by Jim Chessing

Part I

How do we arrive at meaning in tanka through the interaction of content and form? In this first part of a two-part essay, I’ll discuss aspects of content, which I understand to include: 1) the poem’s theme or central idea, 2) its topic or subject matter, 3) its imagery or sensory details, 4) metaphor, 5) tone, and 6) the attitude of the speaker or narrator. In other words, the story’s guts. Theme, topic, metaphor and attitude are the subjective parts of the content, which I accept as the poet presents them. The aspects of content that can be viewed more objectively are tone, the overall feeling of the poem, as well as other emotions presented or implied, and sensory detail. These last two—emotions and sensory detail—are the focus of Part I of this essay. Form, the story’s bones, will be addressed in Part II.

     The idea for this paper grew out of my work in the Tanka Society of America’s mentorship program, led by Theresa Cancro and Ryland Shengzhi Li. I am indebted to my mentees—Bing Bingham, Jenny Polstra and Nitu Yumnan—for trusting me with their work and challenging me to share what I have learned in my long relationship with haiku and tanka. Teaching goes both ways, and I am grateful for what I have learned in the process.

     Here I’ll discuss the style of tanka that juxtaposes two images, or an image with an emotion or point of view. Whether written in traditional short/long/short/long/long format or free form, the material discussed is equally applicable. (I’ll comment on Sanford Goldstein’s diarist style in Part II.) Additionally, I believe that English-language tanka, like all poems, is a celebration of words, a coming together of words that sing, dance, shout, collide, insinuate and echo each other in service of meaning. Human beings are full of stories, feelings and insights that beg to be written, and we poets embrace the unique challenge to craft them in our chosen verse form.

     The question for me as mentor is how to help my mentees fashion their stories into finished tanka. As we explored their work, I provided tanka for study by poets whose work I admire, as well as poems of my own that resonated with theirs. At length, what came from this was a large body of loosely organized material showing different techniques and devices that make poems work. My group found this approach helpful, and it occurred to me that these ideas might have general applicability. So, this essay was born.

     A note on the title: I trust the poetic spirits of John Ciardi and Miller Williams will forgive me for repurposing the title of their seminal work (How Does a Poem Mean? 2ne ed., Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1975) in my limited attempt to uncover in tanka what theirs has done for Western poetry.

Single Emotion

Let’s begin with a single emotion in relation to a primary image. In both poems the emotion is unambiguous.

     you be the poppies                                                      just

     and I’ll be the lupine                                                   one last hug

     together we’ll race up                                                to remember . . .

     the hillside and laughing                                            our closet

     vanish in the sun                                                          is now mine

         Jim Chessing, Ribbons 17:3, 2021                      Bing Bingham, first publication

In the first poem, the thrall of spring love is the central theme, ending in a fantasy consistent with the exhilaration established in the upper part of the poem. In Bingham’s poem, grief is portrayed in the realization that a shared closet is no longer shared. Despite the simple format, both poems are quite evocative and full of feeling.

Complex Emotion

We don’t always feel emotions in their pure form. I think that, more often than not, two or more emotions are experienced at the same time, or a particular emotion may trigger another unexpected one. Reflecting this in our work adds complexity, depth and layers of meaning.

     I brought them back                                                    I’ve asked the sparrows

     from the mountain—                                                 to be quiet today,

     the sorrow                                                                      in respect for the dead—

     of a plundered egg                                                       to fidget less and sit

     and the majesty of wings                                          where I tell them to sit

         Jim Chessing, Gusts 35, 2022                              Michael McClintock, Ribbons 11:2, 2015

In the first poem, the discovery of an empty eggshell evokes both sadness for the loss of the individual bird and a reminder of what the speaker loves about them. With a detailed and nuanced image, the reader will have sufficient information to reconcile such a conflicted response.

     In the second tanka, the contrast between the normal, pleasurable behavior of sparrows is juxtaposed against the speaker’s unbearable grief. In fact, their very activity seems to agitate him. The question, “I’ve asked the sparrows / to be quiet today,” underscores his fragility and marked distress. Notice too how repetition of the “it” sounds in the last two lines intensifies the agitation. I imagine the scene to be a memorial service where the speaker steps away from the other mourners to be alone with his own sorrow. But I can also take this as pure metaphor: what if the “dead” is not a person but the speaker’s own inner sense of deadness? Such are the layers of meaning in the hands of a master craftsman.

Cold and Hot Emotion

Initially, I titled this section “Negative Emotion.” As I mulled it over, I decided that the pejorative wasn’t helpful. What is negative about feeling anger and fear when the situation makes such feelings appropriate? The more pertinent question is: how do we deal with these feelings in tanka?

     The next two poems describe the “hot” emotions of anger and resentment beautifully through the softening or “cooling” effects of metaphor and reflection that we associate with the form.

     I have learned                                                                black flames

     how to keep silent . . .                                                burn in a poppy’s heart . . .

     these pebbles                                                                thinking of it

     under my tongue                                                          there’s no anger left

     seasoned with rue                                                        to hate you with

         Debbie Strange, Cattails, April 2021                  Michele L. Harvey, Ribbons 19:3, 2023

Can we, however, describe strong feelings in the heat of the moment without metaphor? In the first tanka, below, the speaker recalls a memory of great fear. The first four truncated lines ending in a dash mimic the breathlessness of that fear without using the term. All five senses, and the sense of motion, are stated or can be inferred.

     feet kicking—                                                                 you speak

     carried by my armpits—                                            I weep you speak

     surf splashing my mouth—                                      I weep

     he was going to kill me—                                          you speak you speak

     the dad she’d always promised                               you speak

         Jim Chessing, A Volcano, A Peony                      Jenny Polstra, first publication

The second poem consists of only two phrases arranged so that the meaning is evident. Whether the scene is home or a therapist’s office, the emotions of domestic violence are portrayed as they occur in the harsh, uncompromising reality in which it exists. The natural pauses at the line breaks convey the abuser’s speaking over the abused. The abuser’s inability to listen and to communicate other than to repeat himself, but only louder, is conveyed by the short, repeated phrases.

Humor

Humor is such an important emotion in tanka that it has its own sub-genre: kyōka. Kyōka is to tanka as senryu is to haiku. To be honest, I’m not always sure of the difference between kyōka and a funny tanka, but I know the power of laughter to deliver pleasure and insight.

     Political humor has a long history, and what was true of our then President in 2017 is as true today in 2025 (arguably more so). In the second, John Stevenson, who is known more for his haiku, applies his characteristic irony. Because tanka is often about people and relationships, there is no laughter without empathy. Empathy allows us to see ourselves in the other and the other in ourselves.

     yet another                                                                     my wife has written

     Twitter King missive                                                     a new play based on her life

     a nervous skunk                                                            there is a part

     has left its scent                                                            that corresponds to me—

     on my quiet street                                                       a non-speaking part

         Jim Chessing, Failed Haiku 28, 2018                  John Stevenson, Ribbons 12:3, 2016

The next two poems are pure delight. The first, by the late Jeannie Lupton, displays her honesty and ability to laugh at herself, while Kathabela’s, her characteristic whimsy.

     at seventy-six                                                                 my secret skipping life

     in chemo                                                                          my childhood

     for lung cancer                                                               chin scar

     I have a crush                                                                 I think I remember life

     on my masseuse                                                           as a wild rabbit

         Jeannie Lupton                                                            Kathabela Wilson, Bottle Rockets 41, 2019

         One Moment at a Time, TSA Anthology 2022

Objective Correlative

In a two-part tanka, the objective correlative conveys the speaker’s emotions and point of view about the image through implicit or embedded metaphor. In the first tanka by Michael McClintock, who discussed the concept in his Introduction to the tanka anthology (Red Moon Press, 2003), the speaker’s feelings about “children / stoning a crow” are implied in context of the air temperature at a particular time of day, in a particular season. The effect is to insinuate the physical correlates of the environment into the reader’s consciousness to induce a feeling without stating it. So, the body knows it before the mind does.

     coming upon children                                                 that barn

     stoning a crow                                                               has been leaning

     broken in a cornfield,                                                  all our lives—        

     the cold twilight                                                            is it you?

     of an autumn day                                                         no, it’s probably me

         Michael McClintock, Hermitage, 3, 2006        Jim Chessing, Mariposa 44, 2021

“[C]old” serves two purposes, describing not only the speaker’s reaction but by implication the mindset of the children. “[B]roken,” too, may describe all three principals: the children, the crow, and, perhaps, the speaker, who appears ambivalent about intervening.

     In the second poem, the objective correlative, the leaning barn, is delivered first—its function and meaning revealed only after the question and answer of the last two lines. The speaker rehashes an all too familiar question in a long-suffering relationship: Who’s to blame? He could be musing to himself or actually engaged in a conversation with his partner. The barn, whether their own or a feature on the side of the road routinely passed, has become a symbol of their relationship and the repository of related feelings. The reader need only imagine walking through it to appreciate what the couple is living through.

Implied Emotion

     it wasn’t always so                                                       sweeping the ash

     the words and silences                                               from the family fireplace . . .

     that came between us                                                the realtor

     now I bring you irises                                                  tells me she doesn’t need

     cut this morning in the rain                                      to know any history

         Jim Chessing, Ribbons 6:2, 2010                            Michele L. Harvey, Ribbons 14:2, 2018

Both of these tanka allude to specific relationships between the speaker and, in the first, someone else; in the second, between the speaker and the family, but it’s not clear what the quality of those relationships is. Different readers may parse the clues differently. In the first, a once good relationship has grown cold, and the speaker is now making amends. In the second, selling the family home evokes in the speaker understandably ambivalent feelings, in which the realtor has no interest—a perhaps sadly familiar feeling.

Single Sense

     after we bury                                                                 The pressure

     the family cat                                                                 of light

     my grandson                                                                  on ripening apples

     waters the grave                                                           until one-by-one

     so a kitten will grow                                                    they fall

         Jim Chessing, Gusts 38, 2023                              J. Zimmerman, Ribbons 12:1, 2016

Sight is always the primary sense. As soon as the poet puts words to paper, a visual image is created, and this is enough to tell a story. In the first poem, a poignant thought concludes the straightforward story of the grandfather and grandson burying the family cat. Here vision is a passive sense.

     In Zimmerman’s tanka, although vision is the primary sense, the focus is on light itself, without which there is no seeing. Light here is a tangible force that exerts “pressure” on apples to undergo the chemical reactions of “ripening.” We see in our mind’s eye the life cycle of the apple, from blossom to fruit to compost.

Complex Sense

Let’s consider the interplay of multiple senses. To the central visual image, the poet calls out one or more other senses to enhance the reader’s response. The first poem depicts my father-in-law’s efforts to protect his roses from the seasonal ravages of Japanese beetles that love them as much as he does. Note the visual imagery and complex olfactory sensations, as well as repetitive motor activity (“flicking”). While motor activity, or kinesthetics, is not a sense per se, it is a sensation, and I include it in the category. In the second poem, the poet contrasts birdsong with a grieving child’s murmuring to his “late father.” We might also infer the child’s hearing his father’s imagined response in the warm sunlight coming through the window.

     the hours he spends                                                   birdsong window

     flicking Japanese beetles                                           lying close

     into a tin of gas                                                             to an empty chair

     the fragrance of roses                                                 a child murmurs

     beaded with rain                                                          to his late father

         Jim Chessing, Skylark 2:1, 2014                          Nitu Yumnam, HaikuKatha 30, 2024

Below, the first poem evokes the soft touch of light rain and its sound falling on leaves, the sweetness of lilacs, and the haunting call of a loon in the setting of a heartfelt parting. In the second, color and texture combine with physical sensation to re-create a visceral, aching love of the hard land, with which the speaker is so identified that her blood “runs brown.”

     when all this                                                                   a brown aching

     comes to an end . . .                                                    for the land, the rocks,

     a remembrance                                                             the grainy soil—

     of soft rain and lilacs,                                                  scratched with hawthorn spikes,

     a loon calling from the lake                                       my blood runs brown

         Susan Constable, Skylark 1:2, 2013                   Joy McCall, Ribbons 9:2, 2013

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is the perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory experience triggers the involuntary response of another. In the first tanka, sunlight through autumn leaves still on the trees, coupled with the fallen brown leaves that crunch underfoot, is music to the ears.

     the colors sing                                                               growing up 

     while the browns crunch                                           across the bay

     noisily underfoot—                                                     I thought the stars

     when music’s in the air,                                              were in Manhattan

     dance!                                                                              and smelled of salt

             Jim Chessing, Mariposa 47, 2022                       Kathabela Wilson, Bright Stars: An Organic

                                                                                                             Tanka Anthology, Volume 6, M. Kei, ed., 2014

Leave it to a child to gaze at the stars and believe they smell of salt! It is children, after all, who routinely fantasize and create the world anew in the very act of discovering it. There is nothing out of sorts about blending sense impressions.

Conclusion

The significance of such parsing of emotion and sensory detail in tanka becomes clear when it is analyzed in context of the complete poem. I present two extended interpretations to illustrate the point. The first is the tanka by Bing Bingham:

     just

     one last hug

     to remember . . .

     our closet

     is now mine

     The image and emotion are woven together seamlessly. The theme is grief after losing a loved one, one with whom the relationship involved sharing a closet, which implies a spouse or long-term partner. The topic is adaptation after such a loss. The imagery includes the closet that, as a shared container, symbolizes their entire relationship. There is no metaphor. Nothing else is alluded to. This is loss plain and simple. The tone is one of overall sadness. The speaker’s attitude is universal: recalling a last act, the physical closeness, a happy memory juxtaposed against the emptiness of the current reality. I wrote that emotions can be complicated, that contradictory feelings can be present at the same time. But not here. There is no evidence in this tanka to suggest anything but grief. The speaker writes about the loss in context of adapting: “our closet / is now mine.” This is emotion expressed simply and directly, and it makes for a powerful poem.

     In the next tanka, one of my own, the complex sensory details play an outsized role:

     the hours he spends

     flicking Japanese beetles

     into a tin of gas

     the fragrance of roses

     beaded with rain

     Here the theme is the subject’s—not the speaker’s—relationship with his garden and his devotion to his roses. The topic is fending off the insects that would destroy them. The imagery is complex. The picture is of a solitary man standing before his roses for hours, killing Japanese beetles. Of utmost significance is the contrast between the pungent smell of gasoline and the sweet fragrance of the roses, followed by an allusion to the cleansing rain. These smells also suggest something about the subject’s conflicted internal state and the metaphor: everything has its price. The tone is neutral. The writing betrays no value judgment or feelings about what is described except for the first line, which implies the subject spends an inordinate amount of time. If everything has its price, what price is he paying by devoting such time? The speaker’s attitude is mixed: on one hand, it’s objective, like a newspaper reporter’s; on the other, beneath the admiration of the flowers and maybe the subject’s discipline, there is an implicit curiosity about the inner forces that drive his behavior. In this tanka, complex sensory details make the image compelling, while in Bingham’s it’s the utter simplicity that compels.

     I think that whether your writing style involves controlling the narrative from start to finish, layering details as needed, or if it follows the flow of words and lets them tell you where the poem wants to go—or something in between—knowing the possibilities for conveying emotion and sense impressions can only enrich the final product.

Part II

When I became a tanka mentor in 2022, I thought I would develop a tanka curriculum, a systematic presentation of the components of tanka craft. Three things got in the way: one, I am not a systematic kind of guy; two, the genre is too big and too variable to be reduced to such a formulaic approach; and three, my mentees, although possessing varying degrees of skill, were not beginners—all had publishing credits—and so needed different things. In practice, I found my comfort level by immersing myself in their work and letting their needs and stated desires guide me. Among other things, I presented tanka by other poets, as well as my own, that illustrated the techniques and concepts we were working on. At length, this resulted in my compiling a relatively brief and unorganized list of poems with an explanation of the features that made them work. That list evolved into the essay you are reading. Despite myself, while I did not develop a curriculum, what I present is, nevertheless, a useful list of devices and techniques that contribute to tanka craft and construction.

     In Part I, I discussed different ways of presenting emotions and sense imagery to add complexity and depth to tanka. Part II deals with aspects of form arranged into categories of Perspective, Sound, and Style.

Perspective

Perspective, broadly speaking, is the raison d’etre of any poem—that is, to present a new or interesting treatment of a subject to stimulate the emotions and satisfy the intellect. In another sense, the term applies to the ways in which the poem achieves that effect: change how we view the content and we change what the content means. Perspective can be altered over the following dimensions: space, time, point of view, pivot, word choice, and juxtaposition.

SPACE: MOVE THE READER’S EYE

     above                                                                               the fine finger

     the pure white                                                               of a skeletal oak

     Communion dress                                                        jabs the sky . . .

     my daughter’s                                                               gliding on a thermal

     scowl                                                                                 all that I cannot touch

             Julie Bloss Kelsey, A Thousand Voices,              Jim Chessing, Gusts 34, 2021

         2019 TSA Anthology

In Kelsey’s tanka, “the pure white” dress, symbolic of this most important commemoration, grabs the reader’s attention. We can imagine the depths of emotion a mother might be feeling in the moment as she raises her eyes to see her daughter’s scowl. We can see there’s a lot going on for her daughter too. It’s a tender and relatable scene that is keyed by the reader’s lifting the eyes in the last line.

     In the second poem, the reader’s eye lifts from the ground level branch of a desiccated oak to the sky, where an unnamed bird glides on a draft of air. The “gliding,” which now moves the eye horizontally, is enhanced by the run-on sounds that end lines three and four. The third line ends on a long-i, which is immediately echoed in the first syllable of the fourth line (and again in the last line). Likewise, the terminal “-al” of the fourth line is echoed in the first word of the fifth line.

TIME: PAST AND PRESENT

     when I look                                                                     she talks to me

     at the full leaves                                                           of what she has, what she wants

     of the plum                                                                     but no mention

     I see only                                                                        of that shining, laughing child

     the blossoms                                                                 I knew when she was small

         Jim Chessing, Gusts 35, 2022                              Michele L. Harvey, Gusts 28, 2018

Tanka are generally about what’s happening at this moment, but the perception of the moment can be about how the remembered past is experienced in the present.

     The first poem depicts the speaker looking at a plum tree in late spring or early summer, after the blossoms have fallen and the tree is in full leaf. But all he can see are the blossoms of early spring, evoking memories of sadness, loss, and what might have been.

     In the second poem, Harvey describes a once-close childhood relationship that has changed. The speaker struggles to reconcile qualities she used to like about her friend with her new impressions of someone who has become self-focused and materialistic. In both poems the poetic moment lives in that transitional space between past and present.

POINT OF VIEW

Point of view refers to the speaker or narrator of the poem. Who is telling the story? Using another character (third person) to explain the subject’s state of mind can reveal insights that would otherwise be unavailable. In the first tanka, the apparent coldness of the female subject who strides past the beggar boy is explained by her companion. Something about “the beggar boy” calls to mind the woman’s own unresolved feelings about her father’s war injuries, which softens the judgment we might otherwise make of her.

     striding past                                                                   a raven

     the beggar boy                                                              believed it could fly

     without looking                                                             through me

     her father left his legs                                                 unaware that I am glass,

     in Iraq                                                                               pretending to be sky

         Jim Chessing, Blithe Spirit 35:1, 2025               Debbie Strange, 3rd Place,

                                                                                                             2020 San Francisco International Tanka Contest

Strange’s exquisite tanka shifts points of view between the raven and the speaker. With a little poetic license in line two, the reader enters the raven’s mind. But why would a bird need to believe in its ability to fly unless there was some question why it could not? And why the past tense, unless it is to suggest that by the poem’s end something will have altered that ability? The tableau becomes complete in the last three lines when the speaker is introduced. She is looking out a window of reflective glass, and it becomes clear that the raven (shifting back into its head) is “unaware” that it is flying into a building. The unresolved tension of an imminent collision avoids sentimentality and allows the metaphor of the window to develop. What does the poem say about the speaker who is perceived to be invisible? Or reflects only what others can see? Or that the speaker can only look on helplessly, unable to intervene? These are heady questions that bounce between points of view that are left to the reader to consider.

PIVOT

The pivot is a common device in tanka—the knot that connects the two loops of a shoelace. In Kimmel’s tanka, “a trickle now” describes both the current state of a seasonal creek and the “torrential” feelings that once flowed through him in his youth. Unlike the creek, reborn each spring, the speaker realizes that this fading eventually will be final. The poem is a lovely reconciliation of our human limitations.

     this creek                                                                         old carrots

     torrential in spring                                                       the last of the root cellar

     a trickle now                                                                  at first light

     all the things in me                                                      overwintered, bearded

     that wanted voice                                                        I leave my cloistered cell

         Larry Kimmel, HM, 2006                                           Marilyn Fleming, Skylark 4:1, 2016

         TSA International Tanka Contest

Fleming’s tanka offers a more complex pivot: “at first light” describes the time of day when the speaker opens the root cellar door, as well as when she leaves her “cloistered cell.” For me, “cloistered cell” conjures a convent or some other monastic setting. I would argue, however, that the fourth line functions as well in the pivot role. “[O]verwintered, bearded” refers to the “old carrots” that have been stored and grown wispy, beard-like root hairs, as well as to the speaker who has lived a long, monastic life and may have a few chin hairs of her own. She leaves her “cloistered cell” in a symbolic gesture of having gained some new insight, spiritual attainment or opportunity. I asked Fleming about it, and she described it as her paean to spring, having grown up in the dark, overlong winters of Wisconsin. Either way, it’s a remarkable tanka and demonstrates novel use of the pivot.

WORD CHOICE

Word choice in poetry is fundamental: it’s what a poem is about. Word choice can make the difference between a flat line that drags an otherwise interesting poem to the ground and one that adds nuance, enabling it to soar.

     I’m at that age                                                               this remnant

     when everything begins                                             a lens to see

     to break down . . .                                                        the majesty

     the bits of mountain                                                   of the whole . . .

     in my running shoe                                                      blue jay feather

         Jim Chessing, Gusts 39, 2024                              Elizabeth Black, Ribbons 20:2, 2024

In the first poem, my original fourth line, the mundane “the bits of sand,” eventually found a more interesting characterization. Now the eroding mountain and allusion to geologic time add depth and humor to the physical insults of aging.

     I find a certain kinship to Black’s tanka about finding a feather, as I’ve collected many from a mountain hike or stroll along the beach. I marvel at how she, through well-chosen words, elevates finding a feather into something transcendent. The first significant word, “remnant,” links us to something greater, something that has survived. The next significant word is “lens,” a tool to make the unseeable seeable and a metaphor for seeing into the depth of things. And when we look, we see the “majesty,” the grandeur “of the whole . . .”—alluding to the blue jay itself, I think—for now in line five we have the feather. Black presents a simple but eloquent poem about a feather, about the bird, and maybe about the act of discovery.

JUXTAPOSITION

Juxtaposition—the side-by-side placement of images without connecting words—lets readers discover their own connections. The relative distance between images is critical. Images that are too close together pose fewer creative challenges; cause and effect makes for good essays but weak poetry. Images that are farther apart surprise and challenge; they lead us to that novel perspective a poem demands.

     how will I recognize                                                     this poem . . .

     the moment the last spark                                       the way a daisy

     of memory dies . . .                                                      gentled by rain

     this page                                                                          knows itself

     intentionally left blank                                               in the darkness

         Jim Chessing, Eucalypt 33, 2022                             Claire Everett, Ribbons 12:3, 2016

The first tanka’s subject is the aging memory. Everyone of a certain age can identify with the fear and denial around losing our memories, which is to say, our personalities. What’s the answer? The oblique response, “this page / intentionally left blank,” calls to mind those absurd institutional documents we receive in the mail telling us the blank page before us is intentional. In other words, there is no answer! We simply cannot know. We must accept living with uncertainty and what we cannot control.

     The second poem is steeped in even more mystery. Everett likens the writing of a poem to a daisy in the night “gentled by rain.” Turning the adjective “gentle” into a verb endows the rain with an animus that allows the flower, that is, the poem, to know itself in the mystery of darkness. I like to think of the poem as a living thing that knows what it needs, and if I only listen, it will guide me to find the right words. The same sentiment is echoed in Everett’s wondrous tanka.

Sound

In our short songs, sound is the music inherent in the human voice, whether spoken or written. In this section, I discuss rhyme and repetition, tempo, onomatopoeia, and wordplay.

RHYME AND REPETITION

While rhyme is normally eschewed in English-language tanka, it doesn’t mean that on occasion it cannot be effective in linking images and creating a mood. If the eye is the window to the soul, then MacRury’s tender and elegant verse shows her looking through that window at a beloved soul departing. Trying to capture its color, she compares it to “glacial ice” and “autumn skies”—both images of coldness and clarity. The measured cadence of the rhetorical question of the first two lines is linked by the consonance of m-sounds. Lines three through five are so musical I imagine the speaker humming a lullaby. “[G]lacial” echoes the long-a of “shades,” which is a near-rhyme of “fading.” Long-i assonance joins “ice” and “life,” as well as the internal rhyme of “skies” and “eyes”—all bringing the focus to bear on the “eyes” at the end.

     how to measure                                                            how green the green

     the many shades of blue—                                       in the grey light after the storm

     glacial ice,                                                                        how lake the lake

     autumn skies and the life                                           and thistle, thistle

     fading from your eyes                                                 in these hills how me I am

         Carole MacRury, Gusts 29, 2019                        Jeannie Lupton, Love Is a Tanka, 2021

I discovered Lupton’s poem in a review of her first collection, and I was thunderstruck! How beautiful! I’ve never found anything like it again. The mood of a late spring day in the mountains is conveyed by the repetition of the elements, “how green the green / . . . how lake the lake / thistle, thistle,” emphasizing how perfect each is. Any adjective would fail utterly to convey the essence of the thing itself and undercut the triumphant self-affirmation Lupton delivers at the end. Notice, too, the balance and repetition of the two-beat lines one, three, and four, as well as the four- and three-beat lines of two and five, respectively.

TEMPO

Many, if not most, contemporary English-language tanka are written without punctuation, save for the occasional comma, em dash, or ellipsis. In most cases the line breaks are clear; the length of pause and the relationship of the lines are easily determined by the first or second reading. When I come across a particularly engrossing tanka, I like to imagine the poet reading it aloud. If I know the poet, I imagine it in his or her voice. If I don’t, I imagine the tone of voice with which the poem is speaking. Each voice has a unique cadence. It may pause naturally within the line, without any punctuation to indicate it, to emphasize what is to come. So, I advocate writing the poem as if you were reading it aloud, using punctuation not as you would in normal prose but to denote the length of the pause to create the desired effect.

     I’m at that age                                                               I have lost

     when, increasingly, words                                         all I have lost . . .

     lose their way . . .                                                         how quietly

     watering the garden,                                                  snow falls

     salvia, yes, salvia                                                           from the pines

         Jim Chessing, Gusts 36, 2022                              Ryland Shengzhi Li, Cattails, April 2022

The first poem has two commas in line two, an ellipsis in line three, a comma ending line four, and two more in line five, with “yes” in the middle to emphasize the reassuring feeling of recalling at last the flower’s name. The halting rhythm mimics the sometimes-arduous path a word may take on its way to consciousness, the tanka’s subject.

     The second poem controls the tempo differently. Here the tanka’s tone, established in the first line and reinforced in the second, speaks to the gravity of the subject matter and how to read these relatively short lines. The repetition of “I have lost,” with the addition of “all” in line two and the ellipsis at the end, leads to a long, deep pause that lets the feeling sink in, lets us ponder what has been lost. “[H]ow quietly” tells us not only about the falling snow, but the quality of voice with which to continue. The delicacy of the image in the second half contrasts with the heaviness of the first half; short, quick lines in the second half evoke clumps of snow dropping from the branches.

ONOMATOPOEIA

Onomatopoeia is the naming of a thing or action with a word that imitates its sound. Harvey uses common verbs (“crunch” and “snap”) to emphasize what she doesn’t want to hear. Even the phrase, “whistle while you walk” recalls the song, “Whistle While You Work,” from Disney’s Snow White—in this setting an altogether discordant and different tone that supports the speaker’s admonition to be silent and let her take in the forest on her terms.

     do not follow                                                                 Bam! Bam! Bam!

     if you whistle while you walk                                   drummers and drums fill

     or crunch leaves                                                            the dark theater

     and snap wayward twigs; leave me                       who of us here is not

     to the wood’s dappled silence                                 a taiko drum tonight?

         Michele L. Harvey, Gusts 37, 2023                         Marian Olson, Skylark 6:1, 2018

The late Marian Olson calls up in dramatic fashion what it is to experience taiko drums: “Bam! Bam! Bam!” A performance will include drums as big as a car, the sound heard in line one, as well as a variety of smaller drums whose sounds we hear in the variations of the word: “drummers . . . drums . . . drum.” In the theater of the mind, it is impossible not to become “a taiko drum tonight.”

WORDPLAY

Words are our building blocks and our playthings. We combine them to create meaning, music, and, in the process, have a little fun. The next two poems show a couple of the possibilities. In the first, I was the beneficiary of an unconscious sequencing of words in the last line: the reader cannot say “calla lily” without bouncing his or her tongue up and down three times before uttering the word, as if in some faerie incantation.

     the rain begins                                                               he said

     in slow motion, as if                                                    i was his star

     each drop is guided                                                     the night

     by faerie hand to every                                              we sat at the bar

     outstretched calla lily tongue                                  drinking cosmos

         Jim Chessing, Eucalypt 35, 2023                         Taura Scott, One Moment at a Time, 2022 TSA Anthology

A more deliberate device, as old as the genre itself, is the pun. It’s typically used for comic effect. Scott offers a romantic evening of drinks when “cosmos” pulls everything together. “Cosmos” is plural for cosmo, short for Cosmopolitan, a sweet, tart, pink cocktail associated with sophistication and glamour. It also refers to the universe and recalls the word “star” in the second line. To be in love is to be that one star out of the multitude.

Style

Here I describe four styles of writing, which is to say, four different frameworks on which to structure the content: Goldstein’s diarist style, literary reference, narrative tanka, and those I call a “doorway to the universe.”

GOLDSTEIN’S DIARIST STYLE

Sanford Goldstein, professor of poetry and literature, editor and translator, has greatly influenced tanka’s development in English. (See Randy Brooks’s essay in Ribbons, 19:2–3, 2023, “Sanford Goldstein’s Tanka World: Parts 1 and 2.”) LINK He drew inspiration from Takuboku who, along with Shiki and others, remade modern Japanese tanka. For Takuboku, tanka was a diary of the poet’s emotional life, and so it became for Goldstein. He described his work as a “snapshot of me in the moment.” Although later in life he wrote some verses in the traditional short/long/short/long/long format and had success with it, I think as a stylist he stands apart with his original minimalist diary style. What distinguishes these tanka is that they are one sentence long—or sometimes a sentence fragment—comprised of a single image, with a laser focus on the subjective response. I offer several examples to demonstrate his influence.

     the back door                                                                a woman

     key,                                                                                    tending her garden

     and the nothingness                                                   offers me

     of entering                                                                      loquats, and a handful

     this wifeless house                                                      of Cantonese

         Sanford Goldstein                                                        Jenny Polstra, Gusts 41, 2025

         Four Decades on My Tanka Road, 2007

Goldstein suffered terribly for losing his wife to illness early in their marriage, and this stark verse depicts the sorrow that colored much of his early tanka. The entire image consists of him entering the back door of his home and the feelings that arouses. Polstra offers a more elaborated image of a chance encounter with “a woman / tending her garden.” She is gifted loquats and “a handful” of the gardener’s native language, a kindness that bridges language and cultural differences.

     quiet                                                                                  my sorrow

     by the river                                                                     fits me

     a duck                                                                              like the old shoes

     lands                                                                                that she begs me

     in my silence                                                                   to throw away

         AA Marcoff, The Productions of Time, 2023      Juan Edgardo De Pascuale, Eucalypt 29, 2020

Marcoff’s meditative tanka, written in his characteristic restraint, observes a moment in which the speaker is in harmony with the environment. In our hyper-reactive, multi-tasking world, I’m struck by the seamlessness with which Marcoff enfolds a passing duck without breaking the spell. The sorrow that the speaker bears in De Pascuale’s tanka, unlike Goldstein’s, is shared. His suffering affects someone else. The speaker implies that “she” doesn’t understand—or she wouldn’t beg him to throw the symbolic shoes away. Or maybe she does understand, and begging him to throw them away is an invitation to let the suffering go.

     All four tanka convey one image and a particular thought, with a range and depth of feeling.

LITERARY REFERENCE

“Literary reference” and “ekphrasis” are related terms describing poetry that is inspired by another literary work (literary reference) or a work of visual art (ekphrasis). The poems below are references to a song and a well-known poem, respectively.

     I hate the way                                                                so few the words

     autumn fades before it goes,                                   in the weight of days

     when I get                                                                       one bright flower

     the urge for going                                                        among tall trees

     but never seem to go                                                  peace, dropping slow

         Jim Chessing, Gusts, 40, 2024                             Joy McCall, Sweetgrass and Thyme, 2017

I am particularly fond of the song “Urge for Going” by Joni Mitchell (1965), especially Dave Van Ronk’s version, his gravelly voice a tender contrast to the helpless delicacy of the imagery. By employing three different forms of the verb “go,” I emphasize the song’s theme—the perpetual sense of being unable to realize the dream.

     McCall’s tanka reminds us that despite how overwhelmed we might feel, and sometimes beyond words, there is always “one bright flower / among tall trees” to offer solace. The last line connects her poem to W.B. Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” which describes his longing for such a sylvan place, and joins two like hearts in their passionate attachment to the land of their countries. Yeats spent childhood summers near Innisfree in Ireland, and as a teen fantasized about living there like Thoreau at Walden. The poem fell out of his pen after he moved to London. Here are the lines McCall references:

     And I shall have peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

     Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings[.]

We poets inhabit two worlds—the one in which we are tied to people and things, and the place we go to in our imaginations to write.

NARRATIVE TANKA

Encapsulating the story of a person’s life through the illustration of a particular trait or event is what I call narrative tanka.

     making kefir                                                                    the loud argument

     she tells me it will cure                                               of their faithful marriage

     almost anything                                                            of 50 years

     I cried when she died                                                  concluded quietly on

     from the almost anything                                         that morning he did not rise

         Jenny Polstra, first publication                            Jeffrey Woodward, Skylark 6:1, 2018

In the first poem, Polstra tells of a creative woman who eschewed modern medicine and paid the ultimate price. We can imagine her passion and energy, the kind of person she might have been, as well as her shock and betrayal when her remedy failed, just as we grieve with the speaker for her loss.

     How eloquent and succinct is Woodward’s tanka describing that cantankerous, faithful couple of fifty years. We can imagine the wife’s shock at discovering her husband’s death in all its understated irony, and her dawning awareness of the echoing silence that is her future.

DOORWAY TO THE UNIVERSE

It can be argued that all tanka open a doorway to the universe. I use the term, however, to refer to tanka that allow considerable room for interpretation. They evoke a particular scene, with or without people, and without a clear narrative or sense of relationship. Readers are thus invited to enter the poem and take a walk around, making of it what they will.

     deer tracks                                                                      as if

     across the graveyard                                                   for this purpose

     in the snow                                                                    alone

     and an old prop plane                                                 the fallen rocks adjusting

     flying overhead                                                             the creek’s path

         Joy McCall, HM, 2017 Sanford Goldstein        Jim Chessing, Mariposa 50, 2024

             International Tanka Contest

McCall accomplishes a number of things in this enigmatic poem. The scene is clear enough: the speaker directs our gaze by pointing out first the deer tracks on the ground, then a little higher, the gravestones, before leveling our sight to take in the entire field of snow, and finally, to the sky where she hears the putt-putt of an old prop plane. But what’s going on? There is nothing to hint at the relationships. The scene evokes a mood that lets the reader enter the image and exercise his or her imagination in any number of directions.

     The second poem, by contrast, provides the barest of scenes: a creek cutting through fallen rocks with an inference about purpose. What is the speaker’s relationship to the scene? What kind of person would formulate such a question?

     What is the reader to do with tanka like these? Step through the doorway into these micro-universes and let your imagination be your guide.