Incompleteness

 I've said it before and I enjoy repeating it. I take pleasure in haiku written by authors in the Romanian language. And in what they’ve managed to achieve. From time to time, I discover something new. Something that deserves to be highlighted, to guide others in writing better and becoming aware of what they are doing.

I’ve used the word above in connection with allusiveness and fragmentation. As is natural for the haiku form, the text tends to use strings of words that don’t aspire to the length of full sentences. No one forbids sentences, of course, but authors naturally gravitate toward shorter phrases.

It’s normal for these fragments to have a kind of vibrational sense of incompleteness, to suggest continuations. To seem—or actually be—the result of omissions or compressions. Also, since haiku adopts a colloquial style, the compressed fragment can imply a certain hastiness in speech or a dramatization of the situation.

When a fragment is the shorter part of a text, its incompleteness can become much more striking. I’ve chosen three poems by Șerban Codrin in which the meaning of the phrases clearly depends on what follows. As they are, they merely tease us. The second part, just as concise, tells us what it's all about:

no matter how humble – / only when gathering potatoes / do we fall to our knees

no matter how poor – / here and there eaves / full of nests

together with the poor woodworm – / from the same wooden spoon / we eat greedily

These texts illustrate how, by initially evoking an incomplete circumstance, the reader is placed on alert. Incompleteness keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu