English Original
old woman,
rain in the eye
of her needle
First Place, 1981 H.G. Henderson Haiku Contest
Bill Pauly
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
一位老婦人
雨滴停留
在她的針孔內
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
一位老妇人
雨滴停留
在她的针孔内
Bio Sketch
Bill Pauly was born in Davenport, Iowa, 1942. He had lived almost his whole life in the Midwest, which he loved. He published two small books of haiku: Wind the Clock by Bittersweet (1977) and Time from His Bones (1978), but later his work appeared mainly in the haiku journals. He had won several Haiku awards, most notably three First Prizes in the H.G. Henderson annual competitions.
Technically 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.
ReplyDeleteAnd atmospherically speaking, the collocation of an "old woman" [who is knitting outside] and the "rain in the eye of her needle" makes this poem emotionally effective as a middle-of-the-story haiku.