- History.
The tanka developed
during Japan's Heian period (794-1185 A.D.)
as a poem to recognize an occasion (especially romantic).
Woman and men composed tanka.
Often they wrote and sent the tanka to an actual or desired lover.
Each line (or sound group) of a tanka can be a different one image or idea,
with the resulting five lines flowing together as a greater whole.
Modern tanka express many emotions including heartache, longing, and loss.
- Examples.
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Modern Japanese Tanka
(edited by Makoto Ueda) is a good place to begin reading tanka.
It it is the first collection that makes modern Japanese tanka available in English.
The simplicity and elegance of the tanka is beautifully translated and presented in this anthology,
with biographies of the poets.
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Historically, many of the most beautiful tanka are the love poems by the Japanese women poets:
- Ono No Komachi (834[?]-?), who served in the start of the Heian court in present-day Kyoto, and
- Izumi Shikibu (974-1034), who wrote poetry ranging from the religious to the erotic, at
the zenith of the Heian court. (At the same time, Murasaki Shikibu
wrote and presented the world's first novel,
The Tale of Genji.)
Some of the best translations of their tanka are in
The Ink Dark Moon
translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani.
- Form.
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In English, the Tanka is usually written as five short lines.
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Traditionally in Japanese, the tanka is five groups of sounds, each of 5 or 7
sound units.
The first and third units have 5 sound units (as in a
haiku),
while the other units have 7 sound units. This can be represented by:
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In English, some poets consider an English syllable to be a suitable approximation to
a Japanese sound unit.
In English,
we usually place each syllabic group on a separate line:
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Many writers in English use fewer syllables in a tanka,
in recognition that English syllable are longer than Japanese sound units.
As a result, a tanka could use fewer syllables such as, perhaps:
- Your Composition.
Of course, there is much more to the Tanka than the number and length of its lines. To a first approximation:
-
Begin with a haiku and the haiku sensibility.
Most commonly, this means that the poet writes something brief (such as three lines much like a haiku)
depicting nature.
- Then add the rest (usually two lines) to create a new relationship, perhaps adding
information about the internal, emotional state of the poet, to show what the opening lines
signify to her.
This lets the poet link nature and a feeling or emotion.
- Pay special attention to the part of the tanka that connect and leads
from the image of nature to the emotion.
This is where the poem turns or pivots between the physical outer world and the
non-physical inner world.
Most commonly, tanka pivot just after or else during the third line.
- At the pivot point, you put an image that is related both to the preceding lines
(usually on an exterior subject)
and the lines that follow the pivot and that are written on another
(usually interior) subject.
Thus two images (one outer, one inner) could be connected by a third image.
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Like a haiku, make your tanka concise and a reflection of nature.
Both have the appearance of simplicity, but with underlying layers and resonances.
A Tanka tends to be lyrical, whereas a Haiku can be comparatively fragmented.
A Tanka was historically written for emotional purposes, to redirect someone's
heart, whereas a Haiku is more subtle in its evocation of emotion.
Jane Reichhold in Writing and Enjoying Haiku
gives many important pointers, including:
-
"It is not as if you can just glue two haiku together to get a tanka.
Within the tanka there is a switch of time, place, person, thing, or voice
in order to create a leap or define a new relationship."
For further information, see:
|
Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-On Guide
by Jane Reichhold.
Reichhold's many skills include a keen sense for the writing and appreciation of tanka
as well as haiku.
This book includes useful guidelines on writing tanka (as well as haiku and related forms).
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- Check list.
-
Before submitting a Tanka for possible publication, check whether it:
- Invokes a strong feeling in the reader.
- Flows like poetry, particularly when read aloud.
- Includes clear images.
- Includes some kind of shift.
- Shows immediacy and intensity of a particular moment, juxtaposing
in a new way nature (the outer world)
and human nature (the inner world).
- Shows freshness unobscured with excessive complexity or vagueness.
- Shows emotional honesty and authenticity.
- Recognizes its connection to the tanka tradition, perhaps even back to the ancestors of uta and waka,
while using language as currently spoken.
- Does not sound like an awkward translation of Japanese.
- Does, like all poems, exclude anything self-consciously "poetical" or other false notes.
- Has the tanka form, at least in a general sense of five shortish lines.
- Frames its theme.
- Avoids cliche or sentimentality.
- Progresses to a strong yet surprising final line.
- Includes a caesura (which some judges 'find to be effective').
- Includes alliteration if desired.
- Includes inner rhyme if wanted; avoids or is very careful about end rhyme.
- Is indented as wished: do the last two (or three or one or four) lines (for example) need additional indentation.
- Punctuated as wished: perhaps lightly; perhaps with a closing period and perhaps not.
Different editors and judges adopt different guidelines.
You might chose to not submit, for example, to
Ribbons (Tanka Society of America)
as they abhor punctuation,
giving the tanka an alien appearance.
In complete contrast,
Jane Hirshfield
punctuates her landmark translations of Japanese tanka in
The Ink Dark Moon
as normal poems.
- A Last Word.
Just because you start with the intention of writing a Tanka, you do not have to
keep your poem in that form if it does not work for you.
Your attempt to write a formal poem
may help you find words that you would not have found otherwise.
And you may decide that you choose to end up with a
poem in a different form, perhaps even a
prose poem.
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Books on Tanka.
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Modern Japanese Tanka
edited by Makoto Ueda.
This book is the first collection to make modern Japanese tanka available in English.
A delightful and comprehensive presentation of poetry that shows the development of the tanka form.
Each poet is introduced with a biography.
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|
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Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-On Guide
by Jane Reichhold.
Reichhold's many skills include a keen sense for the writing and appreciation of tanka
as well as haiku.
This book includes useful guidelines on writing tanka (as well as haiku and related forms).
|
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The Ink Dark Moon,
translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani,
tanka of Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu of the Heian court.
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New books on writing poetry.
Index of Poetry.
