THE THREE FAVORITE SHORT STORIES
The Fly (1922) by Katherine Mansfield
The New Dress (1927) by Virginia Woolf
Gooseberries (1898) by Anton Chekhov
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| Woman in a Yellow Dress |
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Brimming Water by Tu Fu
BRIMMING WATER BY TU FU
Years
ago I came across Kenneth Roxroth’s translation of “Brimming Water” by Tu Fu.
It is one of my favorites, if not my favorite poem.
BRIMMING
WATER by Tu Fu
Original
language Chinese
Translated
by Kenneth Roxroth
Under
my feet the moon
Glides
along the river.
Near
midnight, a gusty lantern
Shines
in the heart of the night.
Along
the sandbars flocks
Of
white egrets roost,
Each
one clenched like a fist.
In
the wake of my barge
The
fish leap, cut the water,
And
dive and splash.
The
poem was originally published in One
Hundred Poems from the Chinese, translated by Kenneth Roxroth (New York:
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1971), page 34.
It
is concisely descriptive, vividly evoking an unusually lucid image of the
scene. The reality depicted is almost magical.
The
American translation is influenced by Imagism, codified in the early 20th century by Ezra Pound.
Tenets
of Pound’s Imagist manifesto:
-
Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective
-
To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation
-
As regarding rhythm, to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in
sequence of the metronome
—“A
Brief Guide to Imagism” (September 5, 2017) by Academy of American Poets
For
years I had sought to locate the poem in original Chinese characters, at one
point asking my Chinese friends to help me. No such luck.
Fortunately,
I was finally able to obtain the original Chinese text, courtesy of Professor Stephen
Owen of Harvard University. The original text and Owen’s translation are
published in The Poetry of Du Fu, Stephen
Owen, transl., compiled by Ding Xiang Warner and Paul W. Kroll (Boston/Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2016), Volume 4, Book 15, page 122.
The Poetry of Du Fu is a
six-volume series. Free access to the publication in .pdf format is available
at this page in the De Gruyter website:
Owen
is the first to translate into English the complete
poems of Tu Fu.
Owen’s
translation of “Brimming Water” is different from Roxroth’s. Owen has said that
he intended to make his translation of Tu Fu as readable as possible while at
the same time helping a person learning how to read poetic Chinese translate the
original.
Owen’s
title is different from Roxroth’s. The rest of the poem maintains a strong
Imagist character.
HAPHAZARD
COMPOSITION by Tu Fu
Original
language Chinese
Translated
by Stephen Owen
The
river moon is just a few feet away from me;
a
wind-shaken lamp shines in the night, almost the third watch.
Egrets
spending the night on the sand, legs bent under, quiet;
at
the boat’s stern a leaping fish makes the sound of splashing.
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| Moonlit River |
The Midwife Dream by Alicia Ostriker – Analysis and Commentary
THE MIDWIFE DREAM BY ALICE OSTRIKER – ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY
The poem well illustrates insight executed with brevity. Images and symbols are startlingly juxtaposed.
THE MIDWIFE DREAM by Alicia Ostriker
One
of my students invited me to be her midwife
it
seemed an easy birth, the girl healthy and strong
I
reached in, drew out the head
pulled
gently
but
the scalp was smooth and cleft
strange
I thought but it will be ok
only
as I pulled and it emerged
it
actually was a penis
brown
and veined
pushing
through the girl’s stretched labia
strange
the dream arrived
so
late so far along
in
my life
The
narrative begins innocuously enough but then swiftly segues into the surreal.
It describes a chain of fantastical events so that, appropriately, the vignette
unfolds in the setting of a dream.
It
is a visually disturbing account because of the sexually explicit imagery—male
and female genitalia coincide in the act of giving birth, a juxtaposition
denoting that they somehow coincide.
Human
genitalia being symbolic motifs, the phallus especially, a symbolic
interpretation is apropos here. The lurid apparition points to a growing
convergence over time (“the dream arrived / so late so far along / in my life”) of
female with male power, although more than one interpretation is possible. After
all, the poem is pregnant with meaning. Please excuse the wordplay.
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| “pregnant with meaning” |
The River of Time
THE RIVER
Yesterday the river was lapping at my feet like an old man tapping out a message about time flowing downward from hills remote as hawks.
Today he rises slowly, a momentous pulse pushing seaward, fed by faraway pistons.
At the waterside where air is fresh as a pear, a sweet mist glides forward like a perfumed wrist.
Islands of floating plants drift, joining into continents, rearranging in serpentine tattoos.
Beneath the surface glittery like so many exploding firecrackers, fish swirl, shadowy limbs of an athlete smoothly cutting back and forth.
Denizens gather at the riverbanks in spoonfuls, sprinkling laughter farther than droplets shot from spinning umbrellas.
Distantly a lizard pokes its head into the sun, jerking left and right, vainly divining a future obscured by brightness.
My body is a slowing clock…
My body is a slowing clock,
My molecules tick to sleep.
God is my watchmaker;
In his pocket I wish to keep.
The day winds to a close,
The night springs awake.
Time, a river, empties
Into an eternal lake.
TIME IS NO MORE
The sun dwells in darkness.
The moon lives in light.
The owl hunts at daytime.
The falcon prowls at night.
The dead dine with the living.
The living dream, awake.
The eternal is not the future.
The river of time is a lake.
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| Denizens gather at the riverbanks in spoonfuls... |
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