English Original
with words
in a notebook
I’m painting
unseen, in plain sight,
an elegy for the blues
Gusts, 32, Fall/Winter 2020
Michael McClintock
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
在筆記本中
用筆墨
在眾目睽睽之下,
我描繪看不見
的一首藍調輓歌
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
在笔记本中
用笔墨
在众目睽睽之下,
我描绘看不见
的一首蓝调挽歌
Bio Sketch
Michael McClintock's lifework in haiku, tanka, and related literature spans over four decades. His many contributions to the field include six years as president of the Tanka Society of America (2004-2010) and contributing editor, essayist, and poet for dozens of journals, anthologies, landmark collections and critical studies. McClintock now lives in Clovis, California, where he works as an independent scholar, consultant for public libraries, and poet. Meals at Midnight [tanka], Sketches from the San Joaquin [haiku] and Streetlights: Poetry of Urban Life in Modern English Tanka, are some of his recent titles.
Michael's "mood tanka" effectively builds line by line, replete with multi-sensorily evocative images, to an unexpected yet emotionally poignant ending: "an elegy for the blues."
ReplyDeleteAnd it might be interesting to do a thematic comparison reading of the followign tanka:
a blues master
sings the only song
he ever recorded --
I slide my poem
into an envelope
Eucalypt, 2008
David Bachelor