Marjorie A. Buettner and Denis M. Garrison, Judges
First Place ($100)
spiraling
a winged seed makes its way
to the ground
the strange beauty
of my own crooked path
Cherie Hunter Day
San Diego, California
The single word in the opening line is a keynote. This
tanka spirals slowly from natural observation through its turn to
introspection. It has the gentle touch of the nearly weightless seed as it
beckons the reader to likewise look inwardly to regard the unique path of his
or her own life lovely in its very singularity, in its personality. In every
age, people have felt their smallness, their facelessness, in the midst of
multitudes. Still, like the seed making its once-in-a-lifetime journey to the
ground littered with millions like it, for our moment in time, we spiral, we
dance, we are beautiful in someone’s eyes―we are someone. Line two is
remarkable for its evocation of the back and forth movement; it makes the
reader take time with the line only to slide home on the smooth diction of the
closing couplet. This tanka is a joy to read and to contemplate.
Second Place ($50)
because
it’s what he would’ve done
for me
I light the cigarette
someone left on his grave
Andrew Riutta
Travers City, Michigan
This tanka is remarkable for its laconic display of
noblesse oblige in a modern idiom. If it weren’t made clear by the word “cigarette”
that this is recent, it could be an elegy of one knight at another’s grave.
This deceptively plain tanka is eloquent in its evocation of the male
predilection for actions rather than words. The depth of feeling hits the
reader like a wave in the strong final line of the poem, a line that colors
everything before it. It puts a lump in one’s throat. The iambic meter of lines
one through four slams into the opening trochee of the more complex final line,
making us feel the shock as we finally see the whole scene. A deeply moving
tanka, this; and a memorable one.
Third Place ($25)
on the last day of summer
we watch blood pump
through a shrimp’s translucent skin
. . . how I missed all the signs
you were ready to leave
Linda Jeannette Ward
Coinjock, North Carolina
The image of watching the blood pump through the skin
of a shrimp is a very unique and disturbing image. The first line tells the
reader all: it is the last of the last times to watch, to enjoy summer, to be
with a friend or lover, to feel. The concluding lines tell the reader a bit
more but not too much. This is when the image of the blood through the skin
transcends the moment and becomes a universal symbol for human frailty and
finality. We never know when it will be time to leave and already it may be too
late―this last day of summer. Wonderful!
Honorable
Mentions (in no special order)
does any direction
ever lead to home?
I sit and watch
as skeins of wild geese
unwind across the sky
John Barlow
Liverpool, United Kingdom
This is a fine tanka in the interrogatory style. The
wonderful central image is spun out in a delicious final couplet with a
marvelously open-ended sense. One loves to hear beautiful diction like this in
tanka; it is even more precious in such brevity.
the long, long climb
to the mountain’s summit
just to see
how glorious
the valley below
Zane Parks
Livermore, California
Here is a lovely wisdom tanka that has unified imagery
and makes its turn in the realization of the significance of perspective. The
paucity of details allows the reader dreaming room, to make this about his or
her own ideal valley.
Having decided
to be cremated
someday somewhere
I watch applewood logs
give themselves to flame
Carol Purington
Colrain, Massachusetts
There is a sense of mystery in this tanka: there is
another dimension to this to which we have not been invited. The reader is free
to speculate; free to gaze into the blaze and see his or her own vision in the
flames.
sometimes,
when no one is around,
my heart changes
into a heron
and flies
M. Kei
Perryville, Maryland
The surreality of this tanka carries the emotional
freight of the poem. That ineffable feeling of bursting with beauty that one
gets from time to time is approachable only in these dream terms.
turned twenty last month
sixty the week after―
in the curtain’s sheer lining
just a single flash
of firefly
Linda Jeannette Ward
Coinjock, North Carolina
A most ingenious dichotomy in this tanka! Going from
hyperbole in the opening lines and into minimalist understatement in the closing
lines―separated only by a filmy curtain lining. The last line is very short,
yet very powerful. The whole mystery of evanescence appears a firefly’s flash.
This is a classic epiphanic tanka with an amazing shift in tone.
Contest Coordinator: Kirsty
Karkow