Chen-ou Liu's Translation Project: First English-Chinese Haiku and Tanka Blog

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Nostalgia Tanka

mid-autumn night…
the wind whispers to me
Chinese words
that offer me a home
in the shape of a moon


Tanka First Place
2011 San Francisco International Competition Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and Rengay
Reprinted in Mariposa
Anthologized in Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, 4, 2012

Judge's Comment: The originality of the images coupled with the evocative sense of ‘stranger in a strange land’ merited a 1st Place award. The first two lines appear to lead to a traditional path. The third line is the turning point that brings this tanka to the next level. The fourth and fifth lines complete the journey. After reading this tanka I found myself looking at the moon with new eyes and listening to the language of the wind.

Relationship Tanka

her toothbrush
in my medicine chest
declares residency…
gazing at the mirror
a face hard to recognize


2011 San Francisco International Competition Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and Rengay
Reprinted in Mariposa

Judge's Comment: The apparently effortless humor of the poet adds lightness to this tanka and makes it stand out from other submissions. But there is something more: a conflict present in the last two lines. This tanka led me toward another reading of Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara. For this I thank the poet.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A Day and Eternity

day carries me through
night takes me beyond
between day and night
I float among words

hope locks me up
angst sets me free
outside hope and angst
I wander through poems


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 211

Monday, December 26, 2011

Shadow Kill

Drinking alone by moonlight.
Shadow, I miss us having the time
to talk everything to death

like we used to under the sun.


He says nothing, staring at the moon.
Then I club his head, slit his throat
pull forth the guts, tear the body
into pieces through which I wade.


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Sunday, December 25, 2011

A Tanka

long day's work...
the Chinese takeout brings
the steamy smell
from Mom's Taiwan kitchen
to my Ajax attic


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Friday, December 23, 2011

Loneliness Tanka

another holiday ...
I'm alone in the attic
with a fly
battering itself restlessly
against the sunlit window


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Autumn Tanka

startled pigeons
fill the autumn sky...
thoughts of her
dart across my mind
like tongues of fire


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Thursday, December 22, 2011

A Tanka

with the rope
of my unpublished poems
I hang myself
in a rooming house
filled with windowless nights


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Moon Tanka

hunter's moon
rises over the attic
night blankets
my fallen dreams...
their twisted mutters


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

A Tanka about Writing

like a silkworm
spinning its cocoon
I wrap
my grief-stricken heart
with words and imagery


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

A Monostich

cutting the cord I let my poem breathe alone

Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 211

You Are My Resting Place: A Tanka Prose

Tomorrow, my birthday, age of forty. Shut in the attic. My shadow swaying back and forth on the wall.

for the moon alone

waiting in drunken silence ...
His shadow
springs beside me
in every memory

Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Monday, December 12, 2011

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Butterfly Haiku

butterflies mating
on the basement window ledge...
alone with my thoughts


Writer’s Digest (Dec. 5, 2011)

Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, and Communally

In less than six months, Frogpond published two articles1 relating to "déjà-ku"2 experiences that six prominent poets shared (see the poem texts below).3 In his article titled "Bull Kelp," Christopher Herold emphasized that "there are myriad instances of poets tapping into the same sources of inspiration. Resulting poems may be nearly identical… [It's] simply poets attuning themselves to what's going on around them."4 In his article titled "Two and Two," John Stevenson gave similar emphasis that "this phenomenon is all about paired experience and similar expressions… I would say that we independently hit upon a means of expressing a perception that many others must have shared."5 Editor George Swede added a note to the article to share his own déjà-ku experience. In his reply to Swede's enquiry regarding the similarity between their haiku, Jim Kacian stressed that "[my haiku] was taken from life… given the same input and some similar ideas about form, it's not terribly surprising that we might arrive at much the same poem."6

Although recognizing that there are differences between their haiku, both poets give little space in the articles to technical analysis of their poems. As he mentioned in the article, Stevenson at first wanted to withdraw his poem from publication. It's because "it's quite clear that [her haiku] was both written and published before mine and the natural thing to do would be to withdraw mine."7 Later, he felt relieved when Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck said she didn't want him to withdraw his haiku.8 The Heron's Nest published his poem. However, we all know that it's more usual for the editor to withdraw the later poem due to lack of "originality or freshness." Most importantly, if the poet who wrote the later similar poem offers no sufficient reasons to prove that he wrote it by himself, he will run the risk of being criticized for using someone else's idea or imagery.

In her note to Herold, Connie Donleycott stated that "I had no way of knowing about the other poem, but, because the other poet's was published, I felt mine would come across as a copy."9 Her fear of unknowingly writing similar haiku is not unusual–it's a common fear among haiku poets. Over the past year, I've had several lengthy discussions on déjà-ku with other poets. Throughout those discussions, the recurring words or phrases were "not the first," "similar or same," "not original or fresh," and "has been done." I was surprised by most of my fellow poets who considered the Western concept of originality timeless and universal, and who showed little interest in understanding the Japanese concept of originality or newness and its use of honkadori or allusion while at the same time praising the haiku, most of which are highly allusive, written by Japanese haiku masters.10

Of those similar haiku mentioned above, Stevenson's is most "problematic." His first two lines are identical to Mooney-Ellerbeck's except with "…" at the end of line two. As he stressed in the article, "the nearly exact wording of our first two lines is, indeed, striking."11 But, the most important thing about these two haiku is the differences, tonal and thematic, marked by their distinctly juxtaposed images. Reflecting upon the same phenomenon ("more darkness/ more stars"), Stevenson added "autumn begins" as the concluding line to signify a process of the decaying of life, which is initiated by Mother Nature. What he did with his haiku is not merely to add a seasonal reference, but to show the destructive force of nature; more importantly, in the connotative contexts of the opening image and of the compositional occasion,12 this seasonal reference could be read to prefigure a tragic loss of life. Therefore, we as readers are fortunate to have an opportunity to read this beautifully-crafted and heartfelt poem, which is thematically and tonally different from its predecessor poem. Both poets use the same opening image, but if their haiku are read slowly and repeatedly, these differences will emerge.

The only and most important problem I have with these two articles and those discussions relating to déjà-ku is the unexamined concept of originality. Historically speaking, since the post-Enlightenment, the passion for uniqueness and originality has become the main criteria for art works. Poetry viewed as an "original expression of individual creativity is a recurring definition shared by many Romantic poets."13 Individual imagination and creativity has been theorized to represent a high value in literary criticism. This view is well-explored in Forest Pyle's influential book, The Ideology of Imagination: Subject and Society in the Discourse of Romanticism. Today, high poetic value placed upon originality remains ingrained in the Western literary culture. This fear of unknowingly writing similar haiku or the reluctance or disuse of allusion proves that Thomas Mallon's remark still holds true: the poets live under the "fearful legacy of the Romantics."14 Could those poets or editors who are constantly worried about "not being original or fresh" imagine that a poet deliberately using a direct quote as the first two lines of his haiku can achieve a great poem?

The following haiku is written by Katoh Shuuson (or Kato Shuson; 1905-1993), haiku poet and leader of the humanist school that seeks the truths of human existence through the poetic means of haiku, and who is "known for his scholarly and poetic appreciations of the great classic haijin, notably Matsuo Basho:"15

Japanese Original:

hakutai-no kakaku shingari-ni neko-no ko-mo


English Translation:

the days and months travelers
through a hundred generations
kitten tags along

Trans. by Dhugal J. Lindsay16

On a denotative level, this haiku speaks of two types of movement: one is temporal, and the other spatial; one is portrayed in a metaphorical language, and the other a literal one. The juxtaposition of these two parts of the poem stirs the reader's reflection on temporal awareness and consciousness, and it reminds me of one of the thematic foci described in "Book XI" of Confessions, in which St. Augustine explores the relationship between God's timelessness and his creation's experience of time. Most importantly, the image juxtaposed with the first two lines – the Existentialist statement on time as the traveler – is an innocent, uninvited, kitten, offsetting the unbearable heaviness of its preceding lines and thus creating some sort of a comic-tragic effect. It further stirs up the reader's emotions about and reflection on the absence of human beings in the poem. This haiku is brilliantly written and its suggestive power relies on the thematic gap between the two parts of the poem. It can definitely stand on its own without the reader's extra/inter-textual knowledge.

On a connotative level, the first two lines of this haiku are a direct quote from the opening line of the first haibun in Basho's travelogue, The Narrow Road to the Interior, one that is followed by "and the years that come and go are also travelers."17 Read in the context of Basho's travelogue, the opening haibun is the most important section of the work that determines the theme, tone, movement, and goals.18 It also describes multiple departures – "the hermit-poet's philosophical departure from a particular way of life and his actual physical departure from the hermitage, a symbol of life he abandons."19

The haibun was written in the first person perspective, and Basho stressed that "[many] in the past also died while traveling. In which year it was I do not recall, but I, too, began to be lured by the wind like a fragmentary cloud and have since been unable to resist wanderlust, roaming out to the seashores."20 According to Hiroaki Sato, "many in the past" might refer to Japanese poets, such as Saigyo and Sogi, and Chinese poets, such as, Li Po and Tu Fu, who all died while traveling.21 More importantly, Basho's opening lines allude to a popular piece, the preface to "Holding a Banquet in the Peach and Pear Garden on a Spring Night," written by Chinese poet Li Po.22 They are almost a literal translation into Japanese of Li Po's lines, except that " one Chinese term, using the compound tsukihi (month and days, moon and sun, or time) [is] in place of [Li Po's] koin (day and night, light and darkness, or time)."23 Unlike his contemporaries, such as Ihara Saikaku and Oyodo Michikaze, both of whom used a direct quote,24 Basho changed koin to tsukihi. It's because tsukihi brings to the Japanese reader's mind "more concrete and vivid images of the moon and sun with all the connotations the two carry in the Japanese poetic tradition."25 In the haibun, Basho established a poetic-interpersonal relationship with the ancients, one that reveals his sense of rootedness.

Shuuson, unlike his poetic forefather Basho, used a direct quote written in modern Japanese from Basho's famous haibun, and subtly showed the tonal difference between his quoted line and Basho's original.26 And he wrote his haiku from a perspective of an objective observer. There is no human figure in the haiku. What we see is just a cute kitten unaware of the passage of time, tagging along the procession of the days and months as travelers. The psycho-philosophical impact of the inner tension and thematic gap is brought about by the sharp contrast between the two parts of the poem.

For attentive Japanese readers, Shuuson's haiku is fresh and original in terms of his skillful use of a haikai twist through honkadori that parodies the existential themes of death and of the transience of life explored in Basho's work. When they encounter his poem, they read it slowly, repeatedly and communally. Unlike modern English-language haiku, "which [are] often monologic, a single voice describing or responding to a scene or experience,"27 the haiku Shuuson wrote was mainly situated in a communal setting and dialogic responses to earlier poems by other poets. "The brevity of the [haiku] is in fact possible because each poem is implicitly part of a massive, communally shared poem."28 More importantly, it was until the post-Enlightenment that this non-individualist/communal concept of poetry began to be less known to the poets who were brought up in the Western literary culture.29 In his influential book, titled The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, Harold Bloom particularly mentions Shelley's speculations that: "poets of all ages contributed to one Great Poem perpetually in progress."30 Like Japanese poets, Shelley viewed poetry as a collective enterprise.

Veteran haiku poet and editor Cor van den Heuvel gives an incisive explanation about these perspective differences between Japanese poets and "Western-minded" poets who are worried about not being original or fresh: "If a haiku is a good one, it doesn't matter if the subject has been used before. The writing of variations on certain subjects in haiku, sometimes using the same or similar phrases (or even changing a few words of a previous haiku), is one of the most interesting challenges the genre offers a poet and can result in refreshingly different ways of 'seeing anew' for the reader. This is an aspect of traditional Japanese haiku which is hard for many Westerners, with their ideas of uniqueness and Romantic individualism, to accept. But some of the most original voices in haiku do not hesitate to dare to seem derivative if they see a way of reworking an 'old' image."31

The passage quoted above is used as the concluding paragraph of Michael Dylan Welch's essay that appeared in Simply Haiku wherein he introduced his self-coined phrase, déjà-ku. However, the challenge he poses in the end of the essay has not yet been taken up. Isn't it time for us as readers and writers of Japanese haiku to broaden our poetic horizons and consider deepening our poetry through re-examining our perception of originality? In closing, consider the remark by professor Haruo Shirane about Basho's view of haiku writing:

"[The] poet had to work along both axes: to work only in the present would result in poetry that was fleeting; to work just in the past, on the other hand, would be to fall out of touch with the fundamental nature of haikai, which was rooted in the everyday world." 32

Notes:

1 Christopher Herold, "Bull Kelp," Frogpond, 33:3, (Fall 2010), pp. 71-3; John Stevenson, "Two and Two," Frogpond, 34:2, (Spring/Summer 2011), pp. 93-5.

2 Déjà-ku was self-coined by Michael Dylan Welch to describe the haiku that "bear some relationship to other poems. These relationships are good in some cases, such as parody, homage, and allusion, and not good in other cases, such as plagiarism, cryptomnesia (remembering someone else's poem without realizing that one is remembering rather than creating it), and simply being too similar or insufficiently fresh or original." See Michael Dylan Welch, "An Introduction to Déjà-ku," Simply Haiku, Vol. 2, No.4 (July/August, 2004), http://bit.ly/ez70RO

3 There are two poets included in Editor's Note. The haiku in the articles are as follows;

sickle moon
a boy whips the sea
with bull kelp

~ Christopher Herold

wind in my hair
a boy tames the sea
with bull kelp

~ Connie Donleycott

more darkness
more stars
moving on

~ Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck

more darkness
more stars ...
autumn begins

~ John Stevenson

spring breeze
the dog runs
in its sleep

~ Jim Kacian

warm spring breeze
the old hound runs
in his sleep

~ George Swede


4 See Herold, p. 73.

5 See Stevenson, p. 93-4.

6 Ibid., p. 95.

7 Ibid., p. 94.

8 Ibid.

9 See Herold, p. 73.

10 For further information on these issues, see Chen-ou Liu, "The Ripples from a Splash: A Generic Analysis of Basho's Frog Haiku" and "Waking from Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream – Plagiarism or Honkadori," Ripples from a Splash: A Collection of Haiku Essays with Award-Winning Haiku, Ajax, Ontario: A Room of My Own Press, April 2011, pp. 51-73.

11 See Stevenson, p. 94.

12 Ibid.

13 Jessica Millen, "Romantic Creativity and the Ideal of Originality: A Contextual Analysis," Cross-sections: The Bruce Hall Academic Journal, Vol. VI, 2010, p. 91.

14 Thomas Mallon, Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism, New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989.

15 James Kirkup, "Obituary: Shuson Kato," The Independent, 10 July 1993, http://ind.pn/nZPQFo

16 Kaneko Tohta, "Selected Haiku," the Haiku International Association website, http://bit.ly/qkYXrK

17 Hiroaki Sato, trans., Basho's Narrow Road: Spring & Autumn Passages: Two Works by Basho Matsuo, Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 1996, p. 41

18 Eleanor Kerkham, "And Us Too Enclosed in Mori Atsushi's "Ware Mo Mata, Oku no Hosomichi"Matsuo Basho's Poetic Spaces: Exploring Haikai Intersections, Eleanor Kerkham, ed., New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 188.

19 Ibid.

20 See Sato, p. 41.

21 Ibid., p. 40.

22 Ibid.

23 See Kerkham, p. 189.

24 Ibid., p. 197.

25 Ibid., p. 189.

26 See Tohta.

27 Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 15.

28 Ibid., p. 27.

29 Forest Pyle, The Ideology of Imagination: Subject and Society in the Discourse of Romanticism, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995.

30 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 19.

31 Cor van den Heuvel, ed., The Haiku Anthology: Haiku and Senryu in English, New York: W.W. Norton, 1999, p. ix-x. In fact, "Michel Foucault (1977, 115) has argued that the entire concept of artist or author as an original instigator of meaning is only a privileged moment of individualization in the history of art." See Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985. p. 4.

32 Haruo Shirane, "Beyond the Haiku Moment: Basho, Buson and Modern Haiku Myths", Modern Haiku, XXXI:1 (Winter/Spring 2000), accessed at http://bit.ly/CckuN.

A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

Thursday, December 8, 2011

A Haiku Noir

last night’s
distant howling follows me...
a column of smoke


Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Dream Haiku

English Original:

waking to
the scent of jasmine rice . . .
a dream?


Croatian Translation:

budim se
uz miris jasminovog pirinča...
je li to samo san?


Haiku Reality, Vol.8, No. 15, Winter 2011
(Editor's Favorite)
Per Diem Haiku (March 13, 2012)

Recession Haiku

ten storefronts for sale –
Neighborhood Watch sign dangling
by a piece of wire


Writer’s Digest (Dec. 2, 2011)

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Moon Haiku

between you and me
a departing Amtrak train…
autumn moon waning


Writer’s Digest (Dec. 2, 2011)

Reining in My Memories: A Haibun

waking in Toronto
after a long sleep
in Taipei

I sit at the window watching rain splash against the glass and pound the pavement. It’s falling so forcefully that the rose in my front yard bows low, its petals scattered on the ground.

In Taipei, where I grew up, we called this the “Plum Rain Season” because it comes when the plums are ripening. There it rains for three to four weeks.

As a child, I would sit by the screen door and enjoy seeing people rush along the puddled road, their coats over their heads, the rainwater splashing up in a dense spray. Watching these sights and sounds from inside my warm house somehow made me feel safe and secure.

left in my bowl
a few grains

of rice

A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

Monday, December 5, 2011

A Haiku

back to where I live…
hometown memories drifting
with cherry petals


Writer’s Digest (Dec. 2, 2011)

Moon Haiku

Moon Festival
alone, I whisper to myself
in my mother tongue


Editor's Comment: "Moon Festival" is an ancient Chinese cultural event occurring on the 15th of the 8th lunar month; the festival is a millennium-old festival, dating back to 2000 years ago. Different regions or groups of people have different ways to celebrate the festival. Generally speaking, it is mainly a night for family sharing time. Today, it is celebrated sometime between the second week of September and the first week of October. Chinese culture is deeply imbedded in traditional festivals; in the West traditions like Thanksgiving and Christmas are culturally similar in tenor to Eastern traditions like the Moon Festival. The celebration has many aspects. It is a very poetic and elegant celebration—people place ornaments and offerings next to windows, on verandas, and in other places where the moon can be seen in conjunction with items like vases filled with pampas grass and autumnal herbs—people prepare seasonal foods like dumplings, pears, persimmons, and grapes. Moon Festival is an occasion for family reunions, similar to the family events associated with an American (Western) Thanksgiving and / or Christmas. When the full moon rises, families get together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes and sing moon poems (World Haiku Data Base).

The kigo, “Moon Festival” is laden with cultural meaning—and much of that meaning may be obscure to readers unfamiliar with Chinese traditions. In Chen-ou Liu’s haiku the kigo “Moon Festival” is a simplistic statement with a rich cultural message; that message is one of the advantages of haijian who use kigo. The kigo found in a saijiki have been selected because they, in a word or two, express volumes of meaning. In her World Haiku Data Base Dr. Gabi Greve has collected the information above about “Moon Festival”. …And in employing this kigo Chen-ou Liu is expressing the sentiments in a millennium of Chinese cultural custom. In the world of haiku, kigo carries out a rhetorical function that Western writers call understatement—a figure of speech in which a writer / speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is. The direct and denotative kigo statement, “Moon Festival”, shows restraint and a lack of emphasis, when in point of fact the phrase is an understatement that really conveys a host of implied and connotative details expressed in the previous paragraph. The kigo is the most important element in this haiku and it is balanced against the second most important element, the word “alone”. In this haiku the narrator finds himself in a painful situation on this family occasion—he is “alone”, isolated from the meaningful events and occasions of his past. These two elements of this haiku offer a contrast of the past with the present—and the two situations are painfully different. Through understatement Chen-ou Liu displays a severe contrast between the descriptive details of what usually takes place during a “Moon Festival” and what in reality is taking place for the narrator on this particular “Moon Festival”—he is alone. His subsequent action: “I whisper to myself / in my mother tongue” is a second understated event. He “whispers” and his chosen expression is “in my mother tongue” a language he probably no longer uses for daily communication, having had to learn a new language because the environment in which he lives does not use his “mother tongue” for communication. This haiku uses simple language embedded in a complex structure; this haiku is a memorable example of restraint in artistic expression. Through understatement the reader comes to comprehend what is not being said directly and understands the pain the narrator is experiencing.

Moon Tanka

finally
her promised letter arrives
from afar—
in my bedroom mirror
pieces of the winter moon


A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Loneliness Tanka

barbecue smoke
curls around the window...
watching TV
I've a precooked meal
on this night of fireworks


A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

Saturday, December 3, 2011

A Tanka

a desk, suit, and tie
are precisely the things
you need now...
his razor-sharp words cut
the smugness from my face


A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

(Editor's Choice Tanka, whose first line is used as the section title)

Friday, December 2, 2011

Moon Haiku

For Christa Wolf(18 March 1929 – 1 December 2011)
slanted moonlight
on The Quest for Christa T. ...

wailing siren


World Kigo Database (Christa Wolf)

Note: Christa Wolf was one of Germany's most influential postwar writers, and her works have chronicled life in the former East Germany. She built her literary reputation with Divided Heaven, and The Quest for Christa T. successfully explored the tension between the harsh demands of society and the unquenchable desire of the protagonist for individuality.

Snow Haiku

snowy night
drinking tea
from my hometown


The Heron’s Nest, XIII:4, December 2011

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Book Review of My Chapbook

A Hundred Gourds just published Book Review: Following the Moon to the Maple Land by John McManus, British poet and Expositions Editor

The following is an excerpt:

As you can tell from the poem Chen-ou's move from [Taiwan] to Canada has left him feeling trapped between the opposing cultures of his past and his present.

the bat
flitting here and there . . .
Chen-ou or Eric

wordless
in my borrowed tongue
plum blossoms

In the first poem Liu tries to find a way out of his cultural dislocation by giving himself a new English name, but in the second poem he demonstrates how despite his efforts he still feels very much an outsider in his adopted home.

an African man
holds out his hands . . .
snowflakes

Here Liu identifies with another traveller and skilfully captures a profound moment of their experience in a land which is harsh but beautiful.

to tell or not to tell the secret day moon

See the full text here, A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

A Day: A Haibun

November sky
framed by the basement window
thoughts of home

The ceiling still water stained. A pile of poetry books on the desk. None with my name on it. Yet my life harms no one—no wife . . . no pets.

Today, on my forty eighth birthday, no one calls.

Haibun Today, 5:4, December 2011