Troubled stars

troubled stars –

ephemerides’ dance

above the puddle

Vasile Coniosi-Mestesanu

The structure of the poem looks so simple. It makes use of a sharp contrast between the stars -  fixed and everlasting (at least according to the precarious earthly duration idea) - and the ephemerides - flying relentlessly, living just one day. Technically, it makes use of the so frequent mirroring in the water process. By dancing, the ephemerides perform their ritual, but they also wrinkle the water’s surface. The result is the disruption of the water’s mirroring function and, consequently, a less sharp and oscillating image of the stars.

Anyone, even those who do not understand haiku poems quite well, will feel, in the phrase troubled stars, the allusion to the sad fate of the ephemerides. Cool-headed as the stars may be, the trembling puddle did give away their being troubled.

I should draw attention to the unpretentious, unaffected, unladen, sober way in which the images are presented. No insinuating focus is placed over what is evoked. The allusions do not begin from the subjective intention of the author. The allusions are born only out of the objective aura of the poems’ elements. And from the intersection and interference effects of their semantic fields.

Feeling troubled is not, from the outset, emotion (worry, unrest). It is, firstly, a whirling of the water’s clarity and loss of transparency caused by the ephemerides’ agitation. Disturbing the water/ the mirror are the insects themselves; their fleeting, troubled and turbulent fate will contaminate it, caught by the feeling of unrest, and it will be mirrored by it.

(Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

Romanian Monthly Kukai August 2015 Special Prize Poem

great drought –

on the bottom of the lake

not one bit of sky

(Maria Doina Leonte)

There is a certain apparent simplicity to this haiku. However, it is as such only for those readers already accustomed to the haiku poems dealing with the mirroring in the water process. The special beauty of the poem comes from its doing this in a negative way, eliptically. On the bottom of the lake there is now only dry earth, only dust. Mirroring, as a consequence, the drought. There is no drop of water into which one single bit of the sky, of heaven, can be reflected.

The gradation, which postpones the meaning till the end, alternates the dryness (great drought) with the deception of humidity (lake, bit), to finally let our eyes meet a reflection which is, in fact, prohibited. Only the last syllable is the one that rounds the meaning of the poem through an unexpected transfiguration: that which, until then, was just beginning to take shape, as a droplet (of water) suddenly becomes a bit, a crumble, a glitter (of heaven) which is, after all, absent. The dry bottom of the lake has more than dramatic consequences: the hot sky above us is no longer tamed by the cool, fresh water. We only have left a harmful radiation. Is it hostile or punishing?

Many of the best poems flirt with what could be considered a mistake of composition, if we judge harshly. Apparently, they go on the line of the least resistance and they give the impression of the continuity between the two parts because, ah well, following a prolonged drought is the the disappearance of water resources and the drying up of lakes. It is, unquestionably, the false, minimalist track, on which an ironic author sends us. If the last word were water, not sky, then banality would triumph and the haiku would be just the result of an abortion.

The well-crafted work consists, after all, of the idea that substituting the water with the sky is not just an irony defiantly thrown at the reader, but it represents a transfiguration of the literal meaning of the poem, a taking off of the images from the earthly common, everyday life, towards the sky which sets them free. Walking on the thread of logical continuity, the final finding is startling and overturns all that was previously painstakingly built. If you were Lefter Popescu from Two Batches by Romanian writer I.L. Caragiale, you would easily give in to the persecution mania: Vice-versa! You may not, sir! It’s too much! Vice versa! That's quackery, you understand me!

(comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

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)