Selected Haiku: Autumn Twilight Haiku

autumn twilight... 
the shadow reaches farther
than my next step

Haiku Reality, 5, 2010

Selected Haiku: Grassy Fields Haiku

grassy fields...
nothing stands between me
and the sun

Portuguese Translation by Henrique Pimenta

verdinho o campo

nadinha entre mim

e o sol

Serbian Translation by Saša Važić

travnata polja...

ničega između mene

i sunca

Third Choice, Best of Issue, Haiku Reality, 5, 2010

Editors' Comments:

Both an'ya and I [Jasminka Nadaškić-Đorđević] agreed on this haiku by Chen-ou Liu for our Third Favorite. Here is one simple picture, everybody can imagine, or remember, or feel it. This is one great moment when man, as the only one in the world, can feel only nature around him and inside. — Jaca & an'ya.

I an'ya i ja smo se složile da ovom haiku Čen-ou Lia dodelimo treće mesto. Evo jednostavne slike, koju svako može da zamisli ili oseti. To je odlično opisan trenutak u kome čovek, kao jedani na svetu, može da oseti samo prirodu oko sebe i u sebi. — Jaca i an'ya.

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)

Haiku as Ideogrammatic Montage:

A Linguistic-Cinematic Perspective

The film-frame can never be an inflexible letter of the alphabet, but must always remain a multiple-meaning. And it can be read only in juxtaposition, just as an ideogram acquires its specific significance, meaning, and even pronunciation only when combined with a separately indicated reading or tiny meaning – an indicator for the exact reading – placed alongside the basic hieroglyph.

From our point of view, [haiku] are montage phrases. Shot lists.

-- Sergei Eisenstein

[What] fascinates Eisenstein about this form of ‘ideographic’ representation is the way in which both haiku and Chinese characters act simultaneously as linguistic signifiers and denotative images of “natural” things.

-- Ron S. Judy

Read the full text...

Haiku Reality, #5

A Haiku about Grassy Fields

English Original:

grassy fields ...
nothing stands between me
and the sun

Portuguese Translation by Henrique Pimenta
verdinho o campo
nadinha entre mim
e o sol

Serbian Translation by Saša Važić

travnata polja...
ničega između mene
i sunca

Haiku Reality, #5 (Third Choice,Best of Issue)

Editors' Comments:

Both an'ya and I [Jasminka Nadaškić-Đorđević] agreed on this haiku by Chen-ou Liu for our Third Favorite. Here is one simple picture, everybody can imagine, or remember, or feel it. This is one great moment when man, as the only one in the world, can feel only nature around him and inside. — Jaca & an'ya.

I an'ya i ja smo se složile da ovom haiku Čen-ou Lia dodelimo treće mesto. Evo jednostavne slike, koju svako može da zamisli ili oseti. To je odlično opisan trenutak u kome čovek, kao jedani na svetu, može da oseti samo prirodu oko sebe i u sebi. — Jaca i an'ya.

Autumn Haiku

English Original:

autumn twilight
shadows reach further
than my next step

Serbian Translation by Saša Važić

jesenji suton
senke se pružaju dalje
od mog koraka

Haiku Reality, #5

Rain Haiku

English Original: 

the distance between
my attic and the moon --
April rain 

Serbian Translation by Saša Važić

razdaljina između
mog potkrovlja i meseca –
aprilska kiša

Frogpond, Vol., 33:2
Reprinted in Haiku Reality, #4

Haiku, A Looking Bird

Haiku, A Looking Bird is my haijinx column aimed at an exploration of works in haikai poetics bi-monthly.

The first essay published today is as follows:

The Breach of Meaning?: Roland Barthes’s View of Haiku

By Chen-ou Liu

The brevity of the haiku is not formal; the haiku is not a rich thought reduced to a brief form, but a brief event which immediately finds its proper form.

The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!

– Roland Barthes

...

Since the publication of the book, Barthes’s view of haiku has been well received among haiku critics and poets, as well as his readers of literary theory and criticism.

...

Generally speaking, both Hass and Sekine capture the key notions of Barthes’s view of haiku described in Empire of Signs: relating haiku to the Zen project of confounding the fixed categories of language, and reading it as a breach of meaning, an exemption from the Western compulsion to commentary. These notions are widespread and inscribed on the minds of haiku poets and readers, but what do they really mean in the contexts of Empire of Signs, his other writings, and his view of Zen Buddhism? Furthermore, does his view of haiku help deepen our understanding of the poetics of haiku? In the following passages, I’ll try to answer these questions in this introductory essay.

You can read the full text of the essay here. This essay is also reprinted in Haiku Reality, #4

Three Readings of Ezra Pound’s “Metro Haiku”

Throughout the history of English poetry, there seldom is a poem like Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (hereafter referred to as “metro poem”) that has been endlessly researched by scholars, literary critics, and poets alike 1. Most of his readers are familiar with at least two versions of his metro poem: the original version published in the April 1913 issue of Poetry as follows:

The apparitionbbbbof these facebbin the crowd :

Petalsbbbbon a wet, black bough.

and one of the revised versions published in his 1916 book entitled Lustra as follows:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Everyone may have his/her own reading of this ever-famous poem from different perspectives. But due to the limited space of this article and for Magnapoets readers who are interested in the Asian poetic traditions, I will discuss two major popular readings – the haikuesque and ideogrammatic ones -- in the following sections.

Read the full text here...

first published in the January 2010 issue of Magnapoets and reprinted in Haiku Reality, #4