Why Tanka?
My love for Japanese poetry began as a child in elementary school where I was first introduced to the haiku. The haiku represented for me the union of the two things I most loved--language and nature. But even while I admired the haiku for its brevity, as a poet, I often found its three lines and its syllabic count of 5-7-5 a bit too limiting. Then I discovered the haiku's forerunner--the tanka. Typically, the tanka will begin with three lines making reference to something in nature, as does the haiku, while the added two lines will refer to a human event or emotion. Sometimes the order is reversed; sometimes the connection is direct; sometimes nebulous, but always there is the distinct link between what is the concrete reality of our existence with what is deeply human about it. While the tanka has all the same nature imagery as the haiku, it is also able to candidly express a wide range of human feelings, and this to me is what makes the tanka the most intimate and sensual of all poetic forms.
The tanka actually came before the haiku and can be traced back over twelve centuries to the Heian court of Japan, where it began as something of a letter game between lovers. After an evening together, one lover would compose a tanka that would be sent, read and judged by its recipient for its poetic skill, its imagery, even the paper it was composed on. Then a response tanka would be written and sent. Tanka was so popular and highly regarded in this ancient Japanese culture that an experience was was not considered complete unless a tanka was composed to give it expression.
Traditionally, tanka was composed in 31 syllables, five lines of 5-7-5-7-7, but in contemporary English tanka, this syllabic count isn't so strictly adhered to. It is more important, in translation, for the English tanka to be more pleasing and rhythmic. Still, even without the rigid syllable count, the tanka remains a lesson in brevity and requires a poet to be quite selective with words, as well as skilled with their arrangement. The challenge is to accomplish all this while translating a moment in the lived experience so that it appears simple and fluent, as if it were effortlessly composed.
For me, the end result is a little powerhouse of a poem packed with natural imagery, powerful language, often mystique, intrigue, love or loss, and above all, an intimate glimpse into life as we experience it, as it unfolds moment by moment, so that what is essentially ordinary becomes nothing short of extraordinary.
Annette Mineo
reprinted from empty baskets
2007
