TRIVENI SPOTLIGHT A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh guest editor: Geethanjali Rajan
theme: listening
the yink and yank of white-breasted nuthatches we no longer speak
Debbie Strange, Canada
(Modern Haiku, Volume 46, Issue 1, Winter-Spring, 2015)
Note by the editor: The theme for June 2022 is ‘listening’. I hope you enjoy the music, sounds, and silences of nature in these showcased poems of close observation.
I remember this poem from Modern Haiku a few years back, how effectively that squabbled "yink and yank" onomatopoeia in the first line set the tension for the dysfunction stated in the third. Although 16 syllables is a bit long for contemporary English language haiku, there is nothing superfluous in this well-crafted piece. I love "white-breasted nuthatches"-- such a full and tantalizing name, one that rolls off the tongue with ease and suggests how tightly scripted our personal disagreements can be. Kudos to Debbie Strange, and thank you to Geethanjali for posting this rich and multi-layered haiku.
If you want to hear the call of the white-breasted nuthatch go here:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-trp-001&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=trp&p=white+breasted+nuthatch+song&type=Y21_F163_204855_110220#id=1&vid=f1a5a526224319465dc8ec020341e26e&action=view
Thank you for this, Geethanjali!
Thanks Geetanjali!