English Original
silhouetted dragonfly
reeds pierce the moon
The Mainichi Daily News, May 30, 2009
Martin Gottlieb Cohen
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
陰影中的蜻蜓
蘆葦刺穿月亮
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
阴影中的蜻蜓
芦苇刺穿月亮
Bio Sketch
Martin Gottlieb Cohen was born in the South Bronx somewhere on Simpson Street, went to a Yeshiva on East Broadway and Canal Street, and then lived in the South of Brooklyn, the South of Long Island, The Southern Tier of Upstate New York, The South of Manhattan, and finally South Jersey in Egg Harbor
A moonlit marsh scene is vividly depicted in Martin's imagistic haiku with two visually arresting and emotionally evocative "coupled images."
ReplyDeleteTechnically speaking, this is a good example of what American poet Archibald MacLeish calls "coupled images:" One image is established by words which make it sensuous and vivid to the the eyes or ears or touch-to any of the senses. Another image is put beside it. And "a meaning appears which is neither the meaning of one image nor the meaning of the other nor even the sum of both but a consequence of both -- a consequence of both in their conjunction, in their relation to each other" (Krishna Rayan, Suggestion and Statement in Poetry, p.69). It is in the "space between'" that the poem grows. And atmospherically speaking, the collocation of "hens and a knife sharpener" makes the poem emotionally effective as a suspenseful piece of writing. It draws readers into a story and creates a sense of momentum.
-- excerpted from "To the Lighthouse: Coupled Images," accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2016/04/to-lighthouse-coupling-of-images.html