai" aspect of the poem.

it could be nothing
it could be something
winter darkness

First Place, 2013 Porad Haiku Award

Peggy Heinrich

Comment: Peggy's emotionally effective use of syntactic parallelism in Ls 1&2 foregrounds the thematic concern (a sense of uncertainty) while L3 enhances the tone and mood of the poem.

Stop counting syllables,
start counting the dead.

Past All Traps, 2011

Don Wentworth

Comment: The combined use of syntactic parallelism and a perspectival shift makes this poem sociopolitically powerful and emotionally effective. And it reminds me of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s vision of poetry: Poetry as Insurgent Art.

What is the "use" of poetry? Does or can poetry matter to Everyman? More than 50 years ago, American poet William Carlos Williams answered these questions in his then-famous lines: "It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there." His lines claim that poetry really matter to the health of the soul.

Don's powerful poem makes me to rethink: that "the poetical is the political."


In tanka, parallelism could serve to bring a certain unity to juxtaposed parts of a poem.  The following is a good example:

The abbey bell rings
Tolling life’s passing moments
Of joy and sorrow,
Of time for meditation
And to say the rosary

Shining Moments

Neal Henry Lawrence

Jim Wilson's Comment: Lines 3 and 4 are a typical parallel structure; two prepositional phrases, similarly structured, but varying in line length.  There is also variety in the internal structure of each line.  Line 3 uses a conjunction, while Line 4 follows the opening prepositional phrase with a responding prepositional phrase.  I really like the way Lawrence’s usage of parallelism in this tanka reflects the solemn nature of the activities he mentions.  I think this is a good example of how parallelism can be used in shorter syllabic forms.  (As an aside, Line 5 is almost another parallel, maybe a semi-parallel.  ‘To say the rosary’ would be a good standard parallel, but by adding the conjunction ‘and’ Laurence signals to us a poetic shift.  In this case he’s going to close the poem with this clause.  The near parallel structure of Line 5 is a gentle shift while still retaining some of the nature of Lines 3 and 4.
-- excerpted from "Lineation for English Syllabic Verse: Part 1 -- Parallelism"

Below are two examples in which parallelism is employed in an emotionally effective manner:

waking half way
through the day
half the sunshine
half the pain
-- still time for a poem

Little Purple Universes, 2011

Helen Buckingham

Comment: In the upper verse, Helen skillfully uses syntactic parallelism to convey conflicting feelings (sunshine vs pain) while in the lower verse, the thematic and tonal shift adds depth, psychological and spiritual, to the poem.

crossing over
the Bridge of Sighs
I felt you
folding into me
folding into prayer

Gusts, 19, Spring/Summer 2014

Debbie Strange

Comment: The implied contrasts (the physical scene vs the mental image; the symbol of separation from the world vs the religious significance of relational intimacy...etc) between Ls 1-2 and Ls3-5 are emotionally powerful. And the use of syntactic parallelism adds spiritual depth to the poem.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Winter Leaf Haiku by Marianne Paul

English Original

winter leaf --
how she cups the pills
in her hand
  
Acorn, 33, Fall 2014

Marianne Paul


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

冬葉 --
她用手托住藥丸
的樣子

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

冬叶 --
她用手托住药丸
的样子


Bio Sketch

Marianne Paul is a Canadian novelist and poet with a keen interest in Japanese-form minimalist poetry. Her haiku have been published in A Hundred Gourds, The Heron's Nest, Acorn, Modern Haiku, Gems, cattails, Bones, and Frozen Butterfly. She was a contributor to the Spring/Summer 2014 publishing cycle on Daily Haiku. You can learn more about her work at www.literarykayak.com

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

One Man's Maple Moon: Peepal Tree Tanka by Radhey Shiam

English Original

no more I find
the majestic Peepal tree
still I hear
rustling of leaves
chatter of parrots
                                  
Modern English Tanka,  3:3, Spring 2009
                              
Radhey shiam


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

沒有找到
雄偉的匹伯樹
我仍然聽到
樹葉沙沙作響
和鸚鵡喋喋不休

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

没有找到
雄伟的匹伯树
我仍然听到
树叶沙沙作响
和鹦鹉喋喋不休


Bio Sketch

Radhey Shiam: Born on Jan. 14,1922, inherited love for literature, Gandhian way of life, universal brotherhood and human religion, influenced by Danish saint Mr. Alfred Emanuel Sorensen popularly known as ‘Sunyata’. Contributes haiku, tanka, articles and poems in English, Hindi and Urdu languages to Indian and foreign magazines. The Saigyo Award for Tanka 2009, Publication – Song of Life published by Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan.

Butterfly Dream: Stars Haiku by Olivier Schopfer

English Original

pointing at the stars
all the kids
on tiptoe

Acorn, 10, Spring 2003

Olivier Schopfer


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

手指著天上星星
所有的孩子
都踮起腳尖

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

手指著天上星星
所有的孩子
都踮起腳尖


Bio Sketch

Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He likes to capture the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 and in numerous online and print journals, such as Acorn, Bones, bottle rockets, bras bell, Chrysanthemum, Issa's Untidy Hut, moongarlic E-zine, Presence, and Under the Basho. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions: http://olivierschopferracontelesmots.blog.24heures.ch/

Monday, May 4, 2015

A Room of My Own: Life and Death

hospice veranda ...
a girl opens her mouth
to spring rain

(French Translation by Serge Tome, Tempslibres Editor

véranda des spoins palliatifs ...
une jeune fille ouvre sa bouche
à la pluie de printemps)


her black hair
veils our praying hands ...
hospice church at dusk

( French Translation by Serge Tome, Tempslibres Editor

ses cheveux noirs
voilent nos mains qui prient ...
église de l'hospice au crépuscule)

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Night Breeze Haiku by Brian Zimmer

English Original

together in bed
curtain whispering
Bach on the night breeze

Contemporary Haibun Online, 1:3, December 2005

Brian Zimmer


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一起上床
在晚風中窗簾輕訴
巴赫的音樂

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一起上床
在晚风中窗簾轻诉
巴赫的音乐


Bio Sketch

Brian Zimmer wrote from the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. His work had appeared in various international print and online journals. He took inspiration from a variety of sources, including the ancient Japanese poetic-diary (utanikki) and free-form, poetic "essay" (zuihitsu).

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Butterfly Dream: Unzipping the Sky Haiku by Debbie Strange

English Original

geese unzip the sky
a snowflake trembles
on your eyelashes

VerseWrights, 2013

Debbie Strange


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一群鵝打開天空
在你的睫毛上
雪花顫動

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一群鹅打开天空
在你的睫毛上
雪花颤动 


Bio Sketch

Debbie Strange belongs to the Writers' Collective of Manitoba and several haiku and tanka organizations. Her writing has received awards and been published in numerous journals. She is a singer-songwriter and photographer whose photographs have been published and exhibited.  She is currently assembling a haiga collection. Visit her on twitter @Debbie_Strange

Friday, May 1, 2015

Cool Announcement: Breasts of Snow

When I was first confronted with the terror of the incurable disease, I was for the first time convinced of my doom, and that conviction enabled my hands to reach life at the deepest level.
-- Fumiko Nakajo

By expressing what lay at the basis of her life, she turned tanka into a weapon against the terror of death. For Fumiko, who believed in no religion, tanka was her light and her salvation.
-- Makoto Ueda


My Dear Readers:

In celebration of  Tanka Poetry Month, I am pleased to introduce you to Breasts of Snow -- Fumiko Nakajo: Her Tanka and Her Life, published by The Japan Times and written by NeverEnding Story contributor Jane Reichhold with Hatsue Kawamura (available from AHA Books).

 On this beautifully-designed cover is a tanka in Japanese:


haha wo jikuni
ko no kakemeguru
hara no hiru
ki no me wa chikaki
hayashi yori niou

children run around
the axis of their mother
in a daytime field
the fragrance of leaf bud
comes from a near-by forest



Breasts of Snow is the story and tanka of one of the best tanka poets, Fumiko Nakajo (1922-54), who is, though almost unknown outside of Japan, considered to be the third in the three most famous Japanese female poets in the last century, right up there with Akiko Yosano and Machi Tawara. Fumiko Nakajo was a strong-willed woman who lived a tragic life. She died from breast cancer at the age of 32, just few months after her first collection of 50 tanka, titled Chibusa Soshitsu (The Loss of Breasts), won the first prize in a nationwide contest sponsored by a major magazine. Writing from "the depths of her despair, buoyed by a sense of hope," Fumiko poignantly expressed in the tanka her love and desperate struggle with death as a single mother of three.  She distilled all of her thoughts and feelings into this traditional Japanese fixed verse form, whose syllabic confinement, as Makoto Ueda rightly emphasizes in the preface to Modern Japanese Tanka: An Anthology, "matched the confined life she was living in a cancer ward" (xxxii).

Breasts of Snow  includes major tanka from Fumiko Nakajo’s two collections, Chibusa Soshitsu, mentioned above, and Hana no Genkei (A Prototype of Flowers), published posthumously in 1955. Each page contains one tanka in Japanese and in English, along with the joshi (prefatory note) as an explication and the detailed biological background.

For example:

When I faced the fear of cancer, which is said to be irremediable, I was able for the first time to rise from my conviction of unhappiness and reach for the deepest layer of my life.

the leaves of trees
have an agonized look
at night
I think with wonderment
of the sound of the forest

The following is another example taken from one of her most famous tanka:

As one year ends and the new one begins, with fireworks in the night sky, Fumiko, in the arms of her lover, thinks of her recent operation to have a breast removed and her joy in her coming marriage.

overhead a sound
fireworks in the night sky
shoot up and open
everywhere I
can be taken

(Jane Reichhold's comment: The first line oto takaku, (oto - sound, and takaku – high in the sky), has a double meaning; the sound of fireworks is very loud and that the fireworks open high up in the sky. This poem contains the only sexual scene in her tanka collection. The verb ubawarete – "taken" can mean a woman's body is "taken" by a man's so that she is taken in passion or as "possessed" as in almost crazy. In addition, the loss of her breast means that a part of her body has been taken away from her which adds greatly to ephemeral aspect of fireworks. The fireworks symbolize her fleeting, transient and ephemeral happiness, since she now knows she is fated to die soon")

As  Donald Richie emphasized in his review article, titled "Whispers as loud as shouts," Fumiko Nakajo’s short life was both illustrated and illuminated by the tanka that she began writing seriously after she developed the cancer that eventually killed her. The best way to know the story and tanka of one of  the best tanka poets is to read her beautifully-crafted heartfelt tanka.


Selected Tanka

lingering daylight
becomes bluish
on glass trash
let me hear someone’s
words of brutality

a distant grass fire
burning in the evening
intimate
like a special stranger
I think of my husband

close to death
for me an everlasting
vow of love
in a requiem song
has begun to ring

ripening
like fruits of sorrow
the heaviness
when holding a child
is boundless

fresh leaves
of a large elm tree
crumpled by wind
I am detested because
I wish to live passionately

far in the sky
is there happiness?
what is it like?
even an ad balloon
pulls on a rope

spring snow
falling at the crossroads
the young man
at our parting
stammers something

a fin comes up
uneasy with pain
in front of me
the sea becomes
a gray water tank

as if in joy
the oyster bound
by winter kelp
will rise up
a thorn of flesh

for insomnia
the night prepares to give
me something
a toad, a black dog
one who has drowned

in a high fever
at midnight I think
of the day I saw
the tongue of a giraffe
I don’t know why it was black


Note: Before the publication of Breasts of Snow, the only English translations of Fumiko Nakajo's works (20 tanka in total) can be found in Modern Japanese Tanka: An Anthology, edited and translated by Makoto Ueda (pp. 205-216). Below are three tanka about her heart-wrenching struggle with breast cancer:

as the surgical knife
slowly slits open
the past
my fetuses appear
kicking each other in the dark

in search of a shore
where I might spot my breast
drifting along
with white jellyfish
I'll go to sleep again

that hill
shaped like the breast
I have lost
will be adorned with
dead flowers in winter

Cool Announcement: Celebrate Tanka Poetry Month with NeverEnding Story

Changing the world one tanka at a time.  Chen-ou Liu

One poem lights up another. W.B. Yeats


My Dear Friends:

Please join NeverEnding Story to expand the tanka readership base through writing or tweeting  at least one tanka a day for the month of May:

on the windowsill
two canaries singing
to each other
I tweet and retweet

Below is a relevant excerpt from Angela Leuck's article, titled "Tanka and the Literary Mainstream: Are we 'there' yet?" ("Book Review Editor's Message," Ribbons, 10:1, Winter 2014, p. 74):

An alternative approach is suggested by Chen-ou Liu, author of the blog, "NeverEnding Story." In his June 2012 Lynx interview with Jane Reichhold,2 Liu describes the current relationship between the haiku/tanka community and the literary mainstream in terms of "an asymmetric power relationship." He believes a "top down" approach will not work; i.e., trying to change the perceptions of those in the mainstream. Rather, Liu supports a "bottom up" approach, which for him means consolidating and expanding the readership base for tanka through online publishing and social networking sites. He argues:

If there are more people who love reading/writing haiku and tanka, the mainstream poetry world will eventually open their main gate to haiku and tanka poets. This approach to reversing the asymmetric power relationship has been demonstrated in the case of the power transfer from traditional media, such as news papers, TV, and books, to online and social media.

Liu also says that with the increasingly hectic nature of contemporary society, there will be more interest in shorter poetry, as people have less time and attention, but are still seeking to read something meaningful. He notes that both haiku and tanka have become more and more popular on Tweeter ....

Please help spread the word about this celebration via your poetry blogs, websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts. Many thanks for your time and help.

And look forward to reading your tanka (see 2015 anthology submission guidelines for tanka )

Chen-ou

Note:  In addition to being translated into Chinese and published on NeverEnding Story, the accepted haiku and tanka will be tweeted and re-tweeted by  @storyhaikutanka (NeverEnding Story's Tweeter account: following: 8, followers: 464) and @ericcoliu (Chen-ou Liu's Tweeter account: following: 7, followers: 1,763) respectively to reach a larger readership.