English Original
chrysanthemum moon
i peel off another layer
of sorrow
Finalist, 2004 Yellow Moon Haiku Contest
Pamela A. Babusci
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
菊花月
我剝掉另一層
的悲傷
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
菊花月
我剥掉另一层
的悲伤
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.
Visually vocative and symboliccaly rich L1, "chrysanthemum moon" (chrysanthemum, a symbol of autumn and the flower of the ninth moon of the lunar calendar for mourning and grief) sets the theme and mood, while an implied simile employed in Ls 2&3 adds emotional weight and psychological depth to the haiku.
ReplyDeleteFYI: The Onion of Grief: "there are so many correlations between onions and grief. Their papery thin exterior mistakenly leads us to believe that getting through should be relatively easy."