the hunter and the hunted
a black balloon becomes
a hole in the sky
In Borrowed Shoes, 2006
Fay Aoyagi
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
獵人和獵物
一個黑色氣球成為
天空中的一個洞
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
猎人和猎物
一个黑色气球成为
天空中的一个洞
Bio Sketch
Fay
Aoyagi （青柳飛）was born in Tokyo and immigrated to the U.S. in 1982. She
is currently a member of Haiku Society of America and Haiku Poets of
Northern California. She serves as an associate editor of The Heron's Nest.
She also writes in Japanese and belongs to two Japanese haiku groups;
Ten'I (天為) and "Aki"（秋), and she is a member of Haijin Kyokai (俳人協会).
a hole in my sweater
ReplyDeleteI ask him one more time
what he meant
the hunter and the hunted
a black balloon becomes
a hole in the sky
I chose these two haiku to use as my last two examples of Aoyagi’s post-2000 style before noticing that both mention holes. Holes, like doorways, are open spaces that beckon the reader to become a co-poet, making connections, conjuring feelings, perceiving, and discovering. Aoyagi doesn’t explain the connection between the hole in her sweater and “what he meant”; she trusts the reader to find this out, alongside her, in meditation. When I meditate on the haiku, I conjure a darkly comic, real-life scene of a man and woman whose romance, I predict, won’t go far. Of course this is just my reading; the fun of interior, open spaces in poetry is that they allow each reader the freedom to find his or her own meaning. In the second haiku the connection between the first phrase, “the hunter and the hunted,” to the balloon similarly requires each reader to take the initiative, filling the void with his or her own thoughts and feelings. In my own contemplation of it I picture the
balloon growing smaller and smaller as it rises, disappearing and reappearing to the poet’s “hunting” eyes. Ultimately black balloon becomes black hole: a gravity star from which no light and no further meaning can escape. I have no idea as to what Aoyagi “meant” in this haiku; I only care about where it takes me. When you read it, where does it take you? Her art is capacious, leaving plenty of room for us readers to invent and discover...
-- excerpted from Something with Wings:Fay Aoyagi's Haiku of Inner Landscape by David G. Lanoue (Modern Haiku, 40:2, summer 2009), accessed at http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/Lanoue-FayAoyagiHaiku.html
It might be interesting to do a comparative reading of the following haiku:
Deletejune breeze
a hole in the cloud
mends itself
Third Runner-Up, The Heron's Nest Readers' Choice Popular Poets Award (2001)
an'ya