Bibliography of Books Containing Tanka in English

I was going to leave the bibliography to Denis, but since he was in the accident, I decided I might as well take all the data I had and turn it into a word document. The resulting bibliography contains approximately 325 entries. About 100 overlap with Ce Rosenow's Tanka Bibliography, but hers has not been updated since 2000. In addition, I tried hard to find old and obscure works, and put a tremendous effort into research.

I queried poets, viewed existing bibliographies, searched web sites, book reviews in journals, poets biographies, the Library of Congress card catalog, the catalogs of several colleges in the US and Canada, queried my colleagues, etc. Nonetheless, I have about 50 or more titles about which I do not have enough information to make a guess as to whether they contain tanka, and there are many more poets and editors yet to query. It's a neverending project, so I decided to post what I had so that people could start using it and hopefully send me additions and corrections. It is now posted at TankaCentral.com.

I also made some corrections as requested by Denis Garrison, and my 'A History of Tanka Book Publishing in English' is now posted to the Winter issue of Modern English Tanka. Essentially it's a narrative of information in the bibliography and contextual information and commentary, tracing the history of publishing tanka in English. It can be viewed at ModernEnglishTanka.com, Winter, 2006.

I regard both as being preliminaries works. There is so little scholarship on tanka in English that it's important to do this kind of fundamental groundwork to get started and open the subject for discussion and further research.

It's good to see it come to fruition because I've put a tremendous amount of work into this research. There is more to be done, but I don't plan on pushing as hard in it as I have been. I think my next step is to complete my acquistion of tanka anthologies and write about anthology publishing.

The anthologies containing tanka that I own or have on order are:

Japan: Theme and Variations
Sounds from the Unknown
Tomoshibi
Poets Behind Barbed Wire
Tanka in English
Tanka Splendor 1990
Tanka Splendor 1991
Tanka Splendor 1994
Tanka Splendor 1995
Tanka Splendor 1996
Tanka Splendor 1997
Tanka Splendor 1998
Tanka Splendor 1999
Tanka Splendor 2000
Tanka Splendor 2001
Tanka Splendor 2002
Tanka Splendor 2003
Tanka Splendor 2004
Tanka Splendor 2005
Tanka Splendor 2006
The Wind Five Folded
Footsteps in the Fog
Outcry from the Inferno
Heiwa: Peace Poetry
Quiet Fire
Book of Tanka
New Moon
Tangerine Anthology
Castles in the Sand
The Tanka Anthology
Unrolling the Awning
Searching for Echoes
Only the Bulbs
English Tanka Poems
To Find the Moon
Fire Pearls
Something Like a Sigh
A Thin Green Horizon

Books I want to acquire (if you are very nice, you will send them to me!):

Ishokurin (Transplanted Forest)
Maple
Tanka Splendor 1992
Tanka Splendor 1993
Cats/Chats
The Art of Haiku
My Neighbor's Life
Countless Leaves
Full Moon Tide
Moondust/Poussiere de la Lune
How to Haiku
Tulip Haiku
Rose Haiku for Flower Lovers and Gardeners
Tanka Calendar 2005
Tanka Calendar 2006
Invisible Tea and Haiku
Windchimes

~K~