beach storm --
in a sea of sagewort
one wild aster
Notes from the Gean, 2:3, Winter 2010
Neal Whitman
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
海灘風暴 --
在一大片鼠尾草叢中
一朵野生紫菀
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
海滩风暴 --
在一大片鼠尾草丛中
一朵野生紫菀
Bio Sketch
Neal Whitman of Pacific Grove, California, is a member of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, Haiku Poets of Northern California, Haiku Society of America, and Tanka Society of America. Over the past five years he has published over 400 haiku, haibun, and tanka and haiga with his wife, Elaine, who is a photographer.
The visually and emotionally effective jux. of two contrastive images reveals the power, negative and positive, of nature.
ReplyDeleteThe unexpected yet powerful L3 makes a successful shift in imagery and tone.
This haiku demonstrates that our conception of shasei need not exclude the English language's natural propensity for metaphor: in context of a beach storm, 'a sea of sagewort' shows most economically the grey-green sagewort covering the dunes and the sea's waves, their one colour in the storm light, their convergence into a pattern of storm-tossed movement that dominates the scene. The effect is cinematic rather than painterly. The small wildflower, named from the ancient Greek for star, might indeed seem like a star "when only one/ is shining in the sky." (1) As it takes the foreground in the final line, it becomes the centre, the focus that composes sea, sagewort and storm – a small miracle.
ReplyDeleteLorin Ford, Book Review: Blyth's Spirit by Neal Whitman, A Hundred Gourds, 1:2, March 2012