open sky :: SAMVAAD/ 18th January
- Aparna Pathak
- Jan 18
- 1 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
hosts : Sanjuktaa Asopa & Aparna Pathak
jan
etc.
dec
-David Kawika Eyre
(Bones, March 15 issue, 2019; later included in the poet's collection The Nothing That Is, Red Moon Press, 2021)
This haiku works through absence rather than image.
By jumping from “jan” to “etc.” to “dec,” it collapses an entire year into a shrug. Life happens in the “etc"...
the unrecorded middle where days are blur and routines repeat. The lowercase months add to the feeling of smallness and fatigue, as if time itself has lost its proper nouns.
It reads like a sigh at the calendar:
The poet didn't give us any backstory on this ku, instead he says:
I will leave the commentary on this poem to your readership, if only to say it reflects my explorations of brevity and impermanence at the time and how the use of abbreviation and punctuation seemed appropriate to the topic.
I had been waiting so long for our regular readers to offer their perspectives, but since none was forthcoming, I will simply offer my own thoughts.
When Aparna brought this poem to the table, I immediately liked the fact that although so stark and minimalist, yet the poet has chosen to write it in a 3-line format, instead of as a monoku, the much-preferred form among haiku poets…
Aparna,
I'm just waiting for you to post the writer's view on this poem.