I hate hearing myself speaking English. My voice sounds inhuman... mechanical. In the strain of translating a Chinese word into its English equivalent, the spontaneity and natural quality of my speech are lost. I feel that I'm falling out of the tightly knit fabric of emotional vocabulary into a hole-filled net of linguistic signifiers.
April snow...
not a word passes over
my tongue
Contemporary Haibun Online, 7:3, October 2011
Contemporary Haibun, 13, 2012
World Haibun Anthology
(Editor's Note: Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pnin is about a Russian-born professor living in the United States whose life is full of various tragicomic mishaps and difficulties adjusting to American life and language)
Contemporary Haibun, 13, 2012
World Haibun Anthology
(Editor's Note: Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pnin is about a Russian-born professor living in the United States whose life is full of various tragicomic mishaps and difficulties adjusting to American life and language)
Note:
Below is an excerpt from Owen Bullock's review essay, entitled On Contemporary Haibun 13 and published in Haibun Today, 6:3, September 2012 (note:
the essay is an in-depth (and lengthy) review written in the historical
perspective on haibun writing, worthy of multiple readings)
...and I will quote Chen-ou Liu’s in full:
Another Pnin
I
hate hearing myself speaking English. My voice sounds inhuman . . .
mechanical. In the strain of translating a Chinese word into its English
equivalent, the spontaneity and natural quality of my speech are lost. I
feel that I’m falling out of the tightly-knit fabric of emotional
vocabulary into a hole-filled net of linguistic signifiers.
April snow . . .
not a word passes over
my tongue
I
find such massive honesty deeply moving. It’s easy for the reader to
get over any slight reaction to implied criticism of English, because we
know he’s grappling with some big issues. The juxtaposing haiku
suggests a sensate snowmelt. I am also in awe of someone who can write
so well in a second language, and I would have been extremely proud to
have written that last sentence of prose alone.
This
haibun leads to me to reflect that if form is not the main original
component of a piece then some new revelation or way of conveying ideas
might fit the bill. To read any form of poetry in which the writer says
something you’ve never read before gives it a huge plus in my eyes.