Chen-ou Liu, CA

 

 

Haiku   snowflakes fall into the donation jar— Christmas Eve     autumn sun her shadow darkens their son's grave     pillowed on my unpublished poems… winter stars     ceiling fan my thoughts scatter around a haiku     plum petals fall each a piece of me     war cemetery a dove lights on the stone angel's wing     a six foot man curled up in a ball— her three words     Haiku Sequence   Her Moon Face   you are not open to me, she yells low spring tide a firefly in and out of my shadow last summer dusk mid-autumn moon waiting to see her in the dream the winter moon thinned to a thread memory of her     Gogyohka   December’s snow smothers the earth you bury me under drifts of cold looks spring blossoms with rainbow colors now frost-withered to one hue your flower heart morning dews scatter on the autumn wind as do my tears unlike causes yet the same fate the gusts of the autumn wind chill the teardrops of dew that are mine as always the river rapids lure away both blossoms and leaves yet cobbles lay still I pawn Drink Alone by Moonlight at a river tavern gazing at the moon pondering if Li Po is mad at me sea birds grace sky and sea that boundless expanse of blue into which I dive a white carpet of sand drinks my tears as I walk back and forth along the shore the sea inside my heart surges every night churning up the waves only to recede at daybreak lying on the white sand I feel its moisture my first love angst the poem is the death of a poet: his old self put down on paper read at least by one I gaze from the height of my study gauging the world by the size of solitude I scoop the moon from a river of words that runs through the bottom of my heart awake I dream of being a butterfly does he dream of me… who cares in the world of red dust? (Note: Red dust is a Buddhist set-phrase for the world and its passions)     Gogyohka Sequence   A Four Act Passion Play   devotedly I pray yet He listens absently a four-decade old story my heart is a sponge sopping up the tears with which I wash my prayers I cleanse my heart in prayers before Him whom my mind has doubted seventy-seven times no more waiting for Him who is hidden I hang on the cross within me... a faint echo, it’s finished   Gogyohka What is Gogyohka?.Gogyohka (pronounced in four syllables with all hard g's, as in "good") literally translates as "five-line verse". It is an evolution of the great Japanese tradition of short verse, but unlike its predecessors Haiku and Tanka, it has no fixed syllable pattern. There are also no conventions governing content and no assumptions about what is considered to be appropriately "poetic" language. Indeed Gogyohka's accessibility and its power to speak directly to the heart and mind stem from the simplicity of its form, its frequent use of the everyday vernacular and the unwritten rule that almost any subject matter is game. ~Matthew Lane, translator of Enta Kusakabe's booklet, Gogyohka.     Zuihitsu   A Glint of Light on Broken Glass   crescent moon reclining on clouds the maple stands alone Raising my cup, I entice the moon; her reflection of you and me make us three. Bathed in moonlight, I wash in each scent you left behind. Baptized in them, I become born-again, a poet speaking in tongues. faint mist, gloomy clouds sorrow surrounds the day who can take a poem beyond the Pacific a calligraphy of geese flies against the sky Snowflakes seed the sky in silence. The loneliness gnawing at the corner of my heart grows louder. I go out the window.   As for zuihitsu, the first book of zuihitsu poetry in English is The Narrow Road to the Interior written by a Japanese-American poet, Kimiko Hahn who received the 2008 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. ~Submission Note from Chen-ou Liu   Zuihitsu*   Zuihitsu (随筆?) is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. The name is derived from two Kanji meaning "to follow" and "brush", and thus works of the genre should be considered not as traditionally planned literary pieces but rather as casual or random jottings down of thought by their authors.   History of Zuihitsu*   Zuihitsu emerged in the Heian Period with Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book. Shōnagon, a member of the Heian Imperial Court, kept a private diary of her own observations and musings about courtly life. It is unclear whether or not she intended it to be released to the public (although sections of the work itself and anecdotes from her life would suggest that she didn’t), but the work nevertheless survived and provides an alternate view into life of the era, making it an invaluable literary as well as historical resource. The genre next gained momentum as a respectable form of writing several centuries later in the Kamakura Period. With the depotentiation of the Heian Court and the relocation of the capital to Kamakura, near modern day Tokyo, many intellectuals, amidst social chaos, grew disillusioned and chose to live in asceticism – a trend that also reflected the growing importance of Pure Land Buddhism. Writing from isolation, these authors reflected on the degeneracy of their contemporaries, whom they considered philistines, in comparison to themselves, as well as general consideration of the impermanence of the material world. Major works from this period include Kamo no Chōmei's Hōjōki and Yoshida Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa. Zuihitsu rose to mainstream popularity in the Edo period, when it found a wide audience in the newly developed merchant classes. Furthermore, it gained a scholarly foothold, as Japanese classical scholars began customarily writing in the ‘’zuihitsu’’ style. Reputable authors from this movement include Motoori Norinaga, Yokoi Yayu, and Matsudaira Sadanobu. *Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuihitsu