English Original
home-grown lettuce
the taste of well-water
green
Frogpond, 23:3, Autumn, 2000
Jane Reichhold
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
自家種植的萵苣
井水的味道嚐起來
像綠色般清涼
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
自家种植的莴苣
井水的味道尝起来
像绿色般清凉
Bio Sketch
Jane Reichhold was born as Janet Styer in 1937 in Lima , Ohio , USA . She had published over thirty books of haiku, renga, tanka, and translations. Her latest tanka book, Taking Tanka Home was translated into Japanese by Aya Yuhki. Her most popular book is Basho The Complete Haiku by Kodansha International. As founder and editor of AHA Books, Jane also published Mirrors: International Haiku Forum, Geppo, for the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and she had co-edited with Werner Reichhold, Lynx for Linking Poets since 1992. Lynx went online in 2000 in AHApoetry.com the web site Jane started in 1995. Since 2006 she had maintained an online forum – AHAforum
The rhetorical device, synaesthesia ("transference of the senses"), a familiar element in Japanese poetry, is multi-sensorily effectively employed in this haiku. It speaks to one sensory/gustatory aspect of a thing (the "taste" of "well-water" in L2), and then changes its focus on another sensory aspect/visual ("green" in L3). In doing so, L3, "green"," provides a visually and emotionally effective link-and-shift relationship with L1, [green] "home-grown lettuce," obviously "tasty" because of the time and energy, i.e. "love," spent on growing it.
ReplyDeleteNote: The "technique of sense-switching," i.e. synaesthesia, is employed in the haiku. For more, see "Dark Wings of the Night: Jane Reichhold's Haiku Techniques," accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2017/02/dark-wings-of-night-jane-reichholds.html and "To the Lighthouse: A Rhetorical Device, Synaesthesia," accessed at https://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2014/10/to-lighthouse-synaesthesia-transference.html