Friday, 22 October 2021

Pravat Kumar Padhy is walking with dinosaurs as Neena Singh gently mourns, while Subir Ningthouja is held captive by Matsuo Bashõ

 

 
 

 
 

the dinosaurs we have come a long way

 
Pravat Kumar Padhy 
 
 
 
 
 
Pravat's Statement:
 
Monoku is an interesting poetic form of release of compressed expression in brevity and creating a room to unfold the expanded meaning of it for the readers. 
 
Dinosaurs used to walk on our planet 65 million years ago. The huge asteroid impact triggered the extinction of dinosaurs after walking on the Earth for about 165 million years.
 
The ku expands the vertical axis exploring the geological history. It corroborates the evolution history of human beings and the pragmatic scientific visualization on the stretch of the time plane.
 
 
 
 
 
My favourite haiku by Neena Singh:
 


 
quiet mourners
a half-eaten peach
on the table
 
 
 
Neena Singh
is/let 12.2.2021
 
 


 
Pravat's Comment:
 
Neena Singh is a haiku poet with the reflection of originality and integrity in her writing. The ku creates an emotional resonance through the image ‘quiet mourners’: the split of time for the life becoming lifeless. It juxtaposes an image of heavenly departure expressed through the word phrase ‘a half-eaten peach’. Perhaps the poet narrates the incidence with a seasonal reference to autumn during the prevailing pandemic time.
 
It reminds me of Ezra Pound’s observation:

An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time….. It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.
 
 
 
Waiting for Godot:
 
“For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
 
― Samuel Beckett, ‘Waiting For Godot’
 
 
Withnail and I:
 
Uncle Monty: 
“There can be no true beauty without decay.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
gibbous moon 
the pond's captive 
swims with fishes
 

Subir Ningthouja
 
 


 
Subir's Commentary:
 
Who can forget first falling in love? 
 
This is my first haiku, I seriously wrote, when I started falling in love with this kind of poetry. 

The image of the moon in the pond fascinated me, despite the mosquitoes! Making up the poem in my mind, I dedicate it to all aspiring haiku poets, including myself.



 
 
It's not like anything
they compare it to—
the summer moon.
 

Matsuo Bashõ
English version by Robert Hass
The Essential Haiku: versions of Basho, Buson and Issa
 
 
 
 
 
Subir's Commentary:
 
I like this one because 
 
1. It is written so simply.
 
2. The moon has been compared to many things, as it has been in many aspects in various cultures and languages. 
 
3. Many of these vary.
 
4. The moon can be associated with different perspectives in different persons. From a child to an aged person, persons of different regions, cultures, professions....
 
5. Yet the moon is one shining above us all.
 
 
 
 
Waiting for Godot quotes 
 
“I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.”
 
“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It s awful.”
 
“If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.”
 
"Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?”
 
“Don’t question me! The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.”
 
“When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we' ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?”
 
“For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
 
 
 
Withnail and I quotes
 
“I feel like a pig shat in my head.”
 
“I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into you brain! This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”
 
 
NOTES:
 
 
 
Pravat Kumar Padhy
 
Editor: Haibun, Haiga and Visual Haiku, “Under the Basho”
Panelist: The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Poem Awards
 
Monoku: An Experiment with Minimalism in Haiku Literature
by Pravat Kumar Padhy
 
Pravat Kumar Padhy’s zero
 
 
Pravat Kumar Padhy on another haiku 
by Neena Singh:
 
 
Neena Singh

World Haiku Series 2019


 
Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, Manipur, India
 
Subir Ningthouja is a physician. Initially, he wrote free verse and very short stories as a hobby. He writes that: 
“After a friend introduced me to haiku, I have been swimming in haiku and related forms of writing as an enthusiastic novice.” 
 
His work has been published in the Moonlight Haiku Challenge September 2020 Anthology, Haikuniverse, and Haiku Dialogue, and the Blo͞o Outlier Journal Winter Issue 2020:


 

2 comments:

  1. Thank you, Alan, for creating such a wonderful and innovative platform for haiku literature. Congratulations, Subir, for posting your maiden haiku. It is so enchanting!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you P K Padhy, for your kind comments!

      warmest regards,
      Alan

      Alan Summers

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