triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh GUEST EDITOR: Michael Dylan Welch
morning walk
warbler’s song
changes my route
Naomi Y. Brown Woodnotes #16, Spring 1993
About the poem:
I imagine that all haiku poets would change their route on a morning walk if they were to hear a warbler or other favourite bird call. This sensitivity to nature and its seasonal unfoldings remains central to the haiku poet’s worldview—a view of the large but also the intimate and personal. In 2003, Naomi served with Lee Gurga and William J. Higginson on the Haiku Society of America definitions committee, revising the original 1973 society definitions.
Note by the Editor
Woodnotes triveni spotlight
by Michael Dylan Welch
From 1989 to 1997, in various capacities, I edited or helped to edit Woodnotes, the quarterly journal of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, and in 1996 I took on the journal independently before replacing it with my new journal Tundra. I lived in the San Francisco area for more than a dozen years and was active with HPNC from its first year in 1989 until I moved north to Seattle in 2002. Working on Woodnotes with such coeditors as vincent tripi, Ebba Story, Christopher Herold, and Paul O. Williams was a fine education in the art of haiku. The following are selections of favourite haiku and senryu from the journal’s 31 issues, with brief commentary. These poems are expressions of wonder, or as Billy Collins once described haiku, they exhibit “existential gratitude.” In return, I am deeply grateful for the thousands of poems published in Woodnotes over the years, and the hundreds of poets who contributed to the journal’s success. * * * * * This month is going to be a treat for our members. _()_ Thank you so much, Michael.