My first Tanka!

ohh this is neat. i had to look up tanka. in fact, when i saw the title of the thread, i thought you misspelled tonka and that it would be a poem about a child's toy. seriously..ok..maybe i need sleep.
love the imagery. love how brief it is yet still complete. i gotta try one.

I had to look it up, too.

Here are two sites.

Pretty basic:

http://www.americantanka.com/about.html

More info:

http://www.ahapoetry.com/TANKA.htm

Is this a genre debut in this forum? Cool!

I tend toward a

short
long
short
long
long

line scheme. much like yours.

I generally make line three shift perspective to something else. (Not that I'm intimating anyone else should)

I have one-


coming out
of a crack in my soul
a three legged dog
snuffles and growls before
it attacks a train's wheels

oh, Bret, that's brilliant. Amazing how you could describe so perfectly how I've been feeling lately. lol

ha ha! You too? There are wonderful new medications that can help us with these kinds of feelings you know...

Ooh, I like it!

Arizona's so hot right now; this was refreshing to read.

yes, and I forgot to say, tanka very much.

kdnxdr said:

I just tried my first tanka. I don't have a clue if it works. Here goes:


sparkling water flows,
metallic tips and curls gleam;
liquid silver stream,
real, you cannot be a dream,
your blue cool envelops me.

Click to expand...

I like it ... that cool industrial look, metallic shine. Nice, kid. Wave + wink. Smile.

Aspier, HOW NICE TO SEE YOU!

my life so far
does it's best to resemble
falling fast asleep
on a boat that slips it's moor
i wake to the strangest sight

looking like
it bites the road angrily
the dead cat-
wind from a passing car
makes a ripple in the fur

On the bandwagon...

my feet raise dustclouds
as I shuffle the pebbles
up the dirtrut road
the sun crisps my arms maroon
chest pastewhite under t-shirt

kdnxdr said:

when I'm not procrastinating, tenacity is one of my strong qualities.

Click to expand...

You are my Wonder Twin.

How ambitious to try every form. You make me feel like a slacker! I'll probably never attempt a sestina! Good for you.

Re: Tanka. I read two fun books. Tangled Hair by Akiko Yosano and Modern Japanese Tanka by Makoto Ueda. If you run across them, take a look.

Obscurity and failure are a couple of my favorite subjects! I've been researching them for quite sometime...

Re: used poetry books. I am swamped by books of poetry I've found second hand. The library sells discards and then there are the garage sales, flea markets and used book stores. A couple of my friends keep an eye out for me too. If they find a book of any kind of poetry for under a buck when they are garage "sailing" they buy it for me.
(Recent score: The Complete Poems of Octavio Paz.)

Wherever I am, I run into these great deals on used poetry. On my rained out trip to Hawaii last month, I found some great haiku and a rare Marge Piercey book in a used store in Kauai. Once you get tuned in, the books are drawn to you as if magnetically.

There are some good deals on Amazon for haiku that are otherwise impossible to find. (Like the Red Moon Anthologies)

secretly-
a man fastens a rose on
a witch's gate.
behind a hedge of nettles,
a thick silence expands

a crow flies
across a sunflower field
in a mad man's mind
a bent and rusty wheel
squeaks around its hub

repost of the "lost tanka" of June:

In her later years
grandma called me her son's name
and then my own
pine needles drift over
the stepping stones


My pen is as still
as a frog hunting heron peering
into the page
like it thinks another poem
will satisfy the hunger


premonition
the photograph I took
of your shadow proves
a part of you
was never here

Toy box orgy
tangled hair and long long legs
our daughter's Barbies
stripped of their clothing
and any sense of shame