Romanian Monthly Kukai January 2016 Special Prize Haiku Poem - Comments

first fairy-tale –

the kitchen window

with ice flowers

Gabriela Beldie

I noticed at first a few poems that are dealing with a connection between ice flowers and stories. A fabulous natural phenomenon is interposed between the domestic space, warm and secure, and the fury of the rough winter season.

The first one, ice flowers - / grandma spins up fairy-tales / next to the fire-place (Letiția Iubu), emphasizes the warm atmosphere by the fire-place where the grandchildren are gathered as if avoiding the signs of the frost outside. The ice flowers are here the antithesis of the story that tames the storm outside.

The second, small window – / in the ice flowers / mother’s fairy-tales (Gabriel Iordan Dorobanțu), directs, with the same props, a memory. The small window, perhaps a real one back then, also suggests the distance that makes things shrink. The two motifs have merged. The ice flowers have absorbed the fairy-tales.

The third, first fairy-tale – / the kitchen window / with ice flowers (Gabriela Beldie), is my favourite since, through an ellipse, it gives up mentioning, in a laudatory way of course, the storyteller, grandmother or mother. The fairy-tale does not need a narrator, it is the fantastic manifestation of the world, told on the kitchen window. A story without words, written in an alphabet we cannot read yet. But an extremely vibrant one.

(Corneliu Traian-Atanasiu)