Friday Poetry Blog Review: On Dani (A Repost)

Love is a universal emotion. We, as poets or writers, love to just express our heart, our mind’s thoughts, be it troubling or caring or random, through our pen. Some of us are romantics at heart, some like to read romance if not write it. It comes as no surprise then, when the word love itself comes as part of our blog title. Review Tuesdays segment this week reviews such a blog, authored by Dani. We take you today to the blog, “Haiku Love Songs”.

Dani does not say much about herself in the about page, but tells that the blog is about her attempts to write poetry as she tries to go through life not flying too high or too low. She attempts various forms like micro-poetry, haiku, senryu, gogyohka, renga, tanka, short verse, narrative verse, free verse, and poems sometimes inspired by photographs or music.

Love needs some red, in my opinion; and the blog’s look delivers there. The three column Pilcrow template at Wordpress, with black background for posts and the red flower background quite suits the title of the blog. She makes complete use of the four sidebars, including the ones at the bottom of the blog to give an array of widgets. From category clouds and tag clouds, archives and blogrolls to badges of the memes she shares her words with, the blog is quite filled with it all. Active since February 2010, the blog has seen an astounding 1127 posts to date. Those interested in following her wonderful words can do so by subscribing by mail; the option is there in the sidebar.

Like I mentioned earlier, Dani is not bound to a particular form. She writes as her muse desires and writes it simple, even in form. The presentation is very colorful, with the fonts brightly displaying on the black background and images that emphasize her words are there in the posts as well. She also acknowledges each reader who gives a comment with a reply. The badge of the meme she writes for also forms part of the post.

From her recent posts, one of my favorites is the two gogyohka poem “To Love”. It is something that a lot of us would agree with, but to state it simply and poignantly with just twelve words was something I felt was worth a mention. It goes:

to love

is

the

greatest

gift

to

be loved

is

the

second

The second I share with you here today, more appropriately to her title, is a set of two haikus. “In the dance of life” goes:

there are times in life

when the dance leaves you breathless

from joy or despair

other times you waltz

as if gliding on water

…where’s the fun in that?

True isn’t it? We all have had troubles when the dance of life has gone faster than we wanted, yet we have also had fun trying to catch up to that speed. When we’ve had it easy, sure, we got where we wanted without troubles but the journey hasn’t been that fun when the dance has been a slow waltz than a quickstep. Hence the reason I wanted to share this with you.

Dani has more haikus, gogyohkas, free verses for you all to read, I cannot share it all here. I would say you to haunt the memes she haunts; like OSI, Haiku Heights, One Shot Poetry, 3 WW, 6 Word Saturday etc. or even get the whole thing by dropping by her blog often. It is a fun place to visit a lot I feel.

Dani, suggestions to you… I’ve seen that you have a twitter account; it would also be useful if you had a page on Facebook I think. Seeing your sidebars and their content, I’d say to switch to a single sidebar, on the right and shift the lone featured poet widget and feed to the top of the right sidebar. That way, the featured poet can stay featured, and your posts get a wider post are as well. If you felt something off in the review, anything no matter how small, please let me know. Reviewing your blog was somewhat like that quickstep.

From the Review Tuesday team, this is Leo of I Rhyme Without Reason. Have a wonderful week ahead.