thin moon crescent
shines brightly on a
cold, winter night.
Winter Moon [Haiku]
3
Author Archives: B Gourley
DAILY PHOTO: More Scenes from Fo Guang Shan
Five Wise Lines (February 2024)
“If one conforms to the world,
Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki; [Stavros Trans.]
He’s bound to suffer.
If he doesn’t,
He’s considered mad.
But nothing ever bores me. So much the worse for those who are moulded of boredom.
Salvador Dalí, Hidden Faces
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Blaise pascal
I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea.
Lú Tóng (Poet of the Tang Era)
The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is remedied.
John Dewey
Bonus Quote:
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Marcus tullius cicero
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“Rooms” by Charlotte Mew [w/ Audio]
I remember rooms that have had their part
In the steady slowing down of the heart.
The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,
The little damp room with the seaweed smell,
And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide --
Rooms where for good or for ill -- things died.
But there is the room where we (two) lie dead,
Though every morning we seem to wake and might just as well seem to sleep again
As we shall somewhere in the other quieter, dustier bed
Out there in the sun -- in the rain.
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PROMPT: First Computer
My first computer was my brain interfaced with a No. 2 pencil. Yes, I date that far back in the technology stream.
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Dueling Colorful [Haiku]
Butterfly shows off
its luminous blue wings
to hot pink flowers.
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BOOKS: “Deep, Deep the Courtyard” [庭院深深] trans. by Xu Yuanchong
庭院深深：最美的宋詞英譯新詮 by 吳俁陽（賞析）My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Website
This is a bilingual (Chinese / English) anthology of Song Dynasty poetry. It features more than 140 poems by almost fifty poets of the Song Dynasty, but a few of the Song poetic rockstars are particularly well represented (e.g. Su Shi, Qin Guan, Ouyang Xiu, and Xin Qiji.) The principal language of the book is Chinese (Mandarin) and so, while the poems themselves appear in English as well as Chinese, the ancillary matter is only in Chinese. Said ancillary matter includes notes, contextual information, bio-blurbs on the poets, and brief front and back matter.
I learned after reading the translations, that the translator was Xu Yuanchong and that he was (i.e. he’s now deceased) a very big deal as a translator, translating classical Chinese poetry into both English and French. All in all, I enjoyed the translations and found them to be sound as poems in their own right. That said, my personal preference would have been to have had less effort put into maintaining rhyme. I suspect a closer transmission of the ideas of the originals could have been achieved without the forced constraint of rhyme. Furthermore, while in many cases metering was attended to, sometimes it was not, leaving those poems to have a doggerel quality. [I come to this conclusion by comparing a few of the poem’s translations to those by other translators as well as to literal translations.] That said, the translator was clearly no slouch, and his stylistic choices were likely informed by what was popular during his career.
This book is part of a series. Other volumes include: In the Thick Woods a Deer Is Seen at Times (Tang Dynasty poems) and A Pair of Swallows Fly (from The Book of Songs, a.k.a. The Classic of Poetry.) I picked this book up in Taipei’s Zhongshan Book Street (Eslite Bookstore,) and don’t know how widely available the books of this series are outside of Taiwan, but if you are interested in Classical Chinese poetry and can find a copy, I’d recommend it.
View all my reviews
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Sneaky Sun [Free Verse]
A small arc of sun
stands above the trees
Like the tufts of hair
that give away the
hiding boy who can’t
judge hairdo height.
The next time I turn around,
I see Sun -- fully out and
stalking up behind me,
looming larger.
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DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Zuocang Trail
“Curtain” by Paul Laurence Dunbar [w/ Audio]
Villain shows his indiscretion,
Villain's partner makes confession.
Juvenile, with golden tresses,
Finds her pa and dons long dresses.
Scapegrace comes home money-laden,
Hero comforts tearful maiden,
Soubrette marries loyal chappie,
Villain skips, and all are happy.
