Tanka poetry

I may not be making blog entries as frequently as I'd like to, but I have been writing. Poetry mostly. My favorite kind to write is tanka poetry, which I recently discovered is not exactly what I always thought it was. . .

I started writing tanka poetry in about 10th grade as a requirement. Our textbooks taught us that tanka is an ancient style of Japanese poetry, similar to haiku, but having 31 syllables instead of just 17. This appealed to me, as I tend to be verbose. So, a tanka poem would have five lines -- two lines of 5 syllables each and three lines of 7 syllables each which could be placed in any order, according to said textbook. Well, I recently Googled tanka poetry when a friend asked me about it, and learned that in fact, there is a preferred pattern -- the lines are traditionally arranged 5-7-5-7-7.

Ack! Does this mean all the poems I've been writing all these years are wrong? Well, once I thought about it a bit I realized, no. That would be silly. For starters, to be a true tanka, it should be written in Japanese so the rules have already been bent. And the 5-7-5-7-7 thing is only customary -- from what I read, there aren't too many hard-and-fast type rules for tanka in English, especially nowadays. Besides, it's supposed to be art, emotion.

Now, mostly I write poetry for myself and don't tend to share it with too many people. But, since it's a new year, I thought maybe I'd step outside my comfort zone a bit and share a few tanka with you all. I looked through my archives and found this poem I wrote years ago that just happens to follow the official pattern:

Dandelion seeds
Drifting away on a breeze
Like so many dreams
You never dared to follow
Dancing just beyond your reach

And here's one from a few days ago that doesn't:

Pyromaniac's delight
Fire destroys to create
Scorched edges, ashes falling
Find what's left behind -
Beauty in relief

So I choose to keep writing with the guidelines I remember from my high school textbook -- each poem should express a single thought or emotion and use nature imagery -- and I'll let the 5 or 7 syllables fall where they may. I find the writing very therapeutic and I would encourage anyone else who's interested to give it a try. Click if you'd like to learn more about tanka