The Sestina, Ghazal, Villanelle, and now the Tanka. Appropriately enough in the week that The Olympic Games 2020 finally wound itself up, the Italians, Persians and French/Italians now give way to the Japanese hosts.
If you are one of those people that would rather have a poem read to you than read it yourself, you’ll find both text and recording of my tanka(s) on the Love and Nonsense page, via the Listen tab in the main menu. Otherwise you can plough on, and find the poem LIfe Cycle written out at the foot of the page.
Enjoy – and be great to hear how you have found the different forms included in the Summer school, both to read and – if you’ve been brave enough – to write.
Origins
The Tanka has a lot in common with the haiku – including its Japanese origin. Literally, the word tanka means ‘short song’, and it’s hard to imagine a much shorter song than five lines with a strict syllable count of thirty-one, usually in the pattern 5/7/5/7/7. This is the same number of lines, but even fewer syllables than a limerick. What is the point of that? you might ask. Well, like the haiku – which is even shorter – that brevity produces something like an incantation, or meditation – highly focussed images left for the mind to ponder. The trick, to judge by the most successful tankas I’ve read, is to make those images as fresh and direct as possible.
In the really pure form of a tanka, the lines work their magic without help from any punctuation – a single sinuous sentence is the aim. (As you’ll see, in my tanka(s) I ducked that rule, breaking up the flow into sentences and clauses, the better to control rhythm and the switch of meaning.) Rhyme too is surplus to requirements with a tanka – it’s all about those images.
One reason for the haiku’s popularity in schools – as well as the extreme focus – is that despite its brevity, it is a complete thing in itself. It’s possible for a pupil to get outside a whole poem in a relatively short period of time and to work at crafting their own poem, learning how to make sure the line contains exactly the prescribed number of syllables. The same is true of the tanka.
The super tanka
I’m not the first to coin that phrase I’m sure, but the idea here is to produce a chain of individual tankas. Ideally, each is self-contained, yet somehow they all connect. Such a slew of poems makes something else possible; a kind of pocket symphony with an ebb and flow and a juxtaposition of moods that can move through a season or period of life. That was the thinking behind my own ‘supertanka’ Life Cycle – a bit of a grandiose title now I come to think of it – where the fourth stanza provides a chance to rest and reflect, a period of calm before further hard thinking or action – or in this case, the rather savage or bleakly funny tanka that follows it in the sequence; nothing like grief to make you feel murderous on occasion.
As you’ll gather, Life Cycle is about one of those periods when life and death seem to intermingle, and emotions become hard to control. Writing the poem helped me to get my head around things that were happening in our family’s life; by contemplating those things, and seeing them in relation to one another – all part of a sequence – some kind of order was restored. It was important too, to establish in my own mind, where hope resides, so that the final tanka finds calm in thoughts about the regenerative power of nature.
Exemplars
To get a glimpse of the different effects of the haiku and tanka you can’t do better than look at Philip Appleman’s aptly titled, Three Haiku, Two Tanka – further evidence that an accumulation of these tiny gems has its attractions.
Method
For all the heaviness of spirit in Life Cycle, moments of playfulness are almost guaranteed by the game of compression that is intrinsic to the form. This begins with the first line – where a single word accounts for the entire five syllables available. It continues with an ironic examination of our language – the insufficiency of the phrase ‘living room’ at a time of bereavement – and so on.
I don’t really have much else to say on how to construct a tanka, except that the problem-solving aspect – how to capture this thought in the proscribed number of syllables – is quite a pleasurable, technical activity. While the mind wrestles with that, probing different possibilities, emotions tend to clarify themselves.
Life Cycle i Ironically, his bed fills the living room. I’m boiling pasta when the air alters, somehow. Dad’s battered chest has stayed down. ii Our children are home. Spreading their tired old wings our hearts beat once, twice, leave earth; all tempests banished. Life glitters in the late sun. iii She is tiny now; the cruel torque of ancient bones twists her face earthwards. Mum’s mind folds too - hey presto! and the lady vanishes. iv Before waking, sleep. Before sleep, drift from the shore. Before drifting, smile; let some small pleasure recalled lift you in the swell of dreams. v Once, I planned to kill (Murder is a crime, I know.) My logic was plain; ‘If a tree falls unnoticed...’ Then I felt the forest’s eyes. vi Seven years of age and the energy of stars. Briefly spent, she bears our future on softest skin; a winestain map of the world. vii Hush hush dying man fading woman, sleeping child. Outside your window rain quenches thirsty soil. Listen, as the seeds unfurl.
©Fraser Grace
Don’t forget you can subscribe FREE below to receive notice of further updates, and you can leave comments about the Blog or the poetry on the site, via the Contact tab.
Till next time.
wordcageonline.wordpress.com 