酷我-北美枫

[anna]

We take a walk and go further
down another block
until we meet a pomegranate tree.

A quiet neighborhood.
You say.
But my thoughts run away to the kissing fish.

Last night I saw them for sale,
and the water was cold.

The weather is beautiful.
You continue.

I stop to watch pomegranates
fall to the ground.
Their skins crack, red seeds like tips of lit-up cigarettes.

My lips wet like the kissing fish.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

We take a walk and go further
down another block
until we meet a pomegranate tree.

A quiet neighborhood.
You say.
But my thoughts run away to the kissing fish.

Last night I saw them for sale,
and the water was cold.

The weather is beautiful.
You continue.

I stop to watch pomegranates
fall to the ground.
Their skins crack, red seeds like tips of lit-up cigarettes.

My lips wet like the kissing fish.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

From Brad:

Lima said "You don't meet a tree, not even in poetic license ".

I could not, myself, be so declarative about this. I feel -- now that this statement has made me reflect -- that I have met some fine trees in my time.

If they are entities rather than objects (I submit that they are), then one can meet them.

This worked for me. The narrator is at once more distant (part of her mind goes away to fish she saw last night) and present in the moment (seen in her attention to the pomegranates and especially in wet lips) than her companion. This is a complex emotional stance, and it's brought off rather deftly.

I also noticed how utterly conventional the companion's remarks are, set beside the quirky and endearing consciousness of the narrator. This gives the piece poignancy: is there a chance that this kind of narrator will find an answering spirit in a world of banality?
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

From Brad:

Lima said "You don't meet a tree, not even in poetic license ".

I could not, myself, be so declarative about this. I feel -- now that this statement has made me reflect -- that I have met some fine trees in my time.

If they are entities rather than objects (I submit that they are), then one can meet them.

This worked for me. The narrator is at once more distant (part of her mind goes away to fish she saw last night) and present in the moment (seen in her attention to the pomegranates and especially in wet lips) than her companion. This is a complex emotional stance, and it's brought off rather deftly.

I also noticed how utterly conventional the companion's remarks are, set beside the quirky and endearing consciousness of the narrator. This gives the piece poignancy: is there a chance that this kind of narrator will find an answering spirit in a world of banality?
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

From Glas

I will second the motion- trees and mountains, rivers stones all can be met. - read the end of Siddhartha. I would think though that you lips would be wet LIKE those of the kissing fish. Your images are quirky and interesting and the contrast between the two people wonderful.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

From Glas

I will second the motion- trees and mountains, rivers stones all can be met. - read the end of Siddhartha. I would think though that you lips would be wet LIKE those of the kissing fish. Your images are quirky and interesting and the contrast between the two people wonderful.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

From Lima

Sure you can meet a tree, nothing is impossible. It just depends on how high you are, and how good your stuff is.

This is something I have composed especially for the occasion-
it is called Meeting the Tree and is dedicated to all my friends,


Along my path,
I met many obstacles,
high mountains and deep gorges,
and every one of them
recognized me from a previous voyage.
But, avoiding my glance,
and ignoring my presence,
the blossoming cherry tree looked away
as I approached the high point where it stood.
Yet, we were formally introduced
when it was no more than a green bush
with trunk, leaves and branches,
but lacking the white and pink
adornments of spring.


It would have come out better if I were not sober.

Best,
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

From Lima

Sure you can meet a tree, nothing is impossible. It just depends on how high you are, and how good your stuff is.

This is something I have composed especially for the occasion-
it is called Meeting the Tree and is dedicated to all my friends,


Along my path,
I met many obstacles,
high mountains and deep gorges,
and every one of them
recognized me from a previous voyage.
But, avoiding my glance,
and ignoring my presence,
the blossoming cherry tree looked away
as I approached the high point where it stood.
Yet, we were formally introduced
when it was no more than a green bush
with trunk, leaves and branches,
but lacking the white and pink
adornments of spring.


It would have come out better if I were not sober.

Best,
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

From Glas,

I will still believe the speaker in the poem meets a tree- the difference between her and her companion is in the quirky, surreal view of the world and the everyday world he sees. Each to their own point of view I have to greet the sun.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

From Glas,

I will still believe the speaker in the poem meets a tree- the difference between her and her companion is in the quirky, surreal view of the world and the everyday world he sees. Each to their own point of view I have to greet the sun.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

From Bernie:

A---

i've given you my favorable impression of the poem elsewhere.

I agree very strongly with BradGrad.

i understand the poem just fine, grammar based revisions need not apply this time.


this poem is best viewed on a scroll in the heart, not a big screen at the sing a long bar.





Ha Jin is the stage name of our IBPC poem of the year judge---2008-2009.

here, he too writes of a pomegranate:


Quote:
Pomegranates

Ha Jin


Another rain will burst them —
they will grin, full of teeth,
through the tiny leaves

that used to hide them away.
I'll take a photo of my pomegranates
for you, the only one

I care to show. Like others
you craved the fruit
so much you overlooked

the crimson blossoms wounded
by worms and winds.
You could not imagine

some of them would swell
into such heavy pride.
I can tell you, they are sour.


bernie
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

From Bernie:

A---

i've given you my favorable impression of the poem elsewhere.

I agree very strongly with BradGrad.

i understand the poem just fine, grammar based revisions need not apply this time.


this poem is best viewed on a scroll in the heart, not a big screen at the sing a long bar.





Ha Jin is the stage name of our IBPC poem of the year judge---2008-2009.

here, he too writes of a pomegranate:


Quote:
Pomegranates

Ha Jin


Another rain will burst them —
they will grin, full of teeth,
through the tiny leaves

that used to hide them away.
I'll take a photo of my pomegranates
for you, the only one

I care to show. Like others
you craved the fruit
so much you overlooked

the crimson blossoms wounded
by worms and winds.
You could not imagine

some of them would swell
into such heavy pride.
I can tell you, they are sour.


bernie
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

A---



did you tell me you like emily dickinson? if so i will post a great poem of hers---a wonderful poet from Kashmir, living in the US from his homeland---like you---used the poem as a beginning to one of his---


Agha Shahid Ali loved moonlight. Dead now nine years, brain cancer in his 50’s---

in "Stationery," he spoke to his reader:

Quote:
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
In great sheets, reams
Of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
The day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.



"The Jogger on Riverside Drive, 5:00 a.m."

The dark scissors of his legs
Cut the moon's
Raw silk, highways of wind
Torn into lanes...
Has left his body.

In "The Dacca Gauzes," he recalled that fine lost silk, the amputation of the weavers' hands, his grandmother's memories. The poem begins,


Quote:
Those transparent Dacca gauzes
Known as woven air, running
Water, evening dew:
A dead art now, dead over
A hundred years. "No one
now knows," my grandmother says,
"what it was to wear
or touch that cloth."...
And the poem ends:
In history we learned: the hands
Of weavers were amputated,
The looms of Bengal silenced,
And the cotton shipped raw
By the British to England.
History of little use to her,
My grandmother just says
How the muslins of today
Seems so coarse and that only
In autumn, should one wake up
At dawn to pray, can one
Feel that same texture again.
One morning, she says, the air
Was dew-starched: she pulled
It absently through her ring.


Back to top


annayin



Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 364

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 9:45 am Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bernie,

Yes. Yes!

Beautiful. Really. Thank you! I also like Sylvia Plath.

I do not fear if you throw me to the ditch again.

Bernie, I wrote another poem as the soul of the tree's voice, still throw me to ditch? (I changed the first line...)

To meet a pomegranate tree

They debate whether they can meet her,
I keep silent, listen to my veins rise.
My long curved hair fly in all directions,
They never know I am the tree to meet.

The red seeds in her spend enough time
waiting for a harvest, now skin cracking,
they grin to their new adventure.

But I hesitate on her welcomed branches,
as if my roots grasp the deep soil,
cry upon her fleeting rapture.



Anna Yin
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

A---



did you tell me you like emily dickinson? if so i will post a great poem of hers---a wonderful poet from Kashmir, living in the US from his homeland---like you---used the poem as a beginning to one of his---


Agha Shahid Ali loved moonlight. Dead now nine years, brain cancer in his 50’s---

in "Stationery," he spoke to his reader:

Quote:
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
In great sheets, reams
Of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
The day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.



"The Jogger on Riverside Drive, 5:00 a.m."

The dark scissors of his legs
Cut the moon's
Raw silk, highways of wind
Torn into lanes...
Has left his body.

In "The Dacca Gauzes," he recalled that fine lost silk, the amputation of the weavers' hands, his grandmother's memories. The poem begins,


Quote:
Those transparent Dacca gauzes
Known as woven air, running
Water, evening dew:
A dead art now, dead over
A hundred years. "No one
now knows," my grandmother says,
"what it was to wear
or touch that cloth."...
And the poem ends:
In history we learned: the hands
Of weavers were amputated,
The looms of Bengal silenced,
And the cotton shipped raw
By the British to England.
History of little use to her,
My grandmother just says
How the muslins of today
Seems so coarse and that only
In autumn, should one wake up
At dawn to pray, can one
Feel that same texture again.
One morning, she says, the air
Was dew-starched: she pulled
It absently through her ring.


Back to top


annayin



Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 364

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 9:45 am Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bernie,

Yes. Yes!

Beautiful. Really. Thank you! I also like Sylvia Plath.

I do not fear if you throw me to the ditch again.

Bernie, I wrote another poem as the soul of the tree's voice, still throw me to ditch? (I changed the first line...)

To meet a pomegranate tree

They debate whether they can meet her,
I keep silent, listen to my veins rise.
My long curved hair fly in all directions,
They never know I am the tree to meet.

The red seeds in her spend enough time
waiting for a harvest, now skin cracking,
they grin to their new adventure.

But I hesitate on her welcomed branches,
as if my roots grasp the deep soil,
cry upon her fleeting rapture.



Anna Yin
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

Published on zine.

http://whyarewenotinparadise.com/?p=682
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Published on zine.

http://whyarewenotinparadise.com/?p=682
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com