triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Vidya Shankar and Teji Sethi GUEST EDITOR: Baisali Chatterjee Dutt 7 Aug 2024
a fly
in my shiraz
dying with dignity
— Wanda Amos
Five Fleas {Itchy Poetry}, 9/12/22
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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V interesting… it is indeed a story in itself!
Eight words and I can see a short film in my head, where the central point of the film is this scene...a fly in a glass of red.
Who's dying with dignity? The fly? The poet/movie protagonist? Why? Heartbreak? Fired? Bad health news? Down on their luck?
And this is where our imagination takes off...
A beautifully cinematic ku.