The Lincoln Review in the UK recently published three of my poems. Here’s one in its entirety; you can read the other poems in Issue 6 on their site.
I don’t know Japanese. I based my poem on translations I saw of the original text:
aki no yuube tamoto shite kagami fuku onna
One of the more literal translations I saw was:
(autumn) autumn evening. a woman wipes the mirror with her sleeve
I am always up for seventeen syllables if they carry a punch. But I continue to hope that English writers will find some way to render classic haiku in a way that gives us the jolt I suspect Japanese readers feel. We’re not there yet.
|