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    AC Benus
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The content presented here is for informational or educational purposes only. These are just the authors' personal opinions and knowledge.
Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

Zero to Hero, a Guide - 2. Poetry Prompt 1 – Tanka

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Poetry Prompt 1

Let's Write a Tanka!

 

It’s an impossible situation to be in, a role where I have to try and define a thing by saying what it is not. Tanka are not Haiku!

This is a Tanka:

 

Under the mountain,

On the wild moor where we met,

The wind batters me

To look for what can be found

And to think of you no more.[1]

 

If I had a magic wand, I’d wave it to remove your preconceived notions concerning poetry before we go on. But it’s especially important you forget everything you learned in high school about Japanese poetry. For unlike the abstract thing we think of as Haiku, Tanka are direct and personable. You won’t ever find, or shouldn’t at least find, a Haiku using the words “I,” or “me,” or “my,” or “mine.” In examples like the Tanka above, they are essential.

Tanka are emotional poems where the poet is present and guiding us through both the sights and feelings of the scene. A personal POV is all-important.[2] I can’t overstate that enough: Tanka are subjective poems rife with feelings, and because they’re not abstract, should be easy to relate to.

This is a very ancient form of poetry. Fujiwara Sadaie edited an anthology in 1235 in which he collected only this style of verse and presented them sequentially. The first one dates to approximately the year 660 and the last from the year the anthology was collected. Hyakunin Isshu, or The Issue of a Hundred People, provides one Tanka each from one hundred poets. In the 20th century particularly, many fine Japanese writers have seen the potential in the Tanka's open form and revived it richly to modern tastes. [3]

So specifically, Tanka consists of five lines, which are arranged in the following syllables: 5–7–5–7–7. This forms a cohesive stanza where one thought flows into the next with no periods or hard stops at the end of each line (commas, semicolons, dashes, etc. are not ‘hard’ stops but gentle pauses, which are perfectly fine). The stanza is the basic unit of poetry. Be it Couplet, Tanka, Elegy, or the Quatrain of a Sonnet, the stanza has to be one unified effort and not a string of chopped-up lines. Please remember that.

Now let’s look at more examples, keeping the points just mentioned in mind. Here is a translation of No. 94 by Sangi Masatsune from the Hyakunin Isshu:

 

Adrift Yoshino’s

Mountain breeze, the autumn brings

Sounds of honest work,

And my cold family manor

Becomes as supple as cloth.

 

This poem puts you there with Sangi as he sits on his veranda writing and listening to the lively villagers doing laundry in a nearby stream. There is an impromptu feeling to the poem, but also a great and timeless connection to the way things are or have always been. Japanese poets seek this timelessness through references to nature (like the mountain breeze) and to indications of season (like this poet’s plainspoken “autumn”).

Here’s another example:

 

Say that love is like

The wind-tossed boats of the sea;

Say that they are like

A pathless, rudderless thing,

And your voice will have rung true.

 

This is No. 46 by Sone no Yoshitada. With this poem, the seasonal word of “wind-tossed” is more subtle but still conjures images of springtime gales along the seashore. All traditional Japanese poetry and songs contain a seasonal reference, and your Tanka should too, but I want to show you it can be casual. For instance, summer can be brought to your Tanka with 'suntan lotion,' 'public pool,' '4th of July,' 'beach blanket,' anything that puts the reader in the heat of the season. Likewise, for winter, 'robin' (which is associated with Christmas in Britain), 'furnace grate,' 'road salt,' 'heating bill,' 'creaking roof,' 'tire chains,' and on and on can serve to put the reader where you are in the time of year. I hope you get the idea and are inspired. Anything that says season to you is fair game for a Japanese-style poem.

In addition, I hope you were paying attention to the stanza form in the examples. The lines move the central theme of the poem forward without coming to a stop at any line except the final one. If you make a poem of five self-contained lines, each ending in a hard stop, you have not written a Tanka.

This brings me to another wand-waving moment. When you come to write your Tanka in English, be sure to leave room for the connecting words and essential elements of grammar. Words like to, for, by, when, if; articles like a, an, the; subjects, objects, verbs, etc., for we wish to create a naturally complete stanza. They don’t cut out these words in Japanese, and it’s even more of a challenge to stay in the syllable counts in that language, but because of it, it’s considered a sign of poetic accomplishment. In English, Haiku has developed its own path away from the originals for a hundred years now, and our high school teachers bombarded us with poems lost in what I call “haiku-speak,” or a doggerel of choppy lines, missing words and hard stops to prevent flow. Don’t succumb to thinking ‘it’s abstract’ and okay. For Tanka, it’s not okay.

Now, I mentioned Tanka has had a great modern revival, and so it has. Here are three examples by Saito Fumi; her work is incredibly good.

 

Living through an age

Making of base violence

Something beautiful,

I’ll keep singing all the days

My too-childish lullabies.

 

When there’s neither man

Nor horse to be seen passing

On top of a bridge,

It’s at this time it can show

The true nature of a bridge.

 

Don’t resemble me –

Please don’t – I tell the woman

Whom I am sketching,

Who has the beautiful grin

Of a wanton seductress.

 

Here’s another modern stunner by Okamoto Kanoko:

 

The bursting cherries,

Blooming with all their might,

Bid me to please stop;

To give them some attention,

If not all of my power.

 

I hope you find these motivating. Tanka may be a bit of a challenge to master, but once you do, the sky’s the limit with it, which is why I love the form. In my life I’ve written more Tanka than any other type of poem. Studying it now also sets up so much that’s needed later, like understanding line length via syllable count and the importance of thinking of a stanza as one thought progressing over the course of several lines.

 

The Prompt: Write a series of at least five Tanka set in the season of the year where you are right now. Let small things inspire you as you go about your daily routine. Anything that makes you stop and consider your feelings is ideal.

 

As final inspiration, here’s one written by Shuku Choku, but can you guess the season?

 

Arrowroot blossoms

Pressed down in the muddy ground

Yet retain freshness:

Some wandering soul before mine

Has already walked my path.

 

 

 


 

Self-Review: Now that you have written several Tanka, I ask you to perform a self-check against the following set of questions. If you answer ‘Yes’ to one or more of them, and this leads to feelings of dissatisfaction with your results, turn to the appendix List of Random Prompt Ideas and choose one to try the Tanka challenge again. Check this list of questions with your second attempt and whittle those ‘Yes’s down to a comfortable level before going on to the Haiku prompt challenge.

 

Ask yourself DID I:

- Fall short or go over on the syllable counts?

- Fail to place my personal POV in the Tanka?

- Make hard stops at the end of each line?

- Treat the poem as a bunch of random lines and not a stanza?

- Regress to haiku-speak?

- Fail to make my Tanka unified and flowing?

- Sacrifice basic grammar to achieve syllable count?

- Have a basic seasonal reference? (This one is more excusable if you feel you were aiming for a more modern Tanka.)

 

Remember, this course is designed to build knowledge and confidence step by step, so please feel comfortable with Tanka before you proceed.

For some final Tanka inspiration, here are a few brilliant translations of Saito Fumi’s work by Edith Marcambe Shiffert & Yuki Sawa. In case you think I am alone in avoiding the dreaded haiku-speak, take a look:

https://archive.org/details/anthologyofmoder00shif/page/150/mode/2up?view=theater

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


[1] No. 58 by Dani no Sammi from the Hyakunin Isshu. All translations are mine.

[2] In Haiku, the exact opposite is true: the poet’s POV is not there at all. Instead, the scene is only painted in words as if untouched by human sentiments. It’s just an image where the reader is expected to bring some meaning to the sight through his or her own experiences.

[3] You will occasionally see the term Waka used interchangeably with Tanka, but Waka is more properly reserved for the entire genre of traditional poetry. Waka is an umbrella category simply meaning “Japanese Verse,” and we will be studying more of its forms later on.

_    

Thanks to everyone who helped kick the tires on this Prompt before I released it, especially to @MichaelS36and @MacGregwho each took the prompt with great results.
Copyright © 2019 AC Benus; All Rights Reserved.
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The content presented here is for informational or educational purposes only. These are just the authors' personal opinions and knowledge.
Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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2 minutes ago, Mikiesboy said:

oh boy ... 5-7-5-7-7 and these make me quake in poetic boots.  Seriously, i am terrified of these, more than writing a Ballad or an ode.  However, my fear will not stop me. I will do a better job than the first time!!

Deep breath, and let inspiration settle your mind. Winter is a time of year where we feel strong things -- the cold, prickles of warmth -- so let them into your clam mind and bloom. I know you can do it, and I want to make Tanka an item of your poet's toolkit.    

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On 1/18/2019 at 6:33 PM, mollyhousemouse said:

@AC Benus i have a question please, regarding syllables

when i'm counting syllables, i'm doing them as a word is usually spoken

for example the word EVENING when you sound it out, it's three E VEN ING but when you say it, EVE NING it's two

what's the correct way to count these?

Generally speaking, the phonetic sound of the word in everyday speech takes precedence over the same word said in a forced manner. So, I'd error on the side of EVE NING :)

 

 

Edited by AC Benus
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On 1/28/2019 at 10:07 AM, AC Benus said:

I just want to tell everyone I'l really happy with the response to the launch of the book and the first challenge. Everyone is blowing me away by posting their own original Tanka that are real, honest to goodness Tanka! As a Brit might say, I'm chuffed to bits! 

 

You guys make me proud 

You lot make me proud...if you're british.

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On 4/17/2023 at 11:54 PM, raven1 said:

In the first edition of this it was implied that even a indirect reference might be used to hint at the season.  I can't remember the example, but it may be something like this to hint at spring.

Muscles tight ready to spring

Did I misinterpret the first edition's comments?

Terry, you might want to re-read the above, because seasonal words are discussed; it's also a point in the self-help checklist. 

The "spring" you use in your question is a verb, so sadly, it's not anything a reader would relate to the season (in the context of a cat, as in your poem) 

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