English Original
another indigo evening
with windows wide open
to smell the rain
what is the color
of loneliness?
Second Place, TSA Tanka Contest, 2020
Pamela A. Babusci
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
另一個靛藍之夜
並且每一扇窗都敞開
試著聞雨的味道
寂寞是
什麼顏色？
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
另一个靛蓝之夜
并且每一扇窗都敞开
试着闻雨的味道
寂寞是
什么颜色？
Bio Sketch
Pamela A. Babusci is an internationally award winning haiku, tanka poet and haiga artist. Some of her awards include: Museum of Haiku Literature Award, International Tanka Splendor Awards, First Place Yellow Moon Competition (Aust) tanka category, First Place Kokako Tanka Competition,(NZ) First Place Saigyo Tanka Awards (US), Basho Festival Haiku Contests (Japan). Pamela has illustrated several books, including: Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor Awards, Taboo Haiku, Chasing the Sun, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, and A Thousand Reasons 2009. Pamela was the founder and now is the solo Editor of Moonbathing: a journal of women’s tanka; the first all women’s tanka journal in the US.
Like other winning entries, this moody tanka raises a rhetorical question ultimately left to its readers to answer. The open-endedness of the question contrasts with the poem’s simple, straightforward language, such as the second line’s alliterative “windows wide open” that serves to intensify the first line’s less common and more descriptive “indigo evening.” The image also gives the sense of someone with arms wide open to the rain, the darkness, and all the emotions that arise from embracing that experience. The color indigo alludes to one of the seven colors Newton classified to describe a rainbow. Indigo is also the color used to represent the Third Eye or “brow” chakra linked to self-knowledge, intuition, and a kind of universal spirituality that might interpret “loneliness” as an opportunity as much for growth as for sadness. Regardless, the poet’s skillful use of more than one sense—sight and smell—combines to create a memorable and contest-worthy tanka.
ReplyDelete-- excerpted from Judge's commentary, accessed at https://www.tankasocietyofamerica.org/tsa-contest/past-winners-and-judges-comments/2020-winners