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Showing posts with label Japanese poem form. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japanese poem form. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

For Real Toads: with Grace, the Tanka

At the writers' group, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Grace has introduced us to another ancient Japanese poetry form, the Tanka, or "short poem"...a five-line poem with a clear division or turning point between the upper phrase and the lower phrase.
A Tanka should include yugen "a feeling both broad and deep, a subtle and profound atmosphere, and infinite tranquil space with lingering suggestiveness."
All of that in five lines? Yes, and Grace has also asked us to write three Tanka, while including a mysterious instruction about linking up with another poet.


*
day's sky clothed in grey
and night's sky clouded in black
give way to a dawn
of glorious enchantment
intoxicating the birds
*
day's sky wrapt in blue
bright birds soaring above green
intoxicate Man
who sighs, unable to fly
and weeps, being chained to Earth
*
Man, the envious,
accomplishes much on Earth:
now flies, dives and soars
while birds, who do not envy,
still sing to welcome the dawn.