more throwback tanka…another ‘duet’
again
the sea unloads
its burdens
still i cling
to you
in the wind
a wailing dove
you won’t see
as i bend a shadow
beyond yours
Alegria Imperial, Multiverses, Spring 2012
into fog (my first tanka in print)
into fog
we lose who we are
under oaks
first a weight in the eyes
then our hands no longer ours
copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
First published in Eucalypt: a tanka journal 10 2011 Edited by Beverley George
One of five tanka from which Elizabeth Howard, past winner, had picked her best choice or a winner in the issue.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry. A sad note comes with this post as I lose friends on this site who are leaving for other clear meadows, Adam, Brian, Chris G, Claudia and Pete. I’ve gained a steady ground from which my poetry had soared from their constant nourishment in generous words. I’ll really miss you! But come check us out for this last One Shot with the team.
the calm/rereading cards/round and round (3 tanka on the calm from the earthquake elsewhere)
Mie and me on her last visit to Vancouver
1.
the calm–
from Kyoto Mie writes
far from earthquake
the wedding garden today
light snow on cherry buds
2.
rereading cards–
from Michio in Saitama
her New year’s wishes
of Rabbit hopes and dreams
today mine for her in pray’r
3.
round and round
moon and earth mirror each other
chaos of winds
ruined faces blemished cheeks
to be cleansed over and over
you and i in seven pieces (for One Shot Wednesday)
1.
a flower basket moon—
tilting from a swing of arms
in revolving doors
our sighs uncompleted in the eaves
a storm hanging by a cloud
2.
squalling gulls
rip our day in shreds–
the only sound
between us and the stones
and the dying flowers
3.
why the mimosa
shrinks in pain at our steps–
i search for your scent
you squint from its thorns
i sip drops of night dew
4.
darkness leaves us blind
we grope for our eyes but find
our lips like embers
on a bed of pebbles left to die–
we thrum like restless stars
5.
we reap our moaning
gather folds of reticent dawn
into my breast–
you slice away your pain
my flesh thins out in your hands
6.
i beg for the sun
lodged in the cleavage of morning–
you toss it flaming
your destiny line singed
the line of your heart scarred
7.
i lie in wait–
the next moon comes astride
the east wind raging
washing away whirlpools of dust
baring the sun i conceived
soleil levant by Claude Monet 1872 courtesy of wikipedia
haiku truths/crocus and frogs after rain/…secrets…non-stop/oh, poet for you, no rest (where did it come from? or how a NaHaiWriMo idea became this tanka)
haiku truths–
crocus and frogs after rain
ketrels and hyacinths
telling you secrets non-stop
oh, poet for you, no rest
Where did that come from?
If you read the comments between Wrick Daddario (19 Planets Art blog) and me on my #24 & #25 NaHaiWriMo post here, you would have read that tanka. He started with what he liked about the haiku and as always when the interaction takes over, he wrote his own haiku on the comment thread. He later mentioned that perhaps he did write enough to pass off as a-haiku-a-day for the month, adding he didn’t want to make a commit ment but did fulfill it anyway. That’s when this thought that has overtaken me was unleashed…and I wrote on:
“Commitment? That’s always a big scare, isn’t it? It is, in matters of personal and true-to-life matters, especially, but even more so in ART. Because it asks or demands of one’s whole being, the thrill with which we throw ourselves into it soon falters and we slouch off along the way. But something else could also happen like what’s happening to me. (These last two sentences added just now.)
I have had brief bouts of it–this ‘being on a roll’, but not like now that I feel totally consumed by it–though still unaware of commitment to giving in or have given in to–the POWER OF HAIKU and TANKA. I feel I’m changing especially with my personality; I think I’m turning into a monk who prowls the city looking hollow or with burning eyes on details that turn into or churn haiku in my mind.
I used to be mindful of my interactions; I used to be prompt with my replies to ideas–I used to be present in most if not all meetings about social issues and plain social events and stay and follow-up on ideas I throw in. But now? Haiku/tanka flowing into my other poetic forms have gripped me like a vise and all else float or flit about like wings of nymphs. (I’ve added the last phrase just now, again.)
I seem to carry a head that’s brewing a stew of images restlessly swirling as words non-stop! Never mind if none or all that comes out of it is bad or good haiku or poetic lines–the ‘power’ wields its whip anyway and I must let it ride, put down on the screen what I’m not even aware whether or not it’s my composition or simply of this power most of the time.
If this hasn’t happened to you yet, totally, I’m sure you’ve felt it some time–beware! Commitment (to haiku)? I don’t know if you can choose to thwart it or shoo it away!”
And the tanka flowed in.
squabbling crows/sunny day at Zoo/the drum beat of rain NaHaiWriMo prompts turned tanka!
1. Prompt #24 flower
squabbling crows
scream into my thoughts–
at dawn how you left
hollow imprints of sleep
scented dreams of jasmine blooms
2. prompt #25–zoo
sunny day at Zoo
lioness searches for my eyes
behind my black shades–
the way we hold our hearts
as we speak of fears and wants
3. prompt #26–drum
the drum beat of rain
on window pane imprints tears
a flood breaking hearts
in loneliness gray rain sneaks
into wells to fill the dryness
Tanka drafts I should call these because I’m certain that when I read them tomorrow, they will sound bad. These came as spontaneously as the haiku I’ve been posting on the NaHaiWriMo wall. There’s an energy that takes over at the site like a hand that holds my wrist as I pause or pose to let the first word dance on the screen. It’s the presence of so many other haiku writers– whose names I recognize from the Shiki kukai and haiku journals even some haijin–that I think itself serves as the prompt and the word, a prop. The experience, though I hopped in only on Day 19, has been exhilarating.
heron’s splash (published tanka)
heron’s splash
on river marsh rocking
the sound of water –
a mountain of wash
after he left home
First published in LYNX XXIII:3, October 2008
This tanka was first returned to me with a lovely note from the editor of a tanka journal, telling me to read more on the art form, work on writing it and perhaps submit again. She said though that first attempts don’t usually make it, nor the second ones. After reading a lot on tanka, I was convinced I wrote mine true to its form and so, I pushed my luck. I submitted the same batch to LYNX and lucked out on three of them getting accepted, one of them, the above.
grey relentless rain (is it tanka?)
grey relentless rain
on moss covered cherry trees—
he counts his regrets
since the dawn he missed the sun
days half-lived appear each turn
Is it tanka? Possibly because it follows the thirty-one (5/7/5/7/7) Japanese form.
But it can’t possibly be tanka because it does not express “passionate or delicate sentiments”, which its original form did.
Tanka reached its peak in the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries also known as the “Heian period, Japan’s golden age”, as identified by Alfred H. Marks, editor-in-chief of Literature East & West. He introduces the period when no written language existed in Japan as yet and so, tanka, was recited. Each year, under the sponsorship of the emperor, a contest would be held. Professor Marks is a “renowned translator and dynamic scholar”.
Here’s a concrete vision of tanka a drawn by Professor Marks in his introduction: “…a languid lady in a palace lined with screens and colorful sliding walls, reading the thirty-one syllable statement of the heart of some moody nobleman and answering the missive in another thirty-one syllables in tasteful imagery and elegant calligraphy. It was the Heian greeting card, and it is today, in Japan as elsewhere, an apt medium for sentiments passionate or delicate.”
The book, Japanese Tanka, The Court Poetry of a Golden Age for which Professor Marks wrote this introduction contains 56 exquisite tanka by Thomas Gurgal, a former student of Marks, with Illustrations by Maggie Jarvies published by The Peter Pauper Press, Inc. Mount Vernon, NY, 1972.
I found the book squeezed between giant poetry tomes and collections at Vancouver Public Library’s central branch on West Georgia here in downtown Vancouver. The tiny pocketbook-size hardbound edition has been quite a discovery, which could hold me in awe even after I close the covers and must turn it back in when it’s due to circulation…I guess I’ll have to line up forever to get it back.
My tanka is far from the sentiments Gurgal so wondrously expresses. I could pretend to be a lady in some imperial court but I know I would be stretching my imagination too far out. My culture won’t give me a shadow to wing from. I would have to visit Japan, I guess. And so, I conclude, what I wrote is not a tanka by these ancient standards except, and this could be stretching it so much so it could snap, it also expresses a sentiment, that of ‘loss’, which seem to rule my subsconscious.
Japanese Tanka, The Court Poetry of a Golden Age by Thomas Gurgal
harbor walk (with rewrite or turning a ‘hanging’ haiku into a tanka)
harbor walk–
webbed-steps tailing us
into the sunset
This haiku, which I’m not sure whether it’s a half- or non-haiku, brings me back to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. I walked for an hour everyday at sunset way back when I lived there half of the year until four years ago when I started to wait out here in Vancouver for my Canadian citizenship. Most of my early haiku, when I was still groping through it as well as my other poetry, are images of the harbor, Federal Hill Park and the neighborhood.
Rewrite from haiku that hang to a not-sure tanka
harbor walk–
webbed steps tailing us
into the sunset
in blind paths that waver like words
we mislead even the winds
This haiku I posted three days ago seemed to hang, no not seemed, it hang! But I just couldn’t clinch it and so, again, it wrote itself as a tanka. I’m unsure though if indeed it is a good tanka but I like the poem it has turned into.
About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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