triveni spotlight: 25th january

triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh GUEST EDITOR: Michael Dylan Welch

fresh-fallen snow—

footprints leading away

from the grave

Mark Arvid White Woodnotes #26, Autumn 1995

About the poem:

The delicate sensitivity here, perhaps akin to Bashō’s notion of karumi (lightness), is its implication that the person who left those footprints must have been there for a long time, before the snow started to fall. We can therefore feel the depths of the person’s devotion or grief because they stood there even while the snow accumulated. It’s the unsaid the makes the best haiku.

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.