triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Vidya Shankar and Teji Sethi GUEST EDITOR: Vandana Parashar 3rd January 2024
three tiny bones
in my inner ear
meadow lark
— Marietta McGregor
The Heron’s Nest, Vol XXI, Number 4, Dec 2019
I’m sure I’m not the only one maintaining a diary of my favourite ku. Unlike the personal diary, it’s an absolute pleasure to share the contents of this diary with everyone. They say that joy is doubled when shared and God knows the world needs more and more of that.
The haiku and senryu I have chosen aren’t mere observations on the poet’s part. They are a lesson on how to choose and arrange the words to turn a simple observation into poetry. These are the poems which will make you realize there is much more to everything than can be perceived by our senses. A good poem should make you feel things you thought yourself incapable of and surprise you again and again into a sudden awakening and thus to a deeper sense of what it is to be truly alive. I hope that these poems will succeed in doing that.
- Vandana Parashar
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Thank you for being our next guest editor, Vandana. We are looking forward to this month-long selections. Wow! This is going to be a treat!
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Beautiful!!
Beautiful and memorable.
I like this because it connects anatomic fact with the outer natural world, and makes a thing of wonder out of the mechanics by which a sound is received that for us carries so much beauty.
The unemotional fact of natural behaviour is that the meadow lark / skylark's song is a prolonged statement by the male bird to claim the area as its territory, warn others off, and signal to potential mates that he is fit. The emotion we feel is entirely within our own minds. Which makes the beauty we perceive no less, and is a great thing to ponder.
Marietta's background includes biology (botany and palynology) and it's good to have a little science in haiku.
The ku is so alive with a visual and auditory image.
An interesting and moving poem. Thank you for posting this and the commentary was a delight to read.