Blue Porcelain

by Bryn
  • November 5, 2011
  • Poetry
  • Lyrical

Read the spoilers :) please and thank you.

Spoiler! :
Okay so I had an assignment for my chinese class to translate a song by: Jay Chou qing hua ci You can go here to see it, if your just a really dedicated reviewer haha.
http://www.justsomelyrics.com/1079323/Jay-Chou-%E5%91%A8%E6%9D%B0%E4%BC%A6-Qing-Hua-Ci-%E9%9D%92%E8%8A%B1%E7%93%B7-Lyrics
So after I translated the song I had to make a poem out of it.. a lot of people just rearranged the lines from the music, but I tried to put it in my own words so hopefully I succeeded :) okay Ready. Set. Review!


Blue Porcelain

Our meeting I forshadowed
like the porcelain I paint.
The way my brushed flowed
over you, my heav'nly saint.

The brush outlines a beautiful pattern,
a pattern of our love.
Your beauty so sojourn.
So much distance we have to rise above.

A perfect shade of blue.
Waiting for rainy weather,
To appear just like you.
Finally what I've waited for, azure.

The secrets you kept,
made you fade away.
Though the secrets I'll accept.
To spend just one more day.

When I paint, I think of you.
Going through memories,
memories of you.
Finally my porcelain, the perfect blue.

Spoiler! :
Some other little facts to help you understand the poem:
The blue and white Chinese porcelain can only be made in rainy weather for the color to turn out. Thats about it, hope ya like it. Also a rhyming website told me weather rhymes with azure.. I'm starting to think they lied to me -.-

Comments & reviews · 2
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User avatar
xhellysmx
Review
xhellysmx wrote a review · Sat Nov 05, 2011 2:03 pm

Hello there! I found that your poem is very sweet. Well I'm not really good at giving tips,so I will just compliment you with your high vocabulary. The words "sojourn" and "azure" are very rare to find (I think), cause I've never find those words in any books etc. :D So,it's great to learn new words from your poem. Keep writing! :)

User avatar
Daisuki
Review
Daisuki wrote a review · Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:28 am

I for one, really enjoyed this poem. I like Asian things in general, and am always fascinated by how translations turn out. You know how sometimes the wording will make sense, but it'll be kind of quirky, and have a distict style to it? I love that.

So. Now I'm going to try to give some tips. I hope with all my heart that they are even remotely helpful.

Blue Porcelain

Our meeting I forshadowed.
Like the procelain I paint.
The way my brushed flowed,
#FF0000 ">Painting* you, my #008000 ">heavnly saint. #FF0000 ">(Since you just used the word "paint," it might flow better if you use a different one here. Imagining, recreating, illustrating, etc)#008000 "> (Maybe a ' here? Like: heav'nly.)

The brush outlines a beautiful pattern.
A pattern of our love.
Your beauty so sojourn.
But the distance, we will rise above.#FF0000 "> (This line is a little cumbersome - it throws off the rhythm. Maybe think something like, "So much distance to rise above?" I don't know the orginal translation, so I'm not sure what would fit best.)

A perfect shade of blue.
Waiting for rainy weather,
To appear just like you.
Finally what I've waited for, azure. #008000 ">(I like this stanza, but there's a problem with it. You've been previously rhyming the second and fourth lines of the stanza, while here you switched to the first and third. Very confusing to the reader.)

The secrets you kept,
Made you fade away.
Though the secrets I'll accept.
To spend just one more day.#008000 "> (This is a very sweet stanza, I love it :3)

When I paint, I think of you.
Going through memories.
Memories of you.
Finally my porcelain, the perfect blue. #0000FF ">Nice ending, I see the barest hint of that "translation" style I so adore - especially in that last line.


Overall I really enjoy this poem. I like having the colors blue and white swirling around in my head the whole time, especially when the pottery is paired with the rain. Love that imagery ^_^

Note on Punctuation: You might want to re-read this yourself and really question the punctuation. You shouldn't need a mark at the end of every line, nor do you need a capital letter to start off. If it helps, you might even want to put the poem in paragraph form, and insert punctuation that way, then change it back and fix any minor details.

Hope I helped. Thanks for the great read.
-Dai



I was flummoxed by fractious Franny's decision to abrogate analgesics for the moribund victims of the recent conflagration. Of course, to display histrionics was discretionary, but I did so anyways, implicating a friend in my drama to make the effect cumulative. I think a misanthrope would have a prosaic appellation, perhaps one related to autonomy and the rejection of anthropocentrism. I think they wouldn't think much of the prominence of watching the coagulation of tea to prognosticate future malevolent events, not even if those events were related to jurisprudence.
— Spearmint