Naomi Y. Brown and David Rice, Judges
It was an honor for us to be asked to judge the
premier Tanka Society of America International Tanka Contest. We each received
a package of 309 tanka in mid-December 2000. To read and reread so many tanka
is an emotional experience. Tanka, as we all know, allows the essence of the
poet to shine through the five lines. We would like to thank all the poets who
submitted tanka to the contest and for sharing their lives in this wonderful
form.
After we
each had read all the tanka, we selected the 20 that we especially liked. We
exchanged lists of these tanka and then we each selected the six to ten that we
liked best. We spoke on the phone for about an hour and discussed the ten tanka
that we both had picked as most outstanding. From those ten, we selected the
first, second, and third prize winners and four honorable mentions.
We both
selected some poems for special consideration that the other person did not
select at all. We placed an emphasis on tanka that gave us a strong feeling as
we read. Perhaps this is why all judging is idiosyncratic at some level. One
poem may emotionally move one person, while another person might like the poem
but not be especially moved by it. In selecting the tanka we liked the best
from our final group of 10, we also looked for poems that had a strong rhythm
and flow, that sounded good when read aloud. If two other people had been the
judges, the final selection of winning poems would undoubtedly have been
somewhat different. However, we were in considerable agreement about which of
these 309 poems were our favorites, and we agreed on the final order of the
selections.
A group of
309 tanka can easily be sorted into “lighter”/no natural imagery tanka and “deeper”/natural
imagery tanka, analogous to the distinction between haiku and senryu. It is
sometimes difficult to compare poems that are so different in content and aim.
The TSA might consider discussing the general issue of whether tanka poets actually
write two kinds of poems, just as haiku poets write both haiku and senryu.
We would
also like to say that although we agree that there are not absolute rules about
what makes a poem a tanka (e.g., there is not debate on the issue of season
words, as there is in haiku), we looked for poems that contained some sort of
shift. Without a shift, we believe it is more difficult for the poet to explain
why the poem is a tanka.
First Place
($100)
traveling the path
through rustling cornfields
to the cow pasture
I see father waving his cap
just before I wake up
Edward J. Reilly
We liked the flow of this poem. We liked the strong,
happy feeling the poem gave us. And we also liked how the feeling expanded,
like ripples in a pond after a pebble disappears: the poet’s father is no
longer alive. The happiness remains but gains depth and perspective as we sit
with the feeling.
Second Place
($50)
Halving fruit,
my second husband’s
way of love—
hard to change habits
so late in life
Amelia Fielden
Although we think that tanka usually do not need
commas and periods because the structure of the lines can serve to inform the
reader of pauses and endings, we liked this poem so much that we overlooked our
opinions about punctuation. We liked how the taste of this poem remained in our
mouths for a long time. It is a simple poem that grows more complicated in a
satisfying way: her second husband genuinely loves her and she knows that and
yet . . . it doesn’t quite feel like real love and yet . . . she accepts his
love, too.
Third Place
($25)
afterwards
clearing out his desk
I find him
in bits and pieces
the man I never knew
Doris Kasson
We liked how we felt, along with the poet, surprise
and sadness, surprise that someone so close could have such secrets and sadness
that those secrets were not shared.
Honorable
Mentions
autumn—
the old woman turns in bed
waiting for the sun
to reach the tulip tree
already yellow
Leatrice Lifshitz
one block away
from E-business conference
a man with
a shopping cart
talking to the sky
Fay Aoyagi
San Francisco, California
in the flower bed
a rabbit naps
rump in the air
like my son when he wore
footed pajamas
Joann Klontz
I’d have called him at dusk
to wish him a happy birthday
but this year
I study the slow spiral
of a solitary leaf
Joann Klontz
Contest coordinator: Job Conger