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

Saturday, November 1, 2014

A Poet and His Reader(s), A Haibun

Attic Diary
with a pen tucked in the spine
the touch of moonlight

Sitting at his coffee-stained desk, I turn to the page where he left behind:

The know-it-all editor detailed places in red ink where she found the haibun loaded with hazy semantics, or where they suffered from what she called etymological fog. And she emphasized that the Craft of sketching lived experiences is Flaubertian W...

Work? But what will be left of a poet's life in the end? Published poems. An unfinished manuscript. Jotted thoughts shifting and transient as skin cells.

words, always words ...
his right hand grasping
in the cold air

Cattails, 3, 2014
World Haibun Anthology