triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Vidya Shankar and Teji Sethi GUEST EDITOR: Baisali Chatterjee Dutt 5 Aug 2024
a kiss on the neck...
the winter sun does
what you should’ve
—Vandana Parashar
tsuri doro, Issue #13, Jan/Feb 2023
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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So sweet, yet sensuous!
I take a lot of pleasure in Vandana's writing. It is so often fresh and direct — as in this expression of recollection in older age; a missed opportunity; but without any first-person wallowing in treacly nostalgia or bitterness. Excellent.
It brought to mind John Stevenson's masterly: cold moon
a moment of hesitation
long ago
(If I recall correctly)
Aaah! What a ku, what a ku!
Is this from the pen of a poet peeved that their lover has crept out of bed without a morning peck? Or is this a teardrop of a broken heart? Or perhaps, it's the fanciful longing of a romantic?
This ku is fascinating because it can be sexy, sad or simply dreamy...all depending on how we choose to read it.