酷我-北美枫

Tanka of the Week (via The Tanka Society of America)

Winning Tanka of the TSA 2008 International Tanka Contest

First Prize:

old memories
like tangled fish hooks
impossible
to pick up only one
without all the others

an’ya
Lapine, Oregon

Second Prize:

here on a knoll
in the fields of spring
I’ll lay it down . . .
and for a while be rid
of a mind that never rests

Kirsty Karkow
Waldoboro, Maine

Third Prize:

late night storm . . .
I lock the door and hope
the children are safe
in the unruly boroughs
of their dreams

Collin Barber
Marion, Arizona

What do you think of these poems?

Any thoughts, comments or disagreements would be much appreciated!

Tanka of the Week (via Tanka News and haiku Headlines)

First Place Winner: Natalia L. Rudychev

i wish
my kisses
were the cherry petals
that stream all over you
in April wind

Second Place Winner: Marjorie Buettner

I wake
to feel your touch
entering my dreams
there you untie the canoe
and we drift under wild stars

Third Place Winner: Claudia Coutu Radmore

night blooming cereus
its soundless blossoming
lost in ours
this morning’s serenity
of spent grace

What do you think of these poems? Are they good enough?

Any thoughts, comments or disagreements would be much appreciated!

Speak of This to No One: Rexroth-esque understanding of Asian Poetries (2nd draft)

To the best of my best knowledge, no one would doubt that Kenneth Rexroth wrote good poetry and fell deeply in love with Asian poetries, especially Chinese and Japanese. The epitaph on his grave, which is located at the Santa Barbara Cemetery and is the only one facing the Pacific, reads:

As the full moon rises
The swan sings in sleep
On the lake of the mind

However, even though Rexroth-esque poetry is a generous and encouraging commentary, Rexroth-esque poetry translation is nothing more than a series of embarrassing remarks.

In terms of fidelity, linguistic knowledge and cultural understanding, his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetries are laughable. Most of them are Rexroth-esque poetries infused with Asian poetic sensibilities and place names. That’s one of the key reasons scholars have long developed a love-hate relationship with him: on one hand, his brilliantly-written, sometimes self-invented, translations have drawn a lot of English-speaking readers to Asian poetries and thus helped sell books by scholars on Chinese and Japanese cultures; on the other hand, his translations and so-called essays have made his readers misconceive the poetic essences of Chinese and Japanese verses.

For example, eschewing Western poetic aesthetics, in the ‘Spring’ section of his poem “Aix en Provence,” Rexroth introduced readers to his new Buddhist-influenced conception of imagery:

There are no images here
In the solitude, only
The night and its stars which are
Relationships rather than
Images. Shifting darkness,
Strains of feeling, lines of force,
Webs of thoughts, no images,
Only night and time aging
The night in its darkness, just
Motion in space in the dark…..
...It isn't an image of
Something. It isn't a symbol of
Something else. It is just an
Almond tree, in the night, by
the house, in the woods, by
A vineyard, under the setting
Half moon, in Provence, in the
Beginning of another Spring.

This conception results in a new understanding of imagery in particular and of literary devices in general for reading and writing poetry. This new understanding is so-called “Buddhist suchness”: things are not seen as concepts, images, or even singular perceptions; they are experienced directly as relationships in flux. In his view, “It isn't an image of / Something. It isn't a symbol of / Something else.” The things portrayed in the poem are “things” themselves and stand for nothing else. “It is just an / Almond tree, in the night, by / the house, in the woods, by / A vineyard, under the setting / Half moon, in Provence, in the / Beginning of another Spring.”

His Buddhist-influenced critique of imagery and symbols, which fails to consider contextual factors, has been widely used by his fellow poets and readers. As one of the first poets in the United States to explore Japanese haiku, Rexroth helped “de-contextualize” its reading and understanding. This is one of the main reasons why Basho’s frog haiku is much loved and yet little understood by haiku readers.

After reading my piece, you still want to be a reader of Asian poetry books translated by Kenneth Rexroth? -- Sorry to ask you such a Bukowski-esque question.

Breath co-written by ericcoliu

I

Live with the living,
die with the dead;
but for him -- limbo.

II

We all, even Jesus,
go six feet under.
Why do you struggle?

III

Living or dying,
I strive for those,
the spaces in between.

Note:

Below is the companion piece to Breath:

The Shortest Stage Play, Breath by ericcoliu

Over the past two weeks, I have concentrated on viewing the filmed versions of Samuel Beckett’s plays, and impressed by the most compressed of Beckett’s dramatic works entitled Breath. The play has no actors, just a stage full of rubbish. It begins with a brief, faint cry, then the amplified sound of a human breath accompanied by an increase and decrease in the intensity of the light, followed by another faint cry as the lights fade and the curtain falls. Based on Beckett's detailed instructions in his script, the play is estimated about 25 seconds long. The filmed version I watched is about 35 seconds.

Life portrayed in Breath is reduced to a brief interlude of dim light between two cries and two darknesses, symbolizing birth and death. It subtly touches on a more typical Beckett subject: the brevity and futility of life itself. It reminds me of Pozzo's words in Waiting for Godot:

"They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant and then it is night once more."

泊秦淮，杜牧

煙籠寒水月籠沙，夜泊秦淮近酒家。
商女不知亡國恨，隔江猶唱後庭花。

English Translation: Mooring on Qin Huai River

Mists veil cold water while moonlight bathes the sandbanks.
We moor near a line of river-taverns
on Qin Huai River
where singing girls know nothing
about the bitterness of a kingdom ruined
and merrily echo Flower of the Inner Court.

江南春，杜牧

千里莺啼绿映红，水村山郭酒旗风。
南朝四百八十寺，多少楼台烟雨中。

English Translation: Southern Spring

A thousand miles of chirping orioles,
crimson contrasting with green.
Waterside villages, hillside ramparts,
tavern banners in the breeze.

Four hundred eighty temples
built in the Southern Dynasties:
how many high buildings
veiled in the mist and rain?

Cold Mountain Flowers co-authored with ericcoliu

Walking into the hallway of my dorm, I found a not-so-surprising scene: empty rooms; just echoes of far-off voices singing Where Have All the Flowers Gone?.

"They have gone to the Cold Mountain Reading,” I blandly chimed in on the way to my room.

This depressed me: my foreign angst. The guys on my floor had all become “mountain pilgrims” one by one reading through the New Bible, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. In 1965, a poetry chapbook written by the 8th-century Chinese recluse Han Shan, whose name literally means cold mountain, had somehow become the "new thing," a pre-requisite for acceptance by coffeeshop intellectuals.

I dragged my feet into my room. Alone I sat by the window and read my textbook for tomorrow’s midterm test. Returning sunlight slipped through my room and spread over the page, giving it a yellowish glow.

“Hi! Man! You’re still cramming! Who bother reading these useless books!” I had not noticed of Gary’s coming and was disturbed by his high-pitched voice.

“We have a test tomorrow, remember?" I replied in a defensive tone.

“Fuck the test. I’m here to get you to The Cold Mountain Reading.”

“No! Thanks. Students should be properly prepared for tests.” I intoned.

“Jesus! Eric! You can fail your goddamned tests a hundred times and it won't do you any harm. But, you cannot fail the examination of our conscience and our zeitgeist.”

“But do you really like Cold Mountain’s poetry?”

“Yah, sure!”

“Why?”

“Why?” He looked at me with eyes wild open as if I had asked the stupidest question, “because he is BEAT, man!”

I remember his matter-of-fact answer to this very day, and the silent rebuttal I never spoke.

Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing … When will they ever learn? … When will we ever learn? still lingers in the back of my mind.

竹里館王維

獨坐幽篁裏，彈琴復長嘯。

深林人不知，明月來相照。

English Translation: Bamboo-Midst Cottage

Sitting alone in reclusive bamboo dark,
I play the zither, gravely whistling.

Deep in forest, no one can know;
Only the bright moon and I face each other.

過香積寺王維

不知香積寺，數里入雲峰。
古木無人徑，深山何處鐘。
泉聲咽危石，日色冷青松。
薄暮空潭曲，安禪制毒龍。

English Translation

Passing by the Temple of Heaped Fragrance

Not knowing the way
To the Temple of Heaped Fragrance,
I lost many miles
Among cloudy peaks.

There is no human track
Among the ancient trees;
Where is the bell
That rings from deep in the mountains?

The sound of a spring
Is gurgling past towering rocks;
The color of sunlight
Is chilled by green pines.

In faint twilight
Where an empty pond curves,
Zazen subdues
pernicious dragons of the mind.

江雪，柳宗元

千山鳥飛絕，萬徑人蹤滅。
孤舟簑笠翁，獨釣寒江雪。

English Translation

River Snow by Liu Zongyuan

A thousand mountains
Where no birds fly.
Ten thousand paths
Where human footprints are no more.

A solitary boat,
An old man in reed cloak, bamboo hat –
Fishing alone
In the cold river snow.

English, I Anguish Co-written by ericcoliu, An Echo to Lost in Translation by ericcoliu

English, I Anguish

You are not able to connect
emotions to words, to feel
the weight of their syllables.
Without emotional vocabulary
everything becomes elusion, confusion
and the fear of things
you needn’t be afraid of.

You are not able to weave
words into sentences, to free
your thoughts from inertia.
Words have become the isolated cries
of a wandering soul
clutching desperately at your heart.

Note:

English, I Anguish is appropriated from a verse line in My Foreign Anguish by ericcoliu.

The Stab of a Memory co-written by ericcoliu

This afternoon, I was sitting
alone by the window,
looking out at the maple's branches
swaying gracefully in the breeze.
Out of nowhere, I felt
the stab of a memory:
you waving me goodbye.

I balanced
on that memory,
the universe hanging
on the branches.

A Crack in the Edge of the World co-written by ericcoliu

A Crack
In the Edge of the World --
Time crawling indifferently,
Lives withering away,
Hearts worn out.

Earthquake Haiku

I
Amid the debris of ruined lives
The only thing moving
Was the bloodstained hand of Wenchuan

II
A waving hand --
There's hope also
In despair

III
Life after the ruins --
A makeshift tent
On parted ground

IV
A Day slow in going
Echoes
In the corners of Wenchuan

V
In Wenchuan
We walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at the flattened dreams

Note:

Wenchuan County (汶川县) is the site of the epicentre and one of the worst-hit areas of the May 12th earthquake, whose Chinese name is named after the county, making this name resonate across the nation.