egret hunt fresh fish
paddle boarders hunt fresh waves
so much time hunting
do they ever stop, take stock
and practise satisfaction
Janet Keen New Zealand.
Tanka, the 5-line lyric poem of Japan is quickly becoming
popular in the English-language poetry community.
Like haiku, its shorter
cousin, tanka usually is well-grounded in concrete images but also is infused
with a lyric intensity and intimacy that comes from the direct expression of
emotions, as well as from implication, suggestion, and nuance.
If you already
write haiku and have ever wanted to add commentary to your verses, tanka is the
form for you!
The tanka aesthetic is broad and all-encompassing.
You can write
on virtually any subject and express your thoughts and feelings explicitly.
1. Think of one or two simple images from a moment you have
experienced and describe them in concrete terms -- what you have seen, tasted,
touched, smelled, or heard.
Write the description in two or three lines.
As an example:
an egret staring at me
me staring back
2. Reflect on how you felt or what you were thinking when you
experienced this moment or perhaps later when you had time to think about it.
Regarding the moment described above, you could think about how
often you have watched and photographed egrets.
In fact, they even could be said
to be a defining part of your life.
3. Describe these feelings or thoughts in the remaining two
or three lines:
wondering for years
what would be
my life's defining moment
4. Combine all five lines:
an egret staring at me
me staring back
wondering for years
what would be
my life's defining moment
5. Consider turning the third line of your poem into a pivot
line, that is, a line that refers both to the top two lines as well as to the
bottom two lines, so that either way they make sense grammatically.
To do that,
you may have to switch lines around.
Here's a verse with the lines reordered to create a pivoting
third line: wondering for years
what would be
my life's defining moment
an egret staring at me
me staring back
To test the pivot line, divide the poem into two three-liners
and see if each makes sense: wondering for years
what would be
my life's defining moment
my life's defining moment
an egret staring at me
me staring back
6. Think about the form or structure of your verse.
In Japan,
tanka is often written in one line with segments consisting of 5-7-5-7-7
sound-symbols or syllables.
Some people write English tanka in five lines with
5-7-5-7-7 syllable to approximate the Japanese model. You may wish to try
writing tanka in this way.
But Japanese syllables are shorter than English
language syllables, resulting in shorter poems even though the syllable count is
the same.
To approximate the Japanese model, some poets use approximately 20-22
syllables and a short-long-short-long-long structure or even just a free form
structure using five lines.
You may wish to experiment with all these
approaches. My egret verse is free form.
7. Decide where capitalization and punctuation may be needed,
if at all.
Tanka verses normally are not considered full sentences, and the
first word in line 1 usually is not capitalized, nor is the last line
end-stopped with a period.
The idea is to keep the verse open and a bit
fragmented or incomplete to encourage the reader to finish the verse in his or
her imagination.
Internal punctuation, while adding clarification, can stop the
pivot line from working both up and down. A colon could be added
without disenabling the pivot:
wondering for years
what would be
my life's defining moment:
an egret staring at me
me staring back
I decided to use indentation instead:
wondering for years
what would be
my life's defining moment
an egret staring at me
me staring back
A few final tips before you write your first verse:
-
Tanka verses normally do not have titles, unless they are in a "tanka sequence" or "tanka string."
-
Commentary can be separate from the concrete images or woven into them.
- Even though commentary is fine, it's a good policy -- as in any fine poetry -- to "show rather than tell."
This is a very simplified quick start guide
to
writing tanka.
writing tanka.
The more you write tanka and read other’s verses, you will find many variations to the approach presented here.
Enjoy the form and remember to share your verses
with others!
A great place to start is with a tanka society
such as
the Tanka Society of America or any of the other
organizations coming into existence around the
globe.
the Tanka Society of America or any of the other
organizations coming into existence around the
globe.
daisies glow amongst
crumbling lead cracked paintwork in
taranaki town twilight
do ghosts in forgotten shacks
whisper scandals to the tainted
