What is tanka? I'm not even going to try to answer this. Again, I defer to those who have devoted so much of their lives to gathering all of the relevant information. However, I would like to acknowledge that, in my experience, learning and then following the guidelines, alone, will not lead one to compose strong verse. Likewise, deviating from the standards—sticking your tongue out at the traditions—will not automatically ensure masterpiece after masterpiece. Thus, I suppose, some simple advice might be to memorize what are mostly believed to be the standards, and if the moments can be captured within those parameters, proceed, but, if the moments themselves must be compromised in order to make them fit the form, then I would consider stretching the rules slightly. And then simply live with it. If others seem unwilling to acknowledge the poem as a tanka, don't be shaken.


Whether one follows the perceived rules or not, toes will be stepped on and readers will be disappointed. I've certainly had my share of duds, of both varieties. Yet, despite the frustration I felt at times, I continued to write, and as a result there were those few late nights when it seemed I did produce something that represented my life authentically, and, at the same time, fit into the form to an extent that it could, if even loosely, be called a tanka.


Saying goodbye I struck the singing bowl she kept by the door I don't know if it ever ends


Peter Yovu


Years ago, long before I'd ever heard of tanka, I developed an interest in the western occult. (Not to be confused with "a cult"). I asked a knowledgeable teacher which books I ought to read so as to fructify my interest, thinking, of course, that he would direct me to obscure titles such asA


b mli h ae, or Madam Blavatsky'sTe Sert Dcrine. Instead, his ra e n te Mg h e ps e Tmet." h ce ot


answer was "Read Shakespeare. Come to know the diverse energies—both human and non-human— that influence our lives. Read the Sonnets. ReadT


What does any of this have to do with tanka? Well, I believe we must all ask ourselves a question: does poetry exist merely for poetry's sake, or do our poems have the potential to become, as someone once said, "magical spells" that gather into tight bundles all that slips too easily through our fingers? In other words, can the act of writing poems turn us into alchemists of sorts---our spines into columns of light that beam upward into the unknowable dimensions of time and space—or are we just doodling, passing the days?


Truly, being intimate with our own poetic intentions influences our abilities to say what we want to say, what needs to be said. Whether our stories delve into the imaginative myths of personal history, or the unassuming details of our own peculiar geographies, I'm compelled to believe that our stories, our poems, will be measured, more than anything, by the voracity of the telling.


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