Thanks to @owasco for the nudge and to @bananafish for this fun diversion during a "Driving Hazards" warning almost every day this winter (so far).
Rime Ice
frozen fog
whitened my world -
made me look twice
Hielo escarcha
niebla helada
blanqueó mi mundo -
me hizo mirar dos veces
Like @owasco, I speak no Spanish. No idea how the translation sounds or if it works at all.
Gracias!
I like that too @carolkean. Great one! I might suggest inverting the second line. "my world---whitened" (that should be an em dash in there; not sure how it will show up in Hive's markdown engine). But either way, very nice!
@bananafish, respectfully I disagree. In Japanese it is common enough to give haiku titles. Sometimes those titles turn into headnotes so long that the headnote and title together almost become a haibun. But that is in Japanese. In English, last I checked the Haiku Society of America didn't advise one way or the other, only commenting that a haiku may or may not have a title
Respectfully, I disagree on you disagreeing. Rarely Japanese haiku do have a title and it's a common thing only in the earlier days of American haiku. Notes aren't titles (as the notes on tanka poetry) and a haibun is a sort of diary page with haiku, a mixture of short prose with poems, since the times of Bashō. I have been studying haiku for 15 years and I don't remember any significant Japanese haijin using titles...anyway, it's only important for the rules of Mizu No Oto contest: if you want to put a title on your haikus you are free to do it, but all participants in our contest are advised that the absence of a title is preferred (i.e. it is a matter of judgment to determine the winner).
haha indeed. In that case I agree to your disagreement on my disagreement. Good call!
Well if we are comparing credentials, I have been studying Japanese literature and poetry, specifically haiku, since university, so 20+ years; I wrote my thesis on Bashō's travel diaries, and I translate them for a living in Japan where I have been living and studying with various haiku groups for 15 years. Whether a short headnote can be considered a title is a matter of semantics. As for significant figures, Takahama Kyoshi used titles (or single word headnotes, if you will) for many of his haiku, and he is about as major as you get for modern times. Santōka had more than a few of what we could call titles. At one time he was overlooked and considered a nobody, but ever since the publication of his complete works, his name has been rising in the haiku world (in Japan, at least).
But at any rate, I'm not arguing. So many people who write haiku just parrot the incorrect info they pick up from books by people who don't even know Japanese (cough... Hass) so sometimes I get caught by various claims more than I should be. But if you have also been studying for awhile and have your own ideas, more power to you. So peace peace 😃
I came across your contest a few times back when I was posting haiku translations and essays more often, but I never really had time to look into it. The past few days I have been dipping my toes back into Hive after a year away and as I followed the "haiku" tag, I saw your post and it was familiar so I clicked in. Now that I am once again dipping my toes back into Hive, I will pay attention more often and maybe enter if I have a chance.
Please feel free to suggest reading and to give directions, because your knowledge is undoubtedly more thorough than mine.
I mainly rely on studies and bibliography from the defunct AIH (Italian Haiku Association), of which I was a member.
In past editions of Mizu no Oto I have written some small and rough articles aimed at beginners - one of them even talked about titles in haiku - however from a mostly classical perspective.
What little I know about the gendai movement comes mostly from Richard Gilbert's studies.
Regarding Takahama Kyoshi, I talked about him in one of the last articles, but unfortunately in unflattering terms, having been associated with the reaction against the period of experimentation that arose from other students of Masaoka Shiki and being associated with the conservative motto kachofuei, which although allowed us to keep the founding principles of haiku up to the present day, was also rather reductive.
However, feel free to intervene and also to participate ... we need both spontaneity and theoretical preparation.
@bananafish - I'll have to go look up your article on Kyoshi after I write this. We would probably agree about him. His haiku are about average, I think. Some bad, some fantastic, most just average. But it is his politics and his ironfisted attempts at control of the haiku world that makes me dislike him.
Gilbert's work on the gender movement are really the best you will find in English. He has done fantastic and amazing work. If you've read his writing, you are ahead of the game.
I am a huge fan of the two shinkeikō students of Ogiwara: Santōka and Hosai. I am currently, in fact, along with a Japanese colleague working on a book of translations and history for both men. Although I of course enjoy Bashō, Buson, and others of the bigger names (and if you look up my past translations on Hive, those names fill most of whom I have translated), it is those two free-verse haiku poets to which I always return.
Are you Italian, then? My father is Sicilian. His father's family was from Sicily for generations and his mother was from Bari.
Thank you @dbooster!
Too late, I saw @owasco's warning to me that haikus don't have titles. I had already posted before I noticed that one. Oops.
I love this.
Frozen fog captures both the season and the atmosphere in the photo in three short syllables.
Although the photo at first appears somewhat colorless, the author's use of the word white renders it colorful.
The poem brings both author and reader alive for me, makes me look twice knowing that the author did.
And again, we can see that English versions easily can be written in fewer syllables than Spanish versions, although I don't speak Spanish.
Really great haiku @carolkean, even if you did see fit to use a dang title! lol
The translation works very well, except for the title (btw, a haiku shouldn't have a title): "escarcha" already means "rime ice", no need to add "hielo". Another word you can use for rime ice is "cencellada" 😉
I will comment on your post very soon, now I need some sleep
Thank you! owasco tried to warn me (via Facebook) but I spotted the message too late.
And I forgot to include the monochromatic photo. It's a retired grain bin my dad has emptied, having sold off the last of his grain as he too retires. (Too sad for me to contemplate. No haiku on watching our parents grow old, decline, and ultimately die. #NotThereYet and #NeverWannaGoThere, even in haiku.)