English Original
dead cat ...
open-mouthed
to the pouring rain
The Haiku Anthology, 1986
Michael McClintock
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
一隻死貓 ...
它的嘴巴張開
朝向傾盆大雨
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
一只死猫 ...
它的嘴巴张开
朝向倾盆大雨
Bio Sketch
Michael McClintock's lifework in haiku, tanka, and related literature spanned over four decades. His many contributions to the field included six years as president of the Tanka Society of America (2004-2010) and contributing editor, essayist, and poet for dozens of journals, anthologies, landmark collections and critical studies. McClintock lived in Clovis, California, where he worked as an independent scholar, consultant for public libraries, and poet. Meals at Midnight [tanka], Sketches from the San Joaquin [haiku] and Streetlights: Poetry of Urban Life in Modern English Tanka, were some of his recent titles.
McClintock pauses the haiku after the first two words, giving the reader a moment to take-in the idea that he is going to talk about a dead cat. The pause allows the reader a few seconds to ponder their own images and interpretations of the dead cat. Then, McClintock adds the unforgettable image of the open mouth in the pouring rain. It is, at first, rather disturbing. Nevertheless, the bluntness of this haiku is refreshing.
ReplyDeleteAs a society, we like to have everything nice, and neat, and pretty, particularly our poetics. But life isn’t pretty. The very existence of life means that there is a counterpart, death. This haiku explores death in a very blunt and honest way. I can vividly picture this dead cat. It lays in a gutter on a lonely street, muddied and wet (obviously) on its back, leaving the reader puzzled as to how it died. I want to know why no one but this author notices the dead cat in the street and why he decided that this cat was worth writing about. That is the charm of this haiku, that McClintock actually took the time out of his busy day to notice this poor, helpless, dead cat. I had the ability to ask McClintock about the bluntness and honesty of this particular haiku:
I want to see things as they are, not always as I would
wish them to be. That is easy to say, but often hard to do.
I want to work in both ends of the spectrum, to write about
what I find, too, between the extremes of beauty and ugliness.I think that is where most of us live our lives; there’s no sensein pretending otherwise. And I don’t have to go looking for it; it comes to me, whether I want it to or not.
(E-mail interview April 2001)
-- excerpted from Adria Neapolitan's "Nature, Sex, and Bluntness:A Look at the Haiku of Michael McClintock," accessed at https://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/MillikinHaiku/writerprofiles/NeapolitanOnMcClintock.html