酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

Reading and Writing: Life on the Page


Why believe you can write verse in English? (Contemporary Haibun -- Japanese Prose Poem)

To write verse in English is not like growing ideograms inside your heart, reaping the sentences matured by the muse of desire, taking your clothes off with words, and exposing yourself in the rhythm of the stanzas so that you can hold your passport and cross the borders of linguistic solitudes, emigrating from ideographic to alphabetic.

No, it’s not like that. English is not your mother tongue. It remains an unmastered means of deciphering the musings of your mind and heart, and it is constantly intruded upon and twisted with inflections from the old language. Oftentimes, 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.

Even if you find the right words to reflect your feelings, you are not skilled at weaving these words into sentences, freeing your thoughts from inertia. The words simply become the isolated cries of a wandering soul clutching desperately at your heart. Why believe you can write verse in English, whose music is not natural to you?


English, your anguish,
gives you misty eyes, with which
you write verse in english.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Reading and Writing: Life on the Page


Why believe you can write verse in English? (Contemporary Haibun -- Japanese Prose Poem)

To write verse in English is not like growing ideograms inside your heart, reaping the sentences matured by the muse of desire, taking your clothes off with words, and exposing yourself in the rhythm of the stanzas so that you can hold your passport and cross the borders of linguistic solitudes, emigrating from ideographic to alphabetic.

No, it’s not like that. English is not your mother tongue. It remains an unmastered means of deciphering the musings of your mind and heart, and it is constantly intruded upon and twisted with inflections from the old language. Oftentimes, 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.

Even if you find the right words to reflect your feelings, you are not skilled at weaving these words into sentences, freeing your thoughts from inertia. The words simply become the isolated cries of a wandering soul clutching desperately at your heart. Why believe you can write verse in English, whose music is not natural to you?


English, your anguish,
gives you misty eyes, with which
you write verse in english.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

Why believe you can write verse in English,
whose music is not natural to you?

These two lines are taken from A Free Life by Ha Jin:


You have been misled by your folly,
determined to follow the footsteps of Conrad
and Nabokov. You have forgotten
they were white Europeans.
Remember your yellow face
and your puny talent—unlikely
to make you a late bloomer.
Why believe you can write verse in English,
whose music is not natural to you?
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Why believe you can write verse in English,
whose music is not natural to you?

These two lines are taken from A Free Life by Ha Jin:


You have been misled by your folly,
determined to follow the footsteps of Conrad
and Nabokov. You have forgotten
they were white Europeans.
Remember your yellow face
and your puny talent—unlikely
to make you a late bloomer.
Why believe you can write verse in English,
whose music is not natural to you?
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Champagne]

[[Champagne]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[温暖的水獸]

[[温暖的水獸]]

[Lake]

I have to admit even when I write in my mother tongue, my words fail me let alone to write in a foreign language. But, but, I still write verses though not in good English.


English, your anguish,
gives you misty eyes, with which
you write in english.

[[Lake]]

I have to admit even when I write in my mother tongue, my words fail me let alone to write in a foreign language. But, but, I still write verses though not in good English.


English, your anguish,
gives you misty eyes, with which
you write in english.

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

The following are the replies from my poet friends at Wild Poetry Forum:

Chen-ou, your studies have reflected very well upon you and I enjoyed your prose poem very much. I've always wanted to know what it was like from the other side. I have noticed that you are very precise.
-- Kathryn

I will echo the words of others and say how eloquent you are. You are too critical and don't see that you articulate your thoughts well in any language and I can only imagine were i able to read your thoughts in your native tongue how much closer I might get to the source--but I don't feel there is any deficiency because the truth is, the essence of someone's being, can be conveyed with even a rudimentary understanding of another language. I see it often.

-- emusing
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

The following are the replies from my poet friends at Wild Poetry Forum:

Chen-ou, your studies have reflected very well upon you and I enjoyed your prose poem very much. I've always wanted to know what it was like from the other side. I have noticed that you are very precise.
-- Kathryn

I will echo the words of others and say how eloquent you are. You are too critical and don't see that you articulate your thoughts well in any language and I can only imagine were i able to read your thoughts in your native tongue how much closer I might get to the source--but I don't feel there is any deficiency because the truth is, the essence of someone's being, can be conveyed with even a rudimentary understanding of another language. I see it often.

-- emusing
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Lake]

hoho, "Just remember never to underestimate yourself, it can sometimes prove to be just as detrimental as overestimation." This is what my friend said to me when he invited me to post in their Experienced section. I appreciate his words and think what he said suits you as well.

[[Lake]]

hoho, "Just remember never to underestimate yourself, it can sometimes prove to be just as detrimental as overestimation." This is what my friend said to me when he invited me to post in their Experienced section. I appreciate his words and think what he said suits you as well.

[ericcoliu]

Hi! Lake:

Thanks for your insightful advice.

This piece mainly grew out of my on-going struggle with learning English and was my response to Ha Jin's view of the language issue explored in immigrant literature, an issue which, strangely enough, is seldom discussed by my fellow writers at English Garden.

For Ha Jin, the most important work of immigrant literature is Nabokov's Pnin, which, as he said, "deals with the question of language, and I think that's at the core of the immigrant experience: how to learn the language--or give up learning the language!--but without the absolute mastery of the language, which is impossible for an immigrant. Your life is always affected by the insufficiency."


In an afterword to Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov concludes with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940:

"My private tragedy, …… is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammelled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Hi! Lake:

Thanks for your insightful advice.

This piece mainly grew out of my on-going struggle with learning English and was my response to Ha Jin's view of the language issue explored in immigrant literature, an issue which, strangely enough, is seldom discussed by my fellow writers at English Garden.

For Ha Jin, the most important work of immigrant literature is Nabokov's Pnin, which, as he said, "deals with the question of language, and I think that's at the core of the immigrant experience: how to learn the language--or give up learning the language!--but without the absolute mastery of the language, which is impossible for an immigrant. Your life is always affected by the insufficiency."


In an afterword to Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov concludes with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940:

"My private tragedy, …… is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammelled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[川生]

[[川生]]

[川生]

[[川生]]

[川生]

[[川生]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]