Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Comment for a winning haiku in Romanian Monthly Kukai March 2016



stall in the market –
over yesterday’s news
piles of nettles

Daniela Lăcrămioara Capotă

Right from the first reading, this poem caught my eyes. And it bit me. The nettle could not do otherwise. Especially when it is caught in the mood of the local environment. Through an expressive touch: the stall in the market place. Coming proudly into the foreground. 

The newsprint, for the poem speaks about it even if it does not name it, has always had a universal use in the countryside: as wrapping paper, as an improvisation for a tablecloth, to put in the home’s window to stop the bleaching light of the sun and even as an avant la lettre replacement of toilet paper. The pragmatic benefit of the support has far exceeded the need and respect for everyday information.

With some piety and with a strange national pride, you can see in the nettles, the true, native, specific virtues of the place. Slightly undermined by the miser-like air of the spring herbs  advanced to the rank of early vegetables (which obviously refresh the blood). G. Valer Pop, offering each time a multimedia presentation for the winning poems of Romanian Monthly Kukai, chose a brilliant photo for this poem.



The faces of the three women, although they have a very different expression, are a perfect comment for the poem. No, the news were not obsolete, but the realities are more eloquent this way - without words.


The poem has inside it a sarcasm that certainly, by biting us, refreshes our anemic blood due to much too flabby news. And you exclaim: Aha! No way, this is it!

(Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

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