Poetry

Two Haiku Published ‘auf Deutsch’ in the German Journal ‘Chrysanthemum’

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment

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Photo: Tamorlan (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Translations are like lovers: the faithful ones aren’t beautiful, and the beautiful ones aren’t faithful.

This expression, which I picked up in graduate school from one of the musicologists on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, pretty accurately sums up the general state of translation. When it comes to translations, we don’t live in glass houses; we live in the Tower of Babel, hearing each other’s languages, but  not understanding them – even when, in a literal sense, we speak the same language.  We are always, it seems, playing a game of Telephone, mired in human imperfection as we are, and so prone as we are to hearing what we want to hear. Misunderstanding is all but inevitable.

Given the generally sluttish state of translations, I consider myself extremely fortunate that the first translations of some of my poems into a language other than English were exceptionally brilliantly executed. Big thanks to editor Beate Conrad for publishing two of my haiku in English and in German translation in the most recent issue of the German journal Chrysanthemum.

Here are my haiku as published in Chrysanthemum 20 (October 2016), in the original English and in Beate Conrad’s German translations:

full moon glow                                                        Vollmondschein
blankets eggs                                                           deckt Eier zu
in the abandoned bird’s nest                                in dem verlassnen Nest

dropping from the cone                                         aus dem Hörnchen tropft
the ice cream melts                                                 das Eis, zerschmilzt
into a frown                                                              in ein Stirnrunzeln

I love that German allows “full moon glow” to appear as “Vollmondschein,” speeding up into a single word the ephemeral haiku moment the poem conveys. In the second haiku, I love that German syntax allows the ice cream – “das Eis” – to drop from the verb “drops” at the end of the first line to the beginning of the second line. In English, such a construction would come across as stilted:

out of the cone drops
the ice cream …

But as good as Conrad’s translations are, her editing is at least as compelling. I have long thought that there should be an editor’s Hippocratic Oath, paraphrased something like this: I will use treatment (read: I will edit) to help the sick (read: to help the writing) according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing.

Why is it that so many editors perpetrate bloody murder on writing and get off scot-free?  Why are good editors so few and far between?

I despair.

But Beate Conrad suggested a brilliant edit to my ice cream haiku. My original text read:

dropping from the cone
the ice cream melts
her face into a frown

Isn’t it so much more vivid that not the face, but the ice cream itself melts into a frown, as in Conrad’s edited version?

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

This one edit – so subtle and yet so great – says so much about the essence of poetry, about showing not telling, about using fewer words to say more.

Thank you, Beate Conrad, for making my words better – in English and in German. And thank you for your beautiful journal.

Big Thanks to Boston’s Muddy River Poetry Review

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tim-dorr-atlanta-airport
Photo: Tim Dorr/Creative Commons/Flickr

I am extremely grateful to editor Zvi Sesling for publishing two of my poems in the Fall 2016 issue of Boston’s Muddy River Poetry Review.

Both of my poems in this issue explore themes and situations from domestic life.  The inspiration for “Our Father of the Airport” actually did unfold at Gate A18 of the Atlanta Airport, while I waited for a connecting flight on a visit with my in-laws.  I really did look up from my pleasure reading to see a young father smiling down at the tiny boy on his lap, looking for all the world like the Virgin Mary in all those Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child.  I let my imagination play with this idea of a “male Madonna and Child,” and the result is “Our Father of the Airport.”

In “Privacy, Suburban Style” I wrestle with the surreal and unnatural hush that social decorum and respect for the boundaries of others dictate must surround a tragic event.  The poem holds everything at a distance, and I still lament that many preset-day communities in American society, at least, often have no universally accepted rituals and even no language and for simply offering help and love to those who suffer in deeply personal situations.

Be sure to check out all the other great poems in this issue.

“Baby Buggy Boogie-Woogie” Featured on WYSO Public Radio Program and Podcast “Conrad’s Corner”

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Photo: Patrick Breitenbach/Creative Commons/Flickr

Reading a poem is one thing, hearing a poet read his or her poetry can be quite another.

We live in an exciting time, when audio recording technology, radio, and the Internet allow our voices to be in many different places at once. Although poetry as a performance art has been around since cavemen acted poems out to their families. Now, radio and podcasting allow poetry to be everywhere at the touch of a button.

I was thrilled to have my poem “Baby Buggy Boogie-Woogie (Homage to Piet Modrian)” featured recently on Conrad’s Corner, a production of the NPR affiliate WYSO, in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Thank you, host Conrad Balliet, for featuring my poetry on your program.  And thank you, Third Wednesday magazine, for first publishing the poem last spring in Vol. IX, No. 2 of your journal. Listen here to my reading of “Baby Buggy Boogie-Woogie” on the Conrad’s Corner podcast.

As the poem’s title suggests, I took inspiration for “Baby Buggy Boogie-Woogie (Homage to Piet Mondrian)” from Mondrian’s famous 1942 painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie, which shows red, yellow, and blue squares bebopping along in a New York City street grid pattern.

I thought it could be nifty to juxtapose the jazzy urban energy of Mondrian’s painting to the realm of suburban busy-ness. The more specific image of a suburban mom pushing her baby in a buggy while taking her power walk came to mind. I wanted to capture the jazzy feel of Mondrian’s painting and so relied on my ear to create syncopations in the rhythm of the language and to make the surface sound of the language crackle with alliteration and assonance. I also coined a couple new words (“mothersome,” “babyescent”) to give the poem a whimsical feel. The result is a poem whose music lends itself well to being heard read aloud.

I hope you enjoy the poem and the podcast. Drop me a line and let me know.

Haiku Don Oxford Gowns

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment
haiku
Photo: Jennifer Hambrick

It’s interesting, the stuff you find online.

Just the other day, I logged on to do a simple search for something on the Web. I ended up getting sucked in, clicking my way from link to link as through tripping along a stepping stone path that made Homer’s Odyssey seem like the travelogue of a summer road trip.

But, much as I did online the other day, I digress.

While tooling around in that virtual rabbit hole, I discovered quite by accident that two of my haiku had been published in the Spring/Summer 2016 issue of the Oxford, England-based World Haiku Review. And not only that – one of those haiku had actually won Third Place in the “Vanguard” category, and the other was published as a “Haiku of Merit” in the “Neo-Classical” category.

World Haiku Review describes Vanguard haiku as “the most radical” treatments of the haiku genre. Here’s my haiku in that category. I don’t stick to the traditional 5-7-5 syllable count, and there’s an uncomfortable tension between nature and human nature that complicates how the relationship between humans and the natural world is portrayed in traditional haiku.

World Haiku Review uses the term “Neo-Classical” to designate what they describe as “the most traditional” haiku they publish. Scroll down a bit to see my Neo-Classical “Haiku of Merit.”

Enjoy all of the haiku in the Spring/Summer 2016 issue of World Haiku Review.

Thank you, editors Susumu Takiguchi, Kala Ramesh, and Rohini Gupta, for publishing my work in your journal. I am honored.

Beautifully Broken

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 2 Comments
Jack
Photo: Jennifer Hambrick

Many thanks to editor Miriam C. Jacobs for publishing my poem “One-eyed” in the July 2016 issue of Eyedrum Periodically, the literary journal of Atlanta’s Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery. This issue of Eyedrum Periodically is on the theme “Broken,” a true goldmine for poets, who don’t miss a beat when it comes to the wrongness of the world.

“One-eyed” explores both the desperate reality and the exquisite beauty of our human brokenness. The poem was inspired by our dog, Jack, a one-eyed rescue pug who was starved to skin and bones during his first year of life, before we adopted him. We’re not certain what happened during that first year, but Jack might have been born in a puppy mill and, because of his noticeably defective left eye at birth (and since removed), shunted aside for the “reject” pile.

Whatever the reasons, Jack early on grew to fear strangers. But he is a pug and, by nature, a love muffin, and fell in love with us not long after we adopted him. He is extraordinarily protective. I am convinced that he would fight to the death were he to perceive any threat to us.

I am convinced of this because Jack has taken it upon himself to look out our front window now and then each day on what we call “neighborhood watch.” At most, he sees our neighbors across the street going into and out of their homes, working – or in the case of the kids, playing – in their yards, and just generally, as poet James Agee put it, “standing up into their sphere of possession.” And, as I wrote in “One-eyed,” Jack “barks and barks and barks” at our neighbors being neighbors because he’s afraid.

And because he’s broken.

But lest I leave you on a down note, I must also say that, as broken as Jack’s little soul might remain, there is no creature more joyous, more beautiful, more fully himself than One-Eyed Jack. Daily he teaches me that it is possible to live and love through one’s brokenness, that, in fact, one’s brokenness is where we are who we really are, under the wrappers we try to hide behind. Jack’s brokenness reminds me of the world’s need for love.

In that sense, we are all one-eyed. We are all beautifully broken.

Meet My Inner Voices

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment
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Photo: Jennifer Hambrick

There are a lot of voices out there. The voices of Madison Avenue hucksters hawking the Next Big Thing. The voices of politicians doling out demagoguery left, right, and (rarely) center. The voice of your mother. Your father. Your older brother, who once shaved your eyebrows off while you were asleep. Sister Mary Margaret, your fourth grade math teacher, who, because of your lousy recitation of the multiplication tables, told you you’d never amount to much. Your boss. Your yoga instructor. Your spouse.

Some of these voices are for the helpful (imagine the vocal effervescence of Glenda the Good witch), but some are not. The sum total of all of them is a certain cacophony that threatens to paint over your own voice, to mow down what you think you need to say.

As a musician, poet, and broadcaster, my own voice – metaphorically and literally understood – has found many ways to make its presence known. Like all writers, I am sensitive to the figurative notion of authorial “voice,” the special way a writer makes words foxtrot across the page or screen. As a singer and broadcaster, I pay great attention to the voice as a literal thing – a body part to take care of an instrument to master – in my daily work.

In naming this blog Inner Voices, I am honoring the special resonance of voice broadly construed and borrowing from musical lingo, which is so beguilingly expressive. In musical parlance, an inner voice is a line of music that is neither the melody line nor the bass line, but rather a line buried, as it were, in the middle of the texture.

Far from serving as merely a supporting actor, an inner voice gives a musical work depth, richness, and texture. Good performers will always know when and how much to bring an inner voice to the fore. And when an inner voice has its moment in the sun, magic can happen.

Here, on this website, I bring forth the inner voices of my own life as a poet, writer, singer, broadcaster, and voice talent to share with you. I hope you will feel free to make your voice heard, too, and drop me a line now and then. But please be sure to speak up, so we all can hear you above the din.