Sanford Goldstein’s Tanka World

This essay was first published in Ribbons, the Tanka Society of America journal. Part 1, “A Diary of the Emotional Changes in a Man’s Life,” appeared in Ribbons 19:2, Spring–Summer 2023, pages 100 to 113. Part 2, “Why Tanka Instead of Haiku,” appeared in Ribbons 19:3, Autumn 2023, pages 97 to 112. The list of selected translations at the end was collected from the source indicated and was not included in the original publication of this essay in Ribbons.

by Randy Brooks, PhD

Part 1: A Diary of the Emotional Changes in a Man’s Life

Introduction

Dr. Sanford Goldstein was born on December 1, 1925 and passed away recently on May 5, 2023. Therefore, it is an appropriate time to consider and celebrate his lifetime contributions to the literary of art of tanka. Through his work as a translator, he made extensive contributions to our understanding of modernist Japanese tanka. However, for this essay, I will focus primarily on his contributions as a writer of tanka in English.

In the fall of 1975, my first semester as a graduate student at Purdue University, I met a quiet professor of creative writing who would become a significant influence and mentor for my life as a scholar, editor, teacher, and poet. His title was Dr. Sanford Goldstein (December 1, 1925 – May 5, 2023), but everybody called him “Sandy.” I would often see him in the coffee shop in a booth by himself, writing poetry in a journal. If he was intensely spilling out poem after poem, I would leave him to his java muse, but sometimes, he would wave me over. We would discuss his latest translation project, Zen Buddhism, news about poetry publications, or just talk about family. He was a member of a poetry writing group, mostly professors and local poets, which I joined as well. Soon I was studying modernist Japanese poetry and creative writing with Sandy. I would often bring my latest haiku or tanka attempts for him to bloody up with suggested edits. After a class that included writing tanka, some of his students—I was among them—formed a group to write tanka, senryu and haiku. At about this time my wife and I started publishing High/Coo: A Quarterly of Short Poetry. Several of the students, and Sandy, were contributors.

Looking back, I think his most significant influence was simply the example of living the life of a poet. His discipline of daily writing about the emotional truths of his life, his integration of academic scholarship interests with his own creative work, his sharing work with others directly or through publication, and his humorous and encouraging approach to teaching made a life worth emulating.

In Part 1 of this essay, I invite you to consider how his translations of leading modernist Japanese tanka writers helped shape his poetic goals for writing tanka in English. We will see how Goldstein developed his own minimalist approach and personal voice by keeping a lifelong diary, honestly recording the changes in his emotional life. While Sandy loved Japanese culture and lived in Japan much of his life, he avoided Japanese topics, language, and mannerisms. He knew that his tanka, even about Japanese experiences, came from a “gaijin,” or outsider, perspective. I will share some of his best work from his published collections of tanka, which were often organized into strings of tanka on related topics. Part 2 will appear in the next issue of Ribbons.

I hope you enjoy this guided tour into Sandy Goldstein’s world of tanka.

Modernist Japanese Tanka

Goldstein’s interest in modernist Japanese poetry began at the start of his academic career. He earned a BA degree from Western Reserve University in 1948 and completed both MA and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin. His first academic position was at Niigata University from 1953–1955. Wanting to learn more about Japanese language, he studied at Stanford University, where his wife received an MA in anthropology. In 1956 he became a professor at Purdue, where he taught until he retired in 1992. During his years there, he received multiple Fulbright Fellowships at Niigata University, including the following years: 1964–1966, 1972–1974, 1980–1982, and 1987–1989. After retiring from Purdue, he returned to Japan and taught at Niigata University then at Keiwa College in Niigata until 2005.

One of the most fortunate consequences of his years in Japan was his long-time translation partnership with Seishi Shinoda. In an essay on himself for Simply Haiku (2003), Sandy wrote: “Having come across some translated tanka of Takuboku Ishikawa in the early 1960s, I found tanka was the form I had been waiting for. And that began a period of thirty years or so of translating tanka with Professor Seishi Shinoda, my precious colleague at Niigata University.” These translations of leading modernist Japanese tanka writers include: Akiko Yosano’s Tangled Hair (1971); Ishikawa Takuboku’s Sad Toys (1977); Takuboku’s Romaji Diary and Sad Toys (1985); Mokichi Saitō’s Red Lights: Selected Tanka Sequences from Shakko (1989); and Masaoka Shiki’s Songs from a Bamboo Village (1998).

In an interview with Pamela Babusci, Goldstein tells why he was interested in translating and studying these Japanese masters. “Akiko was unusual as a woman’s liberationist in Meiji Japan. Takuboku’s colloquial, down-to-earthness made his appeal to me great. He suffered and suffered. I feel and can understand—as I can with most of the poets I translated. Mokichi Saitō was important to me because [through studying him] I realized what a true tanka sequence was. . . . Shiki’s great suffering moved me. His life is itself a study in human courage. Shiki also wrote the first real sequences in Japanese. The variety of his subjects made him dear to me.”

Translator’s notes from the introductions to these books also indicate why Goldstein was attracted to modernist Japanese tanka. Shinoda and Goldstein refer to the tradition of Japanese court poets over the centuries and how they continued to emulate the poetry of the Kokinshu, published in 905. In the introduction to Tangled Hair, Shinoda and Goldstein discuss changes in tanka in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The ancient court tanka was still worshipped “but as time passed, many words and phrases were totally incomprehensible to the mass of readers. Those families versed in the art of tanka capitalized on the inscrutable expressions in these poems and monopolized the field. The prestige of the poetry families was heightened; moreover, the financial rewards were great. For hundreds of years the heirs of these families were initiated into the well-guarded techniques of the art. As a matter of course, poets and their poems were conservative in the extreme.”

How did modernist Japanese poetics influence Goldstein’s approach to writing tanka in English? He wanted to broaden the content of haiku beyond the beauty of nature and safeness of polite language, and he likewise sought less prescribed content and form for tanka in English. He admired Akiko Yosano’s boldness of expression and new content of forbidden love. Goldstein summarizes his poetics in the introduction to his collection, This Tanka World: “Akiko’s Tangled Hair prepared me for tanka as love, Takuboku’s Sad Toys for the broader spectrum of all man’s activities. I think of myself, though, as Takubokian. It was Takuboku who brought tanka closest to colloquial language while still guarding its poetic element. Takuboku who said that the tanka need not restrict itself to thirty-one syllables, Takuboku who taught me that tanka is a diary of the emotional changes in a man’s life. I feel my own tanka are non-confessional diary, and I am supported in this belief by one of my colleagues who calls my five-liners utterly personal and intimate but perfectly public.”

In an article, “The Eye of Tanka,” published in Blithe Spirit in 2012, Goldstein writes: “I have been on my tanka road for more than fifty years, so my eye has steadily been on tanka. That means of course that I write about myself, the thoughts and feelings I have, the people I meet, the images in front of me, the family or relatives or few life-long friends. The possibilities are immense. Tanka is perfectly adaptable in our culture or in other cultures in spite of its Japanese origin. But it is time to move on to the construction of tanka itself. . . . [Takuboku wrote the following in his] ‘Poems to Eat,’ printed in the Tokyo Mainichi newspaper which serialized it from November 30 to December 7, 1909: ‘Poetry must not be what is usually called poetry. It must be an exact report, an honest diary, of the changes in a man’s emotional life. Accordingly, it must be fragmentary; it must not have organization.’ I have called myself Takubokian for decades. In another essay called ‘Various Kinds of Tanka’ (December 20, 1910), Takuboku wrote, ‘As for the content [of tanka], we should sing about anything, disregarding the arbitrary restrictions which dictate that some subjects are not fit and will not make one. If only we do these things, tanka will not die as long as man holds dear the momentary impressions which flash across his mind, disappearing a moment later during his busy life.’”

A Diary of a Man’s Emotional Life

In the introduction to This Tanka Whirl, Goldstein writes: “I have always felt that Takuboku was right when he said in one of his essays that tanka is a diary of the emotional life of the poet. Throughout the years I have followed this principle, yet I have myself felt that the content of traditional tanka was too restricted. Poets talk about love, about nature, about death, about friends, about frustration, about mothers and illnesses and trips. And I have done that too. But I have tried to broaden even more the content of tanka—the games of children, the impossibility of the tanka form itself, the connection of tanka to literature, my Zen experience and tanka, a multiple diversity.”

In an interview by Robert D. Wilson for Simply Haiku (2009), Goldstein explained his usual process of writing in his journal. Wilson asked: “What goes through your mind when composing a tanka, and how do you know when one is finished?” Goldstein said: “Nothing goes through my mind. I spill my tanka. Whatever flashes through it or whatever I see in front of me can turn into a spill. Or even something spoken. . . . I keep tanka journals, so I go through them, even older journals. . . . And when I come across a tanka I like, I always go over the tanka. Revising, adding, but usually the tanka keeps its basic form. . . . Though I say spill, I go over my poems many times before sending them out, especially those that are sequences or strings. I let the tanka spill. And after it is in my tanka diary, I check, say, at the end of a year, to see the good ones or possibly good ones. Usually, I write 3,000 tanka a year, though now I cannot get to my tanka cafe that easily—in the states I could sit at McDonald’s for two hours and write, during my trips home once a year. When I go through my tanka diary for the year, I usually find, say, 300, that are good or can be made into good. Out of these 300, I choose ones I think I can send out. So out of all these, say 35 poems, I can send these to journals.”

Tanka Left Behind 1968

Perryville, Maryland: Keibooks, 2015

Although this collection is one of the last to be published, it comes from one of Goldstein’s earliest tanka journals. It is a diary of “the most horrible summer of my life. We decided as a family to travel to New York and see my wife’s brother who was suffering from multiple sclerosis . . . my wife had a sudden seizure and was then operated on. While she recuperated in the hospital on the second floor, my daughter Rachel fell from her bike and with a concussion was put on the third floor. As if each of these two events were not enough, I received a phone call that my father had died.”

Written in Goldstein’s characteristic minimalist style, these examples are from his summer 1968 diary of his emotional life. With the inclusion of many tanka from his journal, in chronological order, the author notes that Tanka Left Behind 1968 reads like a novel. I will cite a few of these tanka, maintaining the chronology.

all at once

she hums a tune

to herself,

my wife

on her hospital bed page 12

my kids

splashing in their

uncle’s pool,

why tell them of their

mother sleeping still page 31

a nurse

gives my wife tea

with a spoon,

how beautiful that

simple act of swallowing page 36

my kid on her

third-floor hospital

bed

tries to remember

how she fell from a bike page 45

drifting

asleep on her

hospital bed,

she repeats the days of the week

the months of the year page 62

a sudden call

as if the pain was

not enough,

my father dying

in his house in Cleveland page 81

I listen

to my wife trying

the Beethoven,

her head sways to the rhythm,

her hand tightly in mine page 93

Although these tanka are from some of his earliest journals, they exhibit characteristics of his minimalist approach. They are direct in stating the situation and establishing a scene. They move between two parts, shifting from observation to implied internal states of being. In his essay, “The Eye of Tanka,” Goldstein explains that his tanka “is a dramatic vehicle—that is, the first three lines give a problem or area of interest and the last two make some statement related to that problem, preferably indirectly.” For example, the second tanka cited begins with an observation of “my kids/ splashing in their/ uncle’s pool,” which helps the reader imagine a scene. Then it shifts to an internal question, “why tell them of their/ mother sleeping still,” which connects to the broader context of his wife in the hospital. We simultaneously see and feel both the children’s world and the father’s or husband’s. These tanka are written with simple, direct, everyday language, resulting in emotional intensity.

Tanka Left Behind: Tanka from the Notebooks of Sanford Goldstein

Perryville, Maryland: Keibooks, 2014

soon

she will be gone

four years,

I will light a candle

and set it on an evening plate page 18

at poolside

I listen

to the women

in the water

talk about their dead husbands page 41

all dressed up

in my Florida

tan

and no place

to go page 48

roof fixed

and the running

in the toilet stopped,

I listen for ghosts

in this empty house page 81

confessions

over tuna,

my two girls

telling me

their junior high peccadilloes page 103

In these examples from additional journals, we can see that Goldstein continued to emphasize a two-part tanka strategy with shifting emphasis from external observation to internal realizations. A diary of a man’s changes in emotional life. The early loss of his wife was a constant sadness and yet, as we can see in the last example, he continued to be a caring father.

Gaijin Aesthetics

La Crosse, Wisconsin: Juniper Press, 1983

In his essay, “This Elusive Tanka World” published by Simply Haiku, Goldstein explains that he was a student of Zen and loved the aesthetics of Japanese culture, but he was always a gaijin, an outsider. He writes: “My decades-long love-affair with tanka makes my views on tanka old-fashioned, certainly not bold. For more than a decade during that time I was a follower of Zen, more like an outsider as I went through the various steps with my wife. I never felt that a moment might come when stepping on a brick or thunder-struck by the words of a Zen master, I might achieve enlightenment, but I did learn that the world is co-causal, that every good brings forth its opposite, that every change is often a step backward, that no definition remains steady because the world is perpetually changing. No matter. Zazen continues and the koan continues and the Zen neophyte fails and still goes on.” He enjoyed the quest but had no delusions of becoming a Zen master.

The introduction to Gaijin Aesthetics is clear: “For sixteen years I have been a writer of tanka, that Japanese poetic form traditionally spilled in one line and divided into syllables of 5-7-5-7-7. And for twenty-eight years I have been connected to Japan, whether living on her shores or in America, . . . but the Japanese dub foreigners as outsiders, gaijin, pronounced guy-gene. But whether I am in Japan or not, the feeling of outsider-dom persists. . . . My own foreign-brand of tanka is spontaneous, though occasionally re-ordered, re-shaped, and yet the desire persists that, like a line out of a Western poem, my own single line will spring fully armed from the head of Zeus. . . . Whether above or below, inside or outside, in Japan or not, in them, in my tanka world, I feel an aesthetic, a line connected and disconnected, ordered and broken, but with a rhythm and color and touch lighting up the commonplace world of sabi or wabi, past or present, darkness or dawn, a host of cascading opposites.”

where’s the depth

in these five lines down?—

I walk

a seaside road;

I talk to self page 4

in the bicycle basket

the crone

pushed up

the slope—

tonight’s flower arrangement page 7

the curve

in this tea ceremony

flower

tells me what’s wrong

with my penny world page 24

As you can see from these examples, Sandy wrote his tanka in Japan, but they are about the gaijin’s mind and perspectives. He is a guest of the culture. Curious. Appreciative, but in his own tanka world.

This Tanka World

West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue Poets Cooperative, 1977

Goldstein was working on this collection when I met him at Purdue, so it was formative in my conception of minimalist English tanka. I still consider it the best collection of his work. In Simply Haiku he discussed the book’s publication: “Once I stumbled across tanka, I started writing them in the early sixties. I would send out my tanka and would get rejections. It seemed almost impossible for the tanka to gain a foothold. Haiku was the rage. Eventually small magazines, some at Purdue in the 70’s, began publishing my tanka. In the 70’s a small group of Purdue poets asked me to join them. I was hesitant since I had had no real success with my tanka, but a member of the group read several pages of my tanka and insisted I join. The group decided to publish its own members and chose my book first. Thus, my first tanka collection appeared in 1977, This Tanka World.” Goldstein organized his collection around themes or topics and labelled them accordingly, as noted below. Later he called these chains of related tanka “strings.” I have included a variety of selections to show the range of topics and approaches in this collection.

“of kids and mates mothers and dads”

all I saw

was the hole

in my kid’s

sock

when she performed page 1

In this tanka, we have a single parent’s perspective. He is there for his daughter’s performance but bothered by not being able to keep up or attend to her needs, evident by the hole in her sock.

“of coffee cups and tables”

even

in this fourth

wifeless summer

I take my coffee

with cream page 10

Everyone has their own ways of dealing with grief and loss. In this tanka the narrator notes the passage of time and how things stay the same. The cream in his coffee and memories of summers with his wife add an extra touch of simple pleasure.

“of zen and the master”

reminded

again

of impermanence—

how thick this Sunday morning

snow page 12

This tanka begins with abstract Zen concepts and ends with a one-word thud of snow.

this February

light

lengthens

the day wrapped

in a cloth of cranes page 13

The days are growing longer and the light stays with us. A cloth of cranes would be an elegant silk cloth, perhaps a gift for his wife from his days in Japan. I’ve always loved this tanka.

“of sickness and hospitals and death”

stripped

jabbed

wiped—

my wife

on a hospital bed page 16

A memory or nightmare from his wife’s illness and ultimate death. The indignity. This is a powerful use of three quick verbs in past tense, followed by the present scene of his wife “on a hospital bed.”

planting

a white

chrysanthemum

in the hair

of the dead one page 18

Another powerful tanka, sharing a moment from his wife’s death. A symbol of loyalty, honesty, love, sorrow. And an interesting choice of the word “planting” as if it will take root and grow. But, of course, it won’t. The finality of the last line is also striking.

“of things”

something

lonely

about an umbrella in rain

two legs

moving page 21

After the loss of a loved one, a spouse, one sees couples sharing their lives. This is a seeing of loneliness. Just two legs, moving. The lyrical expression comes from the opening lines “something / lonely,” which is very direct, as tanka can be. The rain doesn’t help.

“of strangers loners and outside persons”

wifeless

in front

of a white stove

after a 5:30

class page 27

loneliness

piles up

at midnight

and sometimes

spills over page 30

The loneliness is real and felt in a variety of situations and ways. Sometimes it “spills over,” late at night.

“of sex and love and marriage”

lighting

the memorial candle

for my wife

I put it

on a white plate page 31

Goldstein was Jewish and followed the traditions of grief, such as lighting a candle on the remembrance day for a loved one. The white plate seems pure and simple. A plate from the kitchen.

that young skin

should not be

this fresh

in the December

light page 34

A tanka of attraction and holding back. December light is an interesting, subdued light. The shadows of winter.

“of various kinds of nothingness”

they ask

about the cooking

cleaning, kids

of midnight

not a word page 36

home

to this nothingness

and upstairs

of the same page 40

Both of these tanka address others and home. In the first one “they ask” about the domestic stuff. How does he care for his children and himself? How does he manage the household chores? Then we get the reality punch—they don’t ask about how he gets through midnight. He’s on his own for those dark times. The second tanka could be an answer to the question “they” don’t ask.

“of food”

even my youngest

knows

something’s wrong

cleaned up

her plate page 42

The scene of this tanka is about a child cleaning up her plate without a fuss. The underlying current is the tension and anguish that the child has intuitively understood. Don’t add to the grief. This is not the time to fuss about eating your green beans.

Part 2: Why Tanka Instead of Haiku?

Although he had some success placing tanka in various haiku journals, Sanford Goldstein was frustrated that there were very few journals receptive to tanka written in English. In 1994 he collaborated with Kenneth Tanemura to launch one of the first English tanka journals, Five Lines Down. Although only four issues were published and the journal discontinued in 1996, it featured a variety of approaches to writing tanka and included critical discussions of “what makes a good tanka” through book reviews and essays. In this second part “Sanford Goldstein’s Tanka World,” I will reprieve some of his arguments about why he only wrote tanka instead of haiku. Why tanka instead of haiku?

I’ve noticed that he addressed this question in several articles on writing tanka. In 2007 in “This Elusive Tanka World” in Simply Haiku, he writes: “When I started sending out my tanka poems in the sixties and seventies, most of them were returned. Haiku was what editors wanted. Perhaps a few of them did not even know tanka existed. Rejection after rejection, but like the Zen neophyte with his endless sitting, I kept sending out my poems, and a few were published in those two decades. . . . In my first collection of tanka, This Tanka World (West Lafayette, Indiana, 1977), I have a final section about writing tanka. I had been frustrated with having only a few of my tanka accepted in the early years. It was, after all, only haiku that was really known. I was frustrated when I wrote the following:

sick

of pretty

haiku

on a pretty

page page 49

Some of that feeling remains today as I go through haiku collections and journals. It seems to me the haiku poets have gone over to the senryu side, and the nature images they create seem unable to resonate.

While I was at Purdue University in the late seventies, I continued to write haiku and tanka. I was getting several haiku published in various journals and started publishing High/Coo: A Quarterly of Short Verse and related chapbooks with my wife, Shirley.

Shirley and I included tanka in our quarterly from the start, and so we invited Sandy to write a short essay about writing tanka. Here is an excerpt from his 1977 essay, “On Writing Tanka,” published in the special tanka issue. “In one of my poems in This Tanka World, ‘sick/ of pretty/ haiku/ on a pretty/ page’ I seem to be rejecting the writing of haiku. But the truth is that I admire haiku and regard it as much more difficult to create than tanka since the epiphany moment of haiku is almost impossible to experience while tanka usually deal with psychological anguish. At any rate, I do admire good haiku, and I have been continually moved by Makoto Ueda’s translations in his anthology, Modern Japanese Haiku (University of Toronto Press, 1976). . . . What appeals to me in these modern haiku may be their tanka element—that is, their very personal connection to nature. It is perhaps this lack of personal connection to nature in ‘pretty haiku’ that leads to mechanism or indifference on the part of the reader. What these ‘pretty haiku’ fail to do is make some personal connection that echoes the Japanese aesthetic, say, of sabi, wabi, or yugen, to cite only a few oriental states of awareness. . . . Good haiku and tanka always startle.”

From our conversations, I remember how Goldstein believed the primary purpose of haiku to be an expression of insight, a literary manifestation of Zen satori. With such a high standard of epiphany as the basis for “quality haiku,” he recognized that even a Zen master would write only a few good haiku. Instead tanka could be a journal of psychological anguish—a means of spilling emotions. With such high standards of epiphany and based on his personal experiences with a Zen master, Sandy didn’t see haiku as a viable means of writing about his own life.

Robert D. Wilson asked a related question in his interview with Goldstein: “You write tanka. How come you don’t write haiku, since the two are interrelated, haikai (haiku) coming from renga (linked poetry) which in turn emanated from waka (tanka)?”

Goldstein answered: “In my early days I did try haiku. I was drawn to Bashō and others. At Indiana University one summer I took a course in haiku writing. The teacher, a famous Japanese, wanted us to make the first and third lines rhyme and I did. I expected, as I would do as a teacher of creative writing for many years, to get my poems back full of red ink, but he did not return a single one, nor did he comment on any in class. At the end of the term, I asked if I could have my poems back. Of course, he never mailed my poems back. I think he was a Zen person.”

It’s not a great secret that this famous Japanese teacher was Kenneth Yasuda, author of the book of translations, The Japanese Haiku, and a collection of his own haiku, A Pepper Pod. A glance at these translations and original English haiku shows that Yasuda was advocating for haiku as beautiful verse, written with orderly 5-7-5 syllables, with first- and third-line end-rhyme, about beautiful observations in nature. Pretty haiku on a pretty page.

Goldstein’s experience with Yasuda in the 1960s preceded his encounter with modernist Japanese tanka poets. Adding to his answer to Wilson, Goldstein writes: “Takuboku, I fell in love with, sort of like Keats’ feeling when he first looked into Chapman’s Homer. I do not believe we should be that diverse in trying several verse forms, but if the poet is drawn to more than one form, he/she can do it of course. But to me doing one thing and hopefully doing it well is something I believe in. Too much diversity weakens one’s work, though some are able to juggle their various interests. I feel like that Japanese woman who said she has studied flower arranging for twenty years and is still studying it—the same holds true for a Japanese studying the tea ceremony even for a longer period—say a lifetime. It’s as if one cannot focus on the one element enough, sort of like the pursuit of satori, which cannot be pursued. To focus is one of the major weaknesses of our world, including mine. I don’t want to spread out—I want to be thin and narrow. So I feel disenchanted when the tanka form gets tangled up with other forms.”

Here are a few more of Goldstein’s tanka about writing tanka from This Tanka World (1977):

this very air

tanka

no rhythm of 31

no word-juggle

only the deep of now page 46

Here are a couple more of his tanka about writing from Tanka Left Behind (2014):

not

waiting

for epiphany,

I write

my five lines down page 92

This is the tanka version of his answer about why tanka, not haiku.

this joy

of splashing red ink

on five haiku

down

the page page 68

This was a familiar scene for me. I’d give him a page of new haiku, and he’d return them with red ink cutting unneeded words, suggesting stronger images, kicking out a commentary. Brutal. But a good teacher. Once in a while he would write “good one” or “submit this.”

Tanka Sequences

This Tanka World was organized by gathering strings of tanka on related topics such as “This tanka world of zen and the master” or “This tanka world of strangers loners and outside persons.” For years Goldstein had published his tanka in short strings of related topics. However, as Ty Hadman noted in his AHA Poetry poet profile, when Goldstein “was translating Mokichi Saitō’s book, Shakko (Red Lights), he realized the power of the sequence with the poems written by Mokichi Saitō upon the death of his teacher Sachio Itō.”

Goldstein explains this in more depth in the article “Tanka String and Tanka Sequence: A New Twist” published by Keiwa Gakuen University in 2004. He writes: “For forty years I have been writing my own tanka in English, and in the first two decades I made no distinction between what I now call ‘tanka string’ and ‘tanka sequence.’ The Japanese use the word rensaku for any combination of two or more tanka that are somehow related. . . . The idea of writing groups of poems under one subject had come to me when, in 1977, I published my first collection of tanka entitled This Tanka World. . . . I had grouped my tanka under various headings, for example, . . .’this tanka world of sex and love and marriage’ . . . In both the tanka string and the tanka sequence, one finds connection between the poems, but the tanka string is much less organized than a tanka sequence. Furthermore, a tanka string has a loose chronology, whereas the tanka sequence has a very strong chronological element. Finally, a tanka string does not necessarily come to any conclusion about society or the world or the individual writing the string, though it may. On the other hand, the tanka sequence is organic, has a beginning, middle, and end, and comes to a strong conclusion about the world or society or about a dramatic change or a new awareness in the poet writing in sequence.”

This Tanka Whirl

Coinjock, North Carolina: Clinging Vine Press, 2001

In 2001 Goldstein published a collection of his tanka sequences, This Tanka Whirl. Each sequence is titled and organized as a short, chronological narrative. Here is one sample tanka sequence.

Body Language

wind me up

for the toy maneuver—

marches

along corridors,

marionette nods

how this morning’s

bitch

guarded its patch of lawn

and forced me

to the street

the nails age too

in spite of a mouth

full of teeth,

and even the toes

show the toil

mouth

watering

all the time:

is it sexual?

is it death?

everywhere

into the brightest shapes

or deepest cracks

I carry

the dead one’s moments

no longer

will she call, will she not,

and in walks too

here’s a pitted path

for a head in a battered cap

This sequence is about the body, aging, desire, and carrying our sorrows. The first tanka suggests a mechanical movement like a toy soldier or a marionette on strings. The second tanka suggests that this walking is a routine, disrupted in this case by a dog protecting its lawn. The third is a self-check tanka about aging: nails, check, teeth, check, and toes, check, but getting old. The fourth tanka starts like a continuation of the aging health report. A puzzling system of the “mouth/ watering/ all the time” and the puzzling questions. The fifth tanka turns to the realization of carrying “the dead one’s moments” wherever he goes. Brightest shapes or deepest cracks, he’s bringing her along. In the final tanka we find the truth that “no longer/ will she call, will she not” and the path is pitted (and worn) “for a head in a battered cap,” which represents the battered head, not just the cap.

At the Hut of the Small Mind

Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1992

Goldstein’s most ambitious and longest sequence was published as a book. In an essay in Simply Haiku, he tells how it came about: “In 1989, I was asked to go to Shikoku Island and interview a famous Zen farmer, but no real interview evolved. . . . The Zen farmer insisted the response to my first question would take years to answer, so that was that. Each day I would write twenty or thirty or fifty tanka. I was left isolated and was asked to correct an English manuscript of the Zen farmer. All in all, this was a major experience of my life, the closest I’ve come to a kind of Zen life. . . . The book that came out of the Shikoku Island experience was At the Hut of the Small Mind, published in 1992.”

In this book’s introduction, Goldstein discusses his realization about writing a tanka sequence. “For quite a long long time, more than a decade in fact, I had thought I was writing tanka sequences, but actually I was writing clusters of poems around a single event or experience or person or thought or feeling. It is not my intention to discount those earlier efforts. But for the last five years I had been studying and translating Mokichi Saitō’s Shakko [Red Lights] with my long-time tanka-translator-collaborator, Professor Seishi Shinoda, and it was through our joint study that I came to realize the dramatic impact of a tanka sequence with its beginning, middle, and end toward some new awareness of the self and/or the world. Mokichi’s dramatic night-run entitled ‘Sad Tidings,’ the run made just after he learned of the death of his famous teacher Sachio Itō, is perhaps the most famous tanka sequence in Japanese—unless it is Mokichi’s sequence on the death of his mother. Whether or not my own tanka sequence is perhaps the first tanka sequence in English by a foreigner is of little consequence, but that it is at least a true tanka sequence pleases me, consisting as it does of the day before my trip to Shikoku, the trip to Matsuyama, the four-day stay at the farm, and the following twenty-four hours in Kyoto.”

These 14 excerpts are in order from the published sequence and follow the chronology of the original diary of 120 tanka.

I pass rice fields,

tiled roofs,

pine, and all the rest;

oh, Japan,

my passing is a passing through

first night:

in the dark

I stumble for a place

to send my urine

natural

I too

am Bashō,

fleas

and that urine smell

in this mountain hut

it’s by candlelight

and perpetual

cock-crow

I write

my morning poem

not a single complaint

do I hear

from these blades of grass

bombarded

by afternoon rain

from communal vegetables

and rice,

how solitary

the wet night walk

back to my mountain hut

I came,

it seems,

to write solitary poems

in my Hut

of the Small Mind

it’s wabi

of course:

the old tangerine

crate

against the hut’s mud wall

eating

the peach,

I wonder

how natural

it is

at last

at the public bath

a public back wash

and my hot spring

soak!

urinating

from my hut door,

I too join

this rain

on green leaf

once,

seeing my smile

that did its silent work,

the master stopped

his word-flow

whether I stay

or don’t,

whether I write

my article or let it pass,

I am in this Hut of the Small Mind

throat bearded,

I back into

the world

from Do Nothing

Farm

Call for Diversity of Approaches to English Tanka

In his later years, Sanford Goldstein made a deliberate call for fresh approaches to writing tanka in English. In his essay, “Diversity in Tanka” published in Modern English Tanka in 2006, he wrote: “The diversity I want to focus on is the subject matter in tanka poems. . . . What I often find missing in tanka content is some new focus, something different, something that surprises us with its sudden insight. Perhaps most of the tanka being written today are about love or nature or a combination of both. Of course, there are poems on friendship, poems on death, poems on children and an infinite number of subjects. Still, more often than not, either love is the center of a poet’s tanka world or nature is. What I now see as cliché is three lines of nature and then the sudden connection to something personal in the poet’s world. Or the poet’s condition is in the first three lines and the situation ends with two lines of nature. I believe these two kinds of combinations often win prizes, so apparently, they find approval in the tanka communities in North America and abroad. But because the technique is so commonly repeated, I find surprise lacking, and I am left with a feeling of staleness.”

Most of Goldstein’s poems are minimalist tanka, spontaneously spilled as a diary. However, in his later years he embraced and began experimenting with the short-long-short-long-long approach in order to craft a more intellectual literary tanka. In an essay, “The Eye of Tanka” published by Blithe Spirit in 2012, he claims to prefer these longer tanka over his earlier minimalist work. He writes: “A great deal has been said about the syllables in tanka. At one point I became a minimalist tanka poet. Once I was strongly criticized in our translation of Akiko Yosano’s Tangled Hair for having one line with the word ‘I’. Sometimes I tried the long ago tradition of tanka as 5-7-5-7-7 syllables and found it was easy to count syllables. Sometimes writers are advocating tanka with 20 syllables to be equal to the 31. But what I found most helpful has been the sudden appearance of short-long-short-long-long as the equivalent of 5 (short) 7 (long) 5 (short) 7 (long) 7 (long). In the early days I made my tanka either minimalist or free, but now I feel short, long, short, long, long is just right. When I read a poem that breaks this pattern, I feel it is weak. This pattern is a recent one, so many of my early poems do not follow it.”

Encounters in This Penny World

Edmonton, Alberta: Inkling Press, 2005

In this collection he not only tries a longer form but also experiments with a literary approach to writing tanka. Each tanka is written from the perspective of a literary narrator, with some told from a third-person or from an omniscient point of view. Notably, these tanka are not a man’s diary of the emotional changes in his life. As he says in the introduction, “. . . something surprising has happened to me in Encounters in This Penny World, for while I follow my usual practice of mentioning nature only occasionally (though I mention it more often in this collection than in some of my others), only a few poems have ‘I’ in them, and the ‘I’ is from the viewpoint of the character in the tanka. In the opening poems on ‘childhood,’ I do use ‘we,’ so that must include myself, but I was thinking more about the states of mind and experiences that most children go through. For the most part I avoid the ‘I’ that I have been so delighted or saddened or confused by these many decades. Still, all of the encounters in these poems I have either lived or observed or thought about or experienced through others. The omission of the ‘I’ leaves, I feel, the poems more as encounters, more as dramatic interludes.” Goldstein has objectified himself in these crafted dramas.

I leave it to Goldstein’s readers whether this experiment in crafting literary tanka is a success. For me, I prefer the raw intensity, the spontaneous conversational tone, and the psychological anguish of Sandy Goldstein’s minimalist tanka.

how we pulled

those dandelions off the hill,

one, fourteen, thirty—

we spread them and tied thin strings,

our Olympic crowns knee-swirled! page 2

his bowling night

and she repeats it’s all right

and hurries him out;

on the way he scolds himself

for forgetting their twentieth page 26

on the floor

the master plays

with the kids—

at dinner a floating silence

thicker than satori grasp page 36

sentimental songs

at the day-care center

for the aged:

they press him to dance, to draw,

they pat his shoulder, cut his meat page 61

two trips back home

and still unable to see

his sister’s grave:

over coffee he scribbles poems

to recite before her stone page 69

The Last Mile on the Tanka Road

Colrain, Massachusetts: Stark Mountain Press, 2023

In the last years of his life, Goldstein maintained correspondence with Joy McCall, a tanka writer he admired and mentored. They shared their work by email and wrote tanka strings together. This last collection, which was published after his death, gathers some of these last tanka written. She noted that “There are not many tanka, as he had slowed down as he grew old, and many of them are sad and dark as he looked back on his own losses.” She fulfilled her promise to publish these tanka after his death and thanked his family “for letting us share these last tanka” and expressed her gratitude to Kazuaki Wakui, Goldstein’s long-term house mate, “for his constant care of my old friend.”

midnight

he reaches the mountain

one less worry—

the bears

are in hibernation

I do not think

I ever found my real self

if there is such a thing

I am a series of moments

some good, some not

I feel

the exhaustion

of dizziness

and still I walk

still I dry dishes

a long stretch

of loneliness

to endure

I decide to vacuum

my dirty study

done

with trivialities

what’s next?

nothing more serious

than a gravestone

An example of a collaborative string between Goldstein and McCall. McCall’s tanka are italicized.

window

again

illness enters

our window

again her pain,

again mine

open,

a window

admits air

and light

and the truth

these

dark evenings

one bright window—

the evening e-mail chat

with the Norwich poet

there are

other joys than me

in your life

tell me them

my sad poet-friend

we’re upside

down

in this world,

our window is open

wide, free

A Bibliography of Tanka-Related Works by and About Sanford Goldstein

Essays on Tanka by Sanford Goldstein

Goldstein, Sanford. “Diversity in Tanka.” Modern English Tanka 1.2, (2006): 186–199. Web. 20 March 2016.
Goldstein, Sanford. “The Eye of Tanka.” Blithe Spirit 22.3, (2012): 18–22.
Goldstein, Sanford. “From This Side of Five Lines Down.” Five Lines Down 1, (1994). [See all four issues of this 1994–1996 journal in Five Lines Down: A Landmark in English Tanka, Edited by Denis M. Garrison, Baltimore, MD: Modern English Tanka Press, 2007.]
Goldstein, Sanford. “A Literary Autobiography.” Atlas Poetica 16, (2013): 50–52. Web. 19 March 2016.
Goldstein, Sanford. “Not Again! Yes, Tanka Strings and Tanka Sequences.” Atlas Poetica 5, (2010): 60–65. Web. 19 March 2016.
Goldstein, Sanford. “On Writing Tanka.” High/Coo: A Quarterly of Short Verse 5, (1977): 2–3.
Goldstein, Sanford. “Sanford Goldstein On Sanford Goldstein.” Simply Haiku 1.6, (2003): n. pag. Web. 11 March 2016.
Goldstein, Sanford. “Tanka String and Tanka Sequence: A New Twist.” Annual Report of Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Keiwa Gakuen University, (2004) 17–33. Web. 09 January 2023.
Goldstein, Sanford. “This Elusive Tanka World.” Simply Haiku 5.2, (2007): n. pag. Web. 11 March 2016.

Essays and Interviews on Tanka and Sanford Goldstein

Babusci, Pamela. “Sanford Goldstein Interviewed by Pamela Babusci.” Simply Haiku 1.6, (2003): n. pag. Web. 11 March 2016.
Hadman, Ty. “Poet Profile: Sanford Goldstein.” AHA Poetry, (2001): n. pag. Web. 23 March 2016.
Kei, M. “A History of Tanka in English, Part 1: The North American Foundation, 1899–1985.” Atlas Poetica Web Site, (2013): 1–18. Web. 19 March 2016.
Prime, Patricia. “Spilling Tanka: An Interview with Sanford Goldstein.” Tanka Society of America, (2004): n. pag. Web. 14 March 2016.
Welch, Michael Dylan. “The Seed of the Human Heart: Writing Tanka.” Modern English Tanka 2.1, 2007.
Wilson, Robert D. “Sanford Goldstein Interviewed by Robert D. Wilson.” Simply Haiku 7.3, (2009): n. pag. Web. 11 March 2016.

Tanka Collections by Sanford Goldstein in Chronological Order

Goldstein, Sanford. This Tanka World. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue Poets Cooperative, 1977.
Goldstein, Sanford. Gaijin Aesthetics. La Crosse, Wisconsin: Juniper Press, 1983.
Goldstein, Sanford. At the Hut of the Small Mind. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1992.
Goldstein, Sanford. The Last Mile on the Tanka Road. Colrain, Massachusetts: Stark Mountain Press, 2023.
Goldstein, Sanford. Records of a Well-Polished Satchel: 14 Occasion Tanka. La Crosse, Wisconsin: Juniper Press, 1995.
Goldstein, Sanford. This Tanka World of Strings. Publisher not identified, 1995.
Goldstein, Sanford. This Tanka Whirl. Coinjock, North Carolina: Clinging Vine Press, 2001.
Goldstein, Sanford. Encounters in This Penny World. Edmonton, Alberta: Inkling Press, 2005.
Goldstein, Sanford. Four Decades on My Tanka Road: The Tanka Collections of Sanford Goldstein. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, 2007.
Goldstein, Sanford. Niigata Ars Nova. Niigata, Japan: Daishi Hall, 2009.
Goldstein, Sanford. Journeys Near and Far: Tanka Roads. Edmonton, Alberta: Inkling Press, 2013.
Goldstein, Sanford. Tanka Left Behind: Tanka from the Notebooks of Sanford Goldstein. Perryville, Maryland: Keibooks, 2014.
Goldstein, Sanford. This Short Life: Minimalist Tanka. Perryville, Maryland: Keibooks, 2014.
Goldstein, Sanford. Tanka Left Behind 1968. Perryville, Maryland: Keibooks, 2015.
Goldstein, Sanford. The Last Mile on the Tanka Road. Colrain, Massachusetts: Stark Mountain Press, 2023.

Japanese Tanka Books Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Partners, in Chronological Order

Yosano, Aikiko. Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Studies, 1971. Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda.
Takuboku, Ishikawa. Sad Toys by Ishikawa Takuboku. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1977. Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda.
Takuboku, Ishikawa. Romaji Diary and Sad Toys by Ishikawa Takuboku. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Publishers, 1985. Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda.
Saitō, Mokichi. Red Lights: Selected Tanka Sequences from Shakko. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1989. Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda.
Yaichi, Aizu. Yamabato: Aizu Yaichi’s “Preface” and Tanka Poems on the Death of His Adopted Daughter. Shibatashi, JP: Bulletin of Keiwa College, 1995. Translated by Fujisato Kitajima and Sanford Goldstein.
Shiki, Masaoka. Songs from a Bamboo Village: Selected Tanka from Takenosato Uta. North Clarendon, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan: Tuttle Publishing, 1998. Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda.
Ryōkan. Ryōkan: Selected Tanka and Haiku. Niigata, Japan: Kōkodō Press, 2000. Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Shigeo Mizuguchi.
Yosano, Akiko. Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami. Boston, Massachusetts: Cheng & Tsui Company, 2002. Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda.

Translations

The following selected bibliography of translations appeared in Four Decades on My Tanka Road by Sanford Goldstein, Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, 2007. It repeats the tanka translations listed above but also includes other translations, mostly books, in alphabetical order by each original author. This list was not included in Ribbons with the original publication of the preceding essay.

Arishima, Takeo, Labyrinth (Library of Japan), Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, ISBN-10: 0819182931. ISBN-13: 978-0819182937. Hardcover, 5.5" x 8.8", 230 pages. The Pacific Basin Institute, 1992. Madison Books, 2000.
Ibuse, Masuji, “Salamander,” Trans. Yokō Sadamichi and Sanford Goldstein. Japan Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1 (1966). Pp. 71–75.
Inoue, Yasushi, The Hunting Gun (1949), Trans. Yokō Sadamichi and Sanford Goldstein. ISBN 0-8048-0257-2. 74 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1961.
Ishikawa, Takuboku, Sad Toys. Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. 198 pages. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 1977.
Ishikawa, Takuboku, Romaji Diary and Sad Toys. Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 1985. ISBN-10: 0804832536. ISBN-13: 978-0804832533. Trade paperback, 5.3"x7.9", 279 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 2000.
Masaoka, Shiki, Songs from a Bamboo Village: Selected Tanka from Take no Sato Uta. Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. 488 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1998.
Mori, Ogai, The Wild Geese. Trans. Kingo Ochiai and Sanford Goldstein. ISBN-10: 0804810702. ISBN-13: 978-0804810708. Trade paperback, 5.3" x 8.1", 128 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1974.
Mori, Ogai, The Wild Geese. Trans. Kingo Ochiai and Sanford Goldstein. ASIN: B000LX2A0E. Trade paperback, 119 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1987.
Mori, Ogai, Vita Sexualis (Tuttle Classics). Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Kazuji Ninomiya. ISBN-10: 0804810486. ISBN-13: 978-0804810487. Trade paperback, 4.3" x 7.2", 153 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1972.
Natsume, Sōseki, To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (Classics of Japanese Literature). Trans. Kingo Ochiai and Sanford Goldstein. ISBN-10: 0804833281. ISBN-13: 978-0804833288. Trade paperback, 5.1" x 7.9", 336 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1985.
Ryōkan, Ryōkan: Selected Tanka Selected Haiku. Trans. Sanford Goldstein, Shigeo Mizuguchi, and Fujisato Kitajima. 209 pages. Niigata-shi, Japan: Kokodo, 2000.
Saitō, Mokichi, Red Lights: Selected Tanka Sequences from Shakkō. Trans. Seishi Shinoda and Sanford Goldstein. 385 pages. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 1989.
Setouchi, Harumi, Beauty In Disarray. Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Kazuji Ninomiya. ISBN-10: 0804818665 and 0804833222. ISBN-13: 978-0804833226. Trade paperback, 5.1" x 7.8", 351 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1993.
Takeda, Taijun, This Outcast Generation and Luminous Moss (two novelettes). Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Yasaburo Shibuya. 145 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1967.
Yosano, Akiko, Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami. Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. ISBN-10: 0911198261. ISBN-13: 978-0911198263. Hard cover, 165 pages. Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue U Studies, 1971.
Yosano, Akiko, Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami. Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. ISBN-10: 0804815224. ISBN-13: 978-0804815222. Trade paperback, perfect-bound, 165 pages. Tokyo: Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1987.
Yosano, Akiko, Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami. Trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. ISBN-10: 0887273734. ISBN-13: 978-0887273735. Trade paperback, perfect-bound, 5" x 7.9", 165 pages. Boston-Worcester, Massachusetts: Cheng & Tsui, 2002.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse