English Original
spirit bodies
waving from cacti
plastic bags
Frogpond, 23:3, Autumn, 2000
Jane Reichhold
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
靈體
從仙人掌中舞動
塑膠袋
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
灵体
从仙人掌中舞动
塑胶袋
Bio Sketch
Jane Reichhold was born as Janet Styer in 1937 in Lima , Ohio , USA . She had published over thirty books of haiku, renga, tanka, and translations. Her latest tanka book, Taking Tanka Home was translated into Japanese by Aya Yuhki. Her most popular book is Basho The Complete Haiku by Kodansha International. As founder and editor of AHA Books, Jane also published Mirrors: International Haiku Forum, Geppo, for the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and she had co-edited with Werner Reichhold, Lynx for Linking Poets since 1992. Lynx went online in 2000 in AHApoetry.com the web site Jane started in 1995. Since 2006 she had maintained an online forum – AHAforum
The Technique of the Riddle -- this is probably one of the very oldest poetical techniques. It has been guessed that early spiritual knowledge was secretly preserved and passed along through riddles. Because poetry, as it is today, is the commercialization of religious prayers, incantations, and knowledge, it is no surprise that riddles still form a serious part of poetry's transmission of ideas.
ReplyDeletespirit bodies
waving from cacti
plastic bags
The 'trick' is to state the riddle in as puzzling terms as possible. What can one say that the reader cannot figure out the answer? The more intriguing the 'set-up' and the bigger surprise the answer is, the better the haiku seems to work. As in anything, you can overextend the joke and lose the reader completely. The answer has to make sense to work and it should be realistic. Here is a case against desk haiku. If one has seen plastic bags caught on cacti, it is simple and safe to come to the conclusion I did. If I had never seen such an incident, it could be it only happened in my imagination and in that scary territory one can lose a reader. So keep it true, keep it simple and keep it accurate and make it weird.
-- excerpted from Jane Reichhold, 'Haiku Techniques,' "Frogpond," 23:3, Autumn, 2000, which can be accessed at "Dark Wings of the Night: Jane Reichhold's Haiku Techniques," https://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2017/02/dark-wings-of-night-jane-reichholds.html