triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Vidya Shankar and Teji Sethi GUEST EDITOR: Baisali Chatterjee Dutt 3 Aug 2024
ancestral home
the acorn I buried
now on a branch
—Ravi Kiran
THF Haiku Dialogue, Editor’s Choice, 13/7/22
One of the things I love about haiku is that it often leaves itself open to interpretation. In certain cases, I think the word ‘interpretation’ can even be exchanged with ‘imagination.’
As someone whose imagination is always running on a tankful of coffee, certain ku read like a scene from a movie making me wonder what happened before, what happened after, what exactly triggered this ku… Where was the poet when this happened? What happened or what did they experience to make them write this ku? Who made them feel this way and why?
I find layers, I read between the lines, I imagine the situation and sometimes, I end up with a movie in my head. A bigger picture. One that goes beyond the three lines before us.
All the ku I’ve chosen for this month’s Spotlight series have set off endless wonderings and
ponderings in my mind…and I happily indulged them all.
— Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
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Thank you for being our next guest editor, Baisali. We look forward to "the endless wonderings and ponderings" all through this month.
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Thank you for the insightful view. The haiku you chose is well-crafted.
Karen
What a trip, this ku is! Standing in the present, it takes us on a trip down memory lane and, if you allow your mind to go there, even shows us a glimpse of future promise.
What was the little boy thinking when he was planting the acorn? Did he ever think about it while growing up or had he forgotten? What other selfless acts did our poet perform as a little boy? I also can't help wondering about the poet's ancestral home -- where is it, what's it like, is he visiting after a long time, who lives there now...?
And of course the ku itself...L3 is an absolute slam-dunk of a line!
I have loved and remembered this…