pre-surgery dinner
tiny ocean
in the oyster shell
Modern Haiku, 31:1, Winter/Spring 2000
Fay Aoyagi
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
手術前的晚餐
牡蠣殼裡
的小海洋
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
手术前的晚餐
牡蛎壳里
的小海洋
Bio Sketch
Fay
Aoyagi （青柳飛）was born in Tokyo and immigrated to the U.S. in 1982. She
is currently a member of Haiku Society of America and Haiku Poets of
Northern California. She serves as an associate editor of The Heron's Nest.
She also writes in Japanese and belongs to two Japanese haiku groups;
Ten'I (天為) and "Aki"（秋), and she is a member of Haijin Kyokai (俳人協会).
“I believe that haiku is about discovery: the deeper the feeling of discovery, the better the haiku, in my opinion. In a great haiku we sense the poet finding out something in the process of composition, not reporting on a thing that has been previously mentally digested. When Aoyagi brings us with her to the table for her pre-surgery dinner, we suspect that she has no a priori idea that the journey will take us to a tiny ocean in an oyster shell. We arrive there with her, sharing the ‘ah!-moment’ of the vision and sensing its nonlinear, non-logical connection to the poet’s (and our) interior life. Thoughts of mortality, the fear of the surgeon’s knife, a vague feeling of dread and lament … so many emotions ebb and flow in the tiny ocean in the shell. The shell on the plate is itself a post-op carcass that on closer inspection becomes a gleaming continental shelf enclosing a tiny, salty sea. Aoyagi doesn’t say what she feels about her vision, whether it comforts or terrifies her; she invites us into the intimacy of the moment to contemplate for ourselves what it might mean.”
ReplyDelete-- excerpted from "Something with Wings: Fay Aoyagi's Haiku of Inner Landscape," by David G. Lanoue (Modern Haiku, 40:2, Summer 2009)