Munira
For this post, we’re going to explore tanka, a different form of ancient Japanese poetry. Tanka actually precedes haiku. It originated in the 7th century and quickly became the preferred form of poetry in the Japanese court. It was often used for courtship purposes – lovers would write tanka back and forth to each other. As a consequence, many of the great tanka writers were women. Tanka often has more of a personal or emotional content than haiku.
Traditionally a tanka has five lines and 31 syllables. The third line represents a shift in the idea or imagery of the poem and transitions into the last two lines. The first three tanka lines are considered to be the origin of the haiku. As with haiku, tanka poets writing in western languages generally ignore the syllable rules since syllables in Japanese are quite different. We are also freer and more experimental with structure and subject matter.
So that’s your lesson for the day. In this post, all the tanka I’m including have been published, most of them in Gusts, the Tanka Canada journal. Several of these tanka were written in the cabin I built myself on my friends’ property in Quebec. I lived in the farmhouse and used the cabin as a retreat place. My friends lived in Vermont and came up to Quebec on the weekends to help me cut wood and garden. The only tanka / photo that isn’t from Quebec is the one by the ocean. That’s from Crescent City, Calif. I was walking on the beach and talking to my son on my cell phone. None of the photos were taken at the same time the tanka were written, but they seem to correspond nicely. As always, it’s a pleasure to share them with you.
I sweep wood chips
from the cabin floor
autumn wind
blows through October
emptiness
Gusts, Fall/Winter, 2020, No. 32