Saturday, February 3, 2024

Butterfly Dream: Iris Haiku by Jane Reichhold

English Original

eyes in secret places
deep in the purple middle
of an iris

Frogpond, 23:3, Autumn, 2000

Jane Reichhold

 
Chinese Translation (Traditional)

秘密之處的眼睛
一朵鳶尾花中間
的紫色深處

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

秘密之处的眼睛
一朵鸢尾花中间
的紫色深处

 
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 ForumGeppo, 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

1 comment:

  1. The Technique of Double entendre (or double meanings) -- Anyone who has read translations of Japanese poetry has seen how much poets delighted in saying one thing and meaning something else. Only insiders knew the secret language and got the jokes. In some cases the pun was to cover up a sexual reference by seeming to speaking of something commonplace. There are whole lists of words with double meanings: spring rain = sexual emissions and jade mountain = the Mound of Venus, just to give you an sampling. But we have them in English also, and haiku can use them in the very same way.

    -- excerpted from "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 the haiku below could be read as a prequel to Jane's:

    beyond the dark
    where I disrobe
    an iris in bloom

    Love Haiku: Japanese Poems of Yearning, Passion, and Remembrance , 2015

    Katsura Nobuko

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