HAIKU Selection
by William J. HIGGINSON
Japanese translations of Reviews,Profile and word for word Japanese translation of English haiku are done by HASHIMOTO Kayoko
kiyotaki ya nami ni chirikomu aomatsuba
Clear Cascade . . .
falling into the waves
green pine needles
- Basho (1644 - 1694)
chohchoh ya nani wo yume mite hanezukai
ah butterfly--
what are you dreaming
working your wings?
- Chiyo-ni (1703 - 1775)
tenmoku ni koharu no kumo no ugoki kana
in the teabowl
this motion of the clouds
of "little spring"
- Kikusha-ni (1753 - 1826)
hi no oku ni botan kuzururu sama wo mitsu
in the fire-depths
saw the way
a peony crumbles
- KATOH Shuhson (1905 - 1993)
sayamame no yubi ni tsumetaki asa wo tsumu
the snowpeas
cool in my fingers
I pluck morning
- KAMEGAYA Chie (1909 - 1994)
tateyoko ni fuji nobite iru natsuno kana
high and wide
Fuji stretches out--
this summer meadow
- KATSURA Nobuko (b. 1914)
nikogori ya itsumo mune ni wa kaze no oto
gelled broth . . .
always in my chest
the sound of wind
- ISHIHARA Yatsuka (1919 - 1998)
n.b. "Gelled broth" (nikogori) is solidified jelly from cooked fish, for example, sometimes eaten cold at breakfast.
mone no [suiren] no sekai no oku ya oto mo nashi
deep in this world
of Monet water lilies . . .
no sound
- Elizabeth Searle LAMB (b. 1917)
yuhhi kage umi no himaku no yuragi keri
the lake sways
in its skin of shadows
just before sundown
- Geraldine Clinton LITTLE (1924 - 1997)
yuki wa kurabukuro no ue ni dokuro ni hi
snow
on the saddle bags
sun in skull
- Cor van den HEUVEL (b. 1931)
Reviews:
the snowpeas
cool in my fingers
I pluck morning
- KAMEGAYA Chie (1909 - 1994)
After schooling in Tokyo, Chie married a Japanese-Canadian and emigrated to Canada. The couple were separated and interned in relocation camps deep in British Columbia during World War II. After the war, she worked at several jobs, including teaching Japanese to Canadian Nisei and others. This poem is from her one small, bilingual haiku collection, "Seasons in New Denver", published in 1994. I find it striking for its strong tactile sensations--the texture and coolness of the snowpeas--and its positive energy. In English, we would say she was a plucky woman, making a life for herself and her husband in difficult circumstances.
the lake sways
in its skin of shadows
just before sundown
- Geraldine Clinton LITTLE (1924 - 1997)
Gerrie, as her friends called her, did not start writing poems until her mid-40s. She wrote and published many haiku, sonnets, and modern free-verse poems and became a fairly well-known poet in her generation, serving for a number of years as a vice president of the Poetry Society of America and also as President of the Haiku Society of America. This haiku, from her collection "Star-Mapped" published in 1989, expresses something I recall from much time spent on various lakes during the summer. Just before dusk, a calm lake often seems most alive--not with birds, fish, and other animals, but the lake itself. It moves as if shrugging off the day and settling down for night. Gerrie's unique expression "sways in its skin of shadows" captures just that feeling.
snow
on the saddle bags
sun in skull
- Cor van den HEUVEL (b. 1931)
This, the title poem from one of the first small collections of American haiku, "Sun in Skull" published in 1961, was virtually unknown until about ten years later, when Cor connected with our haiku community through the Haiku Society of America in New York. Cor grew up in rural Maine, and went to California as a young man. Active in the North Beach scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, he experimented with incorporating fresh images of both rural and urban life in his haiku. This poem, one of a number using images from American Western Movies of the 1940s and 1950s, has stuck in my skull ever since I first read it. In December 2002, Cor recieved a Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Prize, in part because he has edited three successive editions of "The Haiku Anthology", the most widely-read book of English-language haiku. But I will always think of him first for his own exciting American haiku.