Wednesday, November 12, 2014

One Man's Maple Moon: Wings Tanka by Kozue Uzawa

English Original

slowly
I open my wings
and let this loneliness
fly away
in the summer forest

I'm a Traveler, 2011

Kozue Uzawa


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

慢慢地
我張開翅膀
讓這種孤獨感
在夏季森林中
飛走

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

慢慢地
我张开翅膀
让这种孤独感
在夏季森林中
飞走


Bio Sketch

Kozue Uzawa is a retired university professor. She works as editor of the English tanka journal GUSTS. She composes tanka both in Japanese and English. She also translates Japanese tanka into English and co-published Ferris Wheel: 101 Modern and Contemporary Tanka (Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2006), and Kaleidoscope: Selected Tanka of Shuji Terayama (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 2008). Ferris Wheel received the 2007 Donald Keene Translation Award for Japanese Literature from Columbia University.

2 comments:

  1. Below is excerpted from Melissa Dixon's "There is No Turning Back," which was first published in Modern English Tanka, 2, Winter 2016:

    Kozue Uzawa sketches for us a delicate, symbolic poem. We watch in fellowship and hold our breath as she allows her feelings of isolation to ‘fly away’. In selecting this one phrase for the second-last line, she shows us how dramatic emphasis can compensate for the missing syllables of a traditional longer second-last line

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  2. Technically speaking, combined with the use of the symbolism of the summer forest, Kozue's visual mental imagery technique (zoom-out; from a mental close-up of the speaker's "wings" to a visual image of the summer forest) is emotionally effective.


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