triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY hosts: Anju Kishore and Mohua Maulik GUEST EDITOR: Dipankar Dasgupta
1st March 2025
triveni spotlight March 2025
mountain shadow robs the tree of its
Kala Ramesh
Roadrunner Haiku Journal 9.3 August 2009
Theme: Classic
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I read a lot of haiku and admit that I can’t connect to everything I read. Some of the poems appeal to me, some don’t. And there are some that I can’t quite grasp and keep coming back to.
The famous George Swede once wrote to me:
Keep searching for your own voice. We all begin by imitating poets we admire and then gradually find our own style.
I have followed his advice. I am yet to find my style, but I think I know now what I am after.
Keeping this in mind, the only criterion I employed in my selection can be called Excellence. There is no other unique theme for the poems. However, should anyone be looking for more concrete themes, I have assigned to each poem, a theme of its own. These are indicated at the end of the poems. It’s best that I leave it to the readers to decide if they are appropriate. For example, the theme for one of Kala Ramesh’s poems is CLASSIC. For me, classic stands for old gold as in Jane Reichhold.
I have interpretations for the other themes as well. In all cases though, the poems are more important than the theme titles. What matters is that each one is excellent in my opinion.
Dipankar Dasgupta
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Thank you for being our next guest editor, Dipankar. An interesting March this promises to be.
_()_ triveni spotlight team
A deep bow to Dipankar for picking this haiku up.
From where did you unearth it?
Of course, it is in my book - beyond the horizon beyond.
It was a high for me when it was picked up in 2009.
Gendai haiku was unknown then, and one-line haiku was even more rare.
I used to reserve all my 'experiments' for Raodrunner.
If I got into this journal, I considered my day way made, no, my month, my year! It was very difficult to get in!
So you can imagine, when this was selected for this journal.
Why say everything? --attributed to Basho.
I remember this one from the old Roadrunner---it made quite an impression then, and once more today. Thanks for posting this great example of "what's best left unsaid," Dipankar!
---Billie
This is one of my favourite haiku of all time. Very happy to see it spotlighted here.
Well said Dipankar!! Looking forward to read your poems.
I really like this ku of Kala’s. It makes me sit up, listen & think again ~ more than my morning coffee does!