There are some poets, while reading them, you get this overpowering feeling of inadequacy.
Why can't I write like them? And therein lies the mystery and the mastery, of course. Every writer is unique in his/her writing. However, it is that indefinable element that decides the connect between a particular writer and his/her readers. The choice of words? The expressions? The thoughts behind the words? The subject? I am hard put to place my finger on the factor which triggers that magnetic pull...that extent of power to influence...and inspire. Yet, there it is. The awe! A tad tempered with envy which perhaps eggs you on on the path of persistent creativity...prods you...impels introspection...nudges you to grow within and without......analyse....assess.....and EVOLVE!!!
Michael McClintock is one such poet whose haiku has that hypnotic effect on me.
Again, it's difficult to pinpoint what exactly it is which intrigues and enthralls me so much about his poems. Once I tried to review a book by Ruskin Bond, again one of my favourites. I failed miserably. And I know why I did. It was because of his simplicity of expression, his flow of every day language, his commonplace thoughts which automatically become the reader's own. Critiquing him is as difficult as critiquing your own self! Because it is you yourself who comes out of the pages of his books...
The same magic is again on with Michael McClintock....He is so close to your heart that you feel it will pop out if you fiddle with it too long and hard. Funny! Isn't it?
With the grey smoggy days of the Capital this haiku is so apt....so essentially us - the city bred, sufferers in unison looking up to a day of knowing...not knowing... the sun may come up eventually...it may not....who knows whether the mesh of pollutants will make way for sunshine or not?
Doesn't this tanka poem transport you to a different world of half lights and silhouettes ?
Yes, you can see those eon of ancient wisdom peeping through those crisscross tell-tale lines of memories reminisced on this planet earth...
And this one with an infinite proposition of expansiveness of heart, mind and soul...........a very famous one at that!!
And who has not gone through this ordeal of turbulence and the stillness of quietude thereafter....? That there is still life after all that havoc...........! Grand!!
Oh! I love this one and I know and feel the fragrance right here sitting now....
Its been so long that I have undertaken a train journey....nostalgia! And that's what haiku are supposed to be ....hold your hands down memory lane...... the wispiness compressed in a three liner.
The second line of the ku is optimism and hope personified....this is the ultimate border-line ku between image and thoughts evoked by the image.....
Again a tanka poem which pokes you to evaluate your own weaknesses, limitations, narrow confines of aptitude and attributes.
Last but not the least, the most intriguing haiku which made me ponder long ...very long....the mystique beauty of those three lines invoking images not tampered or tinged or cropped by human audacity...simply what is and not what one perceives it to be....
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, its Michael McClintock for you...all the way across the seven seas ...who sees what you have seen and wondered about all along and speaks a language you have babbled in.............priceless in its brevity and unique in its simplicity... that nano chip of wisdom strewn across which has immortalized mankind with its agelessness..His haiku images are all over Google...Grab them....relish them.....cherish them....
