Category Archives: Poetry

Sighs of Autumn Rain #3 (visiting Tu Fu)

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Check out Ken Gierke’s masterful adaptation of a Tu Fu poem!

Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr's avatarrivrvlogr

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Sighs of Autumn Rain #3 (visiting Tu Fu)

Who would notice this common man in Chang’an?
Within his walls, watching through the gate
Cloistered, too old to tend to the weeds
In the rain, children pass by without concern
Hastened by the early cold in the wind’s sighs
A lone goose struggles overhead, wet wings weighted
The white sun has not been seen this autumn
Will the mud ever dry?

Literal translations of classic Chinese poetry can be found at chinese-poems.com. I first learned of this from Robert Okaji, who has written several interpretations of some of those poems. This is my interpretation of a poem by Tu Fu. The literal translation, as provided at chinese-poems.com, is as follows:

Sighs of Autumn Rain (3)

Chang’an commoner who notice
Be locked in weigh gate watch surround wall
Old people not go grow weeds
Child without worry walk wind rain
Rain…

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Stone Path (after Tu Mu)

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Stone Path (after Tu Mu)

High up the cold mountain a stone path rises
to the village in the white clouds.
I stop the carriage and inhale the evening fragrance,
its red, frosted maple leaves richer than any spring flower.

I may have inserted a bit more of myself into this adaptation than is my usual custom. I hope it does not intrude.

The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com reads:

Far on cold mountain stone path slant
White cloud live place be households
Stop carriage because love maple forest evening
Frost leaf red than second month flower

* * *

This adaptation first appeared  in October 2014.

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Fifty-Word Review: Greenhouses, Lighthouses by Tung-Hui Hu

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Tung-Hui Hu’s Greenhouses, Lighthouses highlights lyrical precision in poems that bounce between such diverse launching points as photographic sequences, Euripedes, union slogans, woodcuts and even an historical seaman’s guide. His language placates and challenges, whispers, cajoles and insinuates, and overflows with layered possibilities and nuance. You must read his work.

This first appeared in January 2014.

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Sensing My Dismay at the Election Results, My Wife’s Dog Presses Against Me

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keep-off

 

Sensing My Dismay at the Election Results, My Wife’s Dog Presses Against Me

And when I roll over, my toe finds a hole in the not
inexpensive 400 thread count percale sheet and rips

down its length, and I wonder if I should extend this
metaphor to include walls and the unbearable weight

of societal collapse, or hatred with small hands and
minds or faces like pale disks of whitewashed emptiness

glaring at my friends, or, well, my wife and I, across
the restaurant’s laminate booths or the potholed street

by the bus stop. I recall the woman’s sneer and hushed
commentary that afternoon, and though I wanted to

correct her mistaken assumption (hey, lady, I’m not
Hispanic) and redirect her bigotry to the correct ethnicity,

I chose instead to smile and wave goodbye, to drive to
the polls and cast my ballot, one drop in that dark bucket

of nothingness, floating alone, perhaps to coalesce with
others and attain some sense of parity and belonging,

or to remain outcast, bewildered, wondering how this
could be, what’s happened to us, my home, our country.

real-patriots

 

 

4 Poems Up at The Basil O’Flaherty

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I have four poems up at The Basil O’Flaherty, an online lit-zine based in Ireland. All four have appeared on this blog at one time or another.

Ashes

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Ashes

To sweeten the dish, add salt. To bear the pain,
render the insoluble. She envied

the past its incursions, yet the past yields to all,
avoidance to acceptance, trees to smoke.

My mother brought to this country a token of her death to come.

Now it sits on my shelf bearing implements of music.
In her last days I played Sakura on the mandolin,

trusting that she might find comfort
in the blossoms fluttering through the failing notes,

a return to mornings
of tea and rice, of
warmth and paper walls and deep laughter.

Today the rain spells forgive

and every idea becomes form, every shadow a symptom,
each gesture a word, a naming in silence.

Scatter me in air I’ve never breathed.

* * *

“Ashes,” first appeared in Extract(s) in 2013, was reprinted on The Reverie Poetry Journal, and is included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.

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Requiem

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Requiem

That it begins.
And like a wave which appears
only to lose itself

in dispersal, rising whole again
yet incomplete in all but
form, it returns.

Music. The true magic.

Each day the sun passes over the river,
bringing warmth to it. Such

devotion inspires movement: a cello in the
darkness, the passage of sparrows. Sighs.

The currents are of our own
making. If we listen do we also

hear? These bodies. These silent voices.

* * *

“Requiem” was written in the 80s, in response to a piece of music. It made its first appearance here in February 2015.

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* visiting Jeju w/ daniel paul marshall

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I love it when one of my favorite poets writes about another favorite!

José Angel Araguz's avatarThe Influence

IMG_9433.jpg photo by Joey Rositano

This week’s post features a poem by Daniel Paul Marshall. Marshall writes about the Haenyeo, female divers from the Korean province of Jeju. The Hangul for the word, (해녀)roughly translates to sea women, and serves as the title for this poem.

When I informed Marshall I planned on featuring this particular poem, he was kind enough to share the following:

The tradition of the Haenyo, the lady divers of Jeju, sometimes mythologized as the mermaids of Jeju, dates back some 1500 years.Their tools, other than their updated wet suits, have not changed. They dive as a group, for safety & socializing. They dive in all weather, all seasons. Their strength & endurance to the elements is astonishing.Their shamanic traditions are dwindling from what i gather, their mean ages is 70 odd & the younger generation is not being trained in this ancient custom. 

This poem…

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3 Centos Published in LONG EXPOSURE

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* * *

Three of my centos have been published in Long Exposure. Many thanks to editor Daniel Williams for taking these pieces (What the Body Gives, Gravity Takes; Still Hands; Chill) which have previously appeared on this blog.