triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh GUEST EDITOR: John Stevenson
the shadow in the folded napkin
Cor van den Heuvel
The Haiku Anthology
This month is going to be a treat for our members. _()_ Thank you so much, John.
The fleeting moment of that 'folding' is the highlight and leaves room for the readers to guess 'whose' is that? Beautiful! Wish we could have more details of the poem from the poet.
An example of a haiku without a cut — one reason that Paul Miller thinks it is really half a haiku. Van den Heuvel tried to find another image to go with it, but decided that it stood as it was.
There are plenty of impeccable precedents for haiku as a run-on sentence with or without a clear and contrasting juxtaposition (ichimonojitate and ichibutsujitate IIRC): Shiki, Hosai, Santoka... And our Guest Editor is a masterly exponent of these too.
This has been said to be a single-image haiku, e.g. by Marlene Mountain. But is it? I see two visual elements, the carefully folded napkin, white by default, and the imperfection of the shadow "in" it. The subtle contrast/toriawase leaves plen…
This one-line took my breath away when I first chanced upon it many years back. What a strong imagery. So complete in itself.