Tanka and Renga: Looking Through Windows

Tanka is a short, unrhymed Japanese poem (from tan, “short” and ka, “poem”), often composed of 31 syllables. Tanka is a form of waka, a highly imagistic lyric poem. Many English translations divide tanka into 5 lines of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables.

The form started in ninth-century Japan, and was used as a means of exchange and communication between members of the Japanese Court, particularly lovers. These epistolary exchanges eventually evolved into a new form, renga, chains of collaboratively composed, linked tanka that can grow to be thousands of tanka long.

Tanka to Read:

• “Three Haiku, Two Tanka,” Philip Appleman
• “Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman,” Sonia Sanchez
• Like many tanka and haiku composers, Jun Fujita did not compose tanka that adhered to strict syllable counts, instead crafting poems that honor the tanka’s movement, sensibility, and shape. Read the tanka poems Fujita published in Poetry.
  
  Assignment:
• Select one window in your home. Sit in front of this window and complete the following steps in the morning, afternoon, and evening of the same day.
• You will need something to write on and a writing instrument. For the first part, at least, write by hand. Time yourself as you write in some way (with a timer, the length of a song, or the length of a page).
• Try to write for the whole time, without stopping, in prose (in sentences/paragraphs, without line breaks). Work to get all of your thoughts on the page, without worrying about what you are writing, or how. Follow wherever your mind leads.
• Write for roughly 4 minutes, noting everything you see outside your window. Try to stay as objective and physical as possible. What do you see? What do you hear? Is anything or anyone moving? If your window is open, how does the outside air feel? Can you smell anything? Then, for 2 minutes, turn away from the window, and write down what you are thinking and feeling.
• Leave this writing for at least an hour. When you return, take what you have written and compose the upper part of the poem, the lines of 5/7/5 syllables, using images from outside your window. Try to use an image that engages a sense other than sight: sounds, tastes, smells, physical sensations. The last two lines, the lower part of the poem, should be composed from the last part of your writing, which describe your thoughts and feelings.
  
  Bonus: Start a Renga Chain
  Start a tanka conversation, where two or more people exchange complete tankas, each written in response to a received tanka. Another option is to break the tanka into the upper part (5/7/5) and lower part (7/7), with different poets composing the different parts of the same tanka.
  
  Contemporary Tanka and Renga for Further Reading:
• The Forest of Eyes, Tada Chimako
• “Tanka,” Sadakichi Hartmann
• Tanka Diary, Harryette Mullen
• “Tankas,” Patricia Smith