The seductive elliptical style

hot summer –

through the phone only the rain

seems close

Eduard Ţarǎ

 A versed reader feels what a haiku communicates in a syncretic way, that is by bringing together and merging with ease the heterogeneous elements and situations. By spontaneously understanding and savouring the global meaning of the poem. Rereading, together with progressive and analytical highlighting of its layers, and of the way they intertwine to achieve full complexity always brings, however, supplementary satisfaction.

An innocent reading, browsing through the poem, can bring us to readily understand that in the lengthy heat of summer the pressing need for rain starts to be felt. This would be the background, against which the second part brings variations: through/ on the phone, it seems that the much coveted rain would be announced. It is drawing near. Or is it just an illusion?

It should be noted, however, how the phone marks the switch to an elliptical style. It is the inflection point of the composition, wherein the formulation through the phone (and not on) already produces a shift in the site of action. There is a new and strange place, which diverts the default interest towards the telephone conversation and to the characters involved in it. On the phone only, introduces a restriction, an enclosure: the texture, the plot is no longer on the outside, it has retreated into the private space.

The word only represents the spring board that transforms the previous elements. Allegorically, hot summer is just a doublet of the soul, of the inner droughts belonging to one of the callers, the rain (which we never hear) must be the refreshing words that the interlocutor’s voice drops like a balm on the soul spied until that moment by dryness. The rain through the phone is genuine and effective, summer can wait outside.

One word with a noun phrase meaning, the phone, together with a preposition, through, and two adverbs, only and close, have built out of hints, using an allegorical transfer, a scene and a situation that are explicitly non-existent. He gave, in the elliptical style, just some minimal clues. But which are enough to guide our imagination.

Or has my own imagination become too ardent?

(essay by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

The Imitating a Good Poem Exercise – October 2015

I have rarely met a poem confirming more consistently that quality poems can be written by imitating a good poem. I do not know if the author of the poem which I will be talking about really knew the poem by Şerban Codrin: apple trees in bloom -/ I have everything before me/ on the empty table, whether she really took after it as a model or whether she simply imitated it without being aware of that*. Either way, she confesses that the meaning of the poem she wrote would ultimately amount to the idea that, in order to be happy, you should not ask for too much, something that any reader can notice after reading both poems.

empty larder -
in the overflowing bucket
the moon

 Argentina Stanciu

Imitation means not only to capture in the poem the same overall impression, but also to use a similar scheme to achieve the intent of the structuring into its parts. There is, in both poems, a fundamental opposition between emptiness (the empty table vs. the empty larder) and the (too) full (apple trees in bloom vs. the moon) which requires urgently of the reader to choose one of the alternatives. A choice which, if well done, can turn him into the chosen one. For the purposes of temporal austere renunciation of certain things (which are otherwise strictly necessary) in favour of others, of a higher level of spiritual order.

The empty table suggests, in an ambiguous way, the possible lack of food, as well as the priviledged place (if, according to the well-known tradition of poet Eminescu the table is made of fir-tree wood) for the practice of writing. The empty larder is closer and more unequivocally linked to the lack of certainty regarding the availability of food. Either way we deal with a possible compensation to the lack of food: apple trees in bloom, as well as the table (the austere, writing desk) in the first poem and the moon in the sky (reflected in a mirror image in the overflowing bucket).

Șerban Codrin relies with declared firmness, expressed in the first person, on the usual poetic vocation used to struggling with necessities. Argentina Stanciu is more reserved, only evoking the (miraculous) presence of the moon in the sky (a promise or grievance, usually impossible to fulfill) in the overflowing bucket (also having the meaning that it does not escape from the eye). Sufficiency occurs in sobre, almost austere conditions, since, paradoxically, the offer is found on the empty table or in the (dim) water.

* Imitating without realizing it means that you do it unaware that a similar poem has been written. Determined only by the chance that you had a similar experience and you have written the poem in the environment of a community where such experiences have been felt previously and were recorded by the poems.

(Comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

The Results of Romanian Monthly Kukai - September 2015

Theme: using the word starling

First place – 24 points

58.

empty vineyard –

nibbling at the sunset

a flock of starlings

Gabriela Beldie

Second place – 23 points

45.

loneliness –

the old woman no longer chases away

the starlings from the vineyard

Claudia-Ramona Codău

Third place – 15 points

9.

bare branches –

a starling’s song

filling up the orchard

Daniela Lăcrămioara Capotă

12.

competition -

a noisy starling

and mother-in-law

Dan Norea

29.

ripe grapes –

first for the tasting

a flock of starlings

Letiția Iubu

Fourth place – 13 points

6.

thundercloud –

a flock of starlings heads

towards the ripe grapes

Adina Enăchescu

48.

a starling’s song –

still not moved

the scarecrow

Cristina Oprea

Fifth place – 12 points

22.

starlings stealing -

dad aims at

the scarecrow

Constantin Iliescu

43.

grey November –

the wind shakes off the branch

a starling

Dan Iulian

Sixth place – 11 points

10.

immigrant children -

invaded by starlings

the ancestral vineyard

Genovel-Florentin Frățilă

35.

flying starlings -

the sea brings ashore

refugees

Daniela Zglibuțiu