Thursday, September 8, 2016

One Man's Maple Moon: September Rain Tanka by Carol Purington

English Original

September rain
and a few wine-dark leaves
tumbling
into a day
of shared loss

Moonbathing, 9, Fall/Winter 2013

Carol Purington


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

九月雨
和一些酒黑色樹葉
翻滾掉落成為
共同喪失生命
的一天

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

九月雨
和一些酒黑色树叶
翻滚掉落成为
共同丧失生命
的一天 


Bio Sketch

Carol Purington uses tanka to capture flashes of natural loveliness and psychological insight that drift around her rural New England home. Her second collection of tanka, Faces I Might Wear, was published in 2013.

1 comment:

  1. Carol effectively infuses the natural scene ("September rain/and a few wine-dark leaves") with human emotion or sentiment ("shared loss"). And on a second reading, "rain" and the color ("wine-dark") of falling leaves take on symbolic significance.

    Carol's visually and emotionally evocative tanka reminds me of the following comment by Kaibara Ekiken:

    In poetry, the scene (kei) is always in the emotion (jo), and the emotion is always in the scene.

    ReplyDelete