English Original
my body
his body
plum afternoon
plum afternoon, 2017
Kristen Deming
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
我的身體
他的身體
梅花盛開的午後
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
我的身体
他的身体
梅花盛开的午后
Bio Sketch
Kristen Deming was an accomplished haiku poet and lover of literature. Her haiku collection, Plum Afternoon was a finalist in the Haiku Society of America's Merit Book Award in 2017. As a past president of the Haiku Society of America and active member in the haiku community in Japan for many years, one of Kristen's enduring contributions to the haiku communities around the world was a weekly poetry column in the Japan Times called "Haiku Moments" that she co-wrote with a Japanese colleague for six years, helping to open the world of haiku to English speakers and to give glimpses of Japanese culture through the lens of haiku.
The sexual/ physically intimate relationship descibed in Ls 1&2, where syntactic parallelism is employed, is enhanced by visually evocative and symbolically rich L3.
ReplyDeleteAnd the following haiku could be read as a sequel to Kristen's:
the old body lying
next to my old body ...
our years together
Haiku Canada Review, 16:2, 2022
Naomi Beth Wakan
FYI: The plum is associated with the start of spring, a symbol of fertility in China (as well as symbol of resilience and beauty in Japan)