Monday, September 18, 2017

Butterfly Dream: Racehorse Haiku by Barry George

English Original

dogwoods in blossom --
the death of a racehorse
ends the evening news           

Modern Haiku, 33.3, Fall 2002

Barry George


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

盛開的山茱萸 --
一匹賽馬的死亡消息
總結晚間新聞報導

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

盛开的山茱萸 --
一匹赛马的死亡消息
总结晚间新闻报导


Bio Sketch

Barry George is the author of Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku and The One That Flies Back, a collection of tanka. He has won the AWP Intro Poets Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and numerous Japanese short-form competitions, including First Prize in the Gerald R. Brady Senryu Contest.

1 comment:

  1. The contrasts between the two parts of the haiku are visually and emotionally poignant. This is a fine example of employing Type II Formulation of cutting:

    ... Later in the seventeenth century when Danrin poets formulated their ideas about kireji, the discussion might be presented in terms of Yin-Yang metaphysics or simply in terms of a discrimination set up within a hokku between a "this" opposed to a "that." A work from 1680 put it in a refreshingly slangy way:

    The kireji is that which clearly expresses a division of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang mean the existence of an interesting confrontation within a poem (okashiku ikku no uchi ni arasoi aru o iu nari). For instance, something or other presented in a hokku is that?-no, it's not that but this, etc. 46 ...

    -- excerpted from my "To the Lighthouse" post, "Three Formulations about the Use of Cutting, which can be accessed at http://goo.gl/2aWfn , and which includes haiku examples and scholarly references.

    ReplyDelete