triveni spotlight: 3rd january

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

sidewalk sale—

wind twists a lifetime

guarantee tag

Tom Clausen

Woodnotes #6, Summer 1990

About the poem:

Just as the wind is twisting a tag on a sale item, the word “lifetime” twists also. Wind not only twists the physical guarantee tag but also twists a conceptual lifetime. The line break is innovative and effective in producing a double meaning that makes us aware of life’s ephemerality and change. That wind seems to suggest that nothing in life can ever be guaranteed.

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 is going to be a treat for our members. _()_ Thank you so much, Michael.