I'm pleased to have a solo show and interview at 3Lights Gallery online. Liam Wilkinson has done a lovely job as usual presenting my work. I like his conceit of the gallery exhibiting poetry as if it were art. The theme of the exhibit, homoerotic tanka, is one that I often write, but which people often fail to realize. With a gender-non-specific pen name like 'M. Kei' it leaves the poems open to interpretation with the reader filling in whatever gender suits his or her taste. Which explains why I have been mistaken for a woman online... poems addressed to male lovers are assumed to have been written by a woman.
rattlesnake love—
you gave me warning,
but I, entranced
by your desert heart,
wouldn't heed it
(Fire Pearls, 2006)
Full well do I know
that this transient pleasure
is like foam on the sea;
Yet even so I want it
to last a thousand years
(Simply Haiku, Summer, 2006)
his burlap skin
washed by the
diamond waters,
and everywhere,
jellyfish in bloom
(Modern English Tanka, Winter, 2006)
Persian carpet,
my denim leg over
your bare one,
my book resting
against your back
(Gusts #6, 2007)
The above tanka are all homoerotic poems that have been published in various places without drawing attention to the fact that they are poems of male love. 'Persian carpet' was inspired by a Tom of Finland drawing, and when I saw it published in Gusts, I realized that I had to do something to make the context explicit if I wanted these poems to be seen as I felt them. I am grateful to Liam Wilkinson for his openness to publishing a collection of this sort.
I have searched the Internet for other gay tanka and there aren't many, and even fewer that are good. My own style is an indirect one, so that makes it difficult to write poems which are frank in their appreciation of male love and friendship. There is also the perception that gay=pornographic, that anything gay must be full of explicit homosexual sex acts. I suspect the reason why the insistence of a gay extreme for sexuality is because the line between male friendship and homoeroticism is a slim one and easily crossed. People become uncomfortable if they suspect a relationship might be perceived as 'abnormal' in some way. They justifiably object to viewers reading something into a relationship that does not exist. Therefore they exaggerate the differences between male intimacy and homosexuality.
One of the reasons why the exhibit carries the subtitle 'homoerotic tanka of love and friendship' is to acknowledge this continuum of male feelings and to permit the publishing of poetry without building a wall between friendship and sexuality. My own experience with soldiers, for example, suggests to me that the emotional intimacy that develops in men who serve together in harsh conditions is not foreign to sexuality. This is not to say that soldiers' relationships are erotic, but to acknowledge that men are emotional beings as well as physical, and that the emotional intimacy that men can develop is very powerful. Whether a man is a soldier or a lover, the capacity for emotional connection is there. Not only there, but desirable and necessary if we are to be a civilized people.
American men in particular are deeply constrained in their self-expression to the roles of bad-ass action hero and buffoon, often at the same time (especially if he is black). More desirable and finely nuanced roles -- such as father -- are hard to sustain. Contempt for men is widespread. Teenage girls walk around wearing t-shirts that say, "Boys have feelings too, but who cares?"
I do. Part of coming out gay is not only a matter of coming out with regards to one's sexual orientation, but a coming out to demand to be perceived and respected as a whole person, not just a set of genitalia driven by hormonal urges searching for a compatible set of genitalia with which to mate. I don't want to have sex with men as much as I want to be able to hold hands with a male lover and walk down the street in safety. The most important reason I use a pen name for my poetry is so that I can write what I want to write and feel reasonably safe. I want the right to be a whole person, without being stereotyped, denigrated, channeled, ignored, assaulted, and discriminated against.
~K~
Showing posts with label tanka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tanka. Show all posts
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Love Letters : Homoerotic Tanka of Love and Friendship
M. KEI : LOVE LETTERS
One of tanka's most distinctive and passionate of voices makes his return to 3LIGHTS this Summer with an exhibition of homoerotic tanka of love and friendship. Although many would associate M. Kei's poetry with images of the ocean, the coast and his native Chesapeake Bay, this latest exhibition from the editor of such publications as Atlas Poetica, Fire Pearls and author of Heron Sea, homes in on tanka of a more personal nature. We are proud to present this exhibition and delighted to welcome back a good friend of the Gallery.
M. Kei: Love Letters: Homoerotic Tanka of Love and Friendship
3LIGHTS Gallery, July 1st - September 31st 2008
http://www.threelightsgallery.com/foyer.html
One of tanka's most distinctive and passionate of voices makes his return to 3LIGHTS this Summer with an exhibition of homoerotic tanka of love and friendship. Although many would associate M. Kei's poetry with images of the ocean, the coast and his native Chesapeake Bay, this latest exhibition from the editor of such publications as Atlas Poetica, Fire Pearls and author of Heron Sea, homes in on tanka of a more personal nature. We are proud to present this exhibition and delighted to welcome back a good friend of the Gallery.
M. Kei: Love Letters: Homoerotic Tanka of Love and Friendship
3LIGHTS Gallery, July 1st - September 31st 2008
http://www.threelightsgallery.com/foyer.html
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
1st Int'l Erotic Tanka Contest
FIRST INTERNATIONAL EROTIC TANKA CONTEST
Deadline Postmark: Dec. 31st 2008
Eligibility: Open to everyone MUST BE AT LEAST 21 YEARS OLD
TO ENTER
Subject matter: Erotic, sensual/physical tanka. Tanka that expresses
love in all its manifestations. Please NO pornography!!
Prizes: First Place $100 Second Place $50 and Third Place $25
Prize monies maybe reduced if there are insufficient funds due to
number of entries.
Entry Fee: $1 per tanka No limit on number of tanka submitted.
Checks, money orders, made payable to Pamela A. Babusci, or cash.
Foreign entries CASH ONLY, U.S. MONIES.
Rules: Submit tanka on 3x5 index cards. One card with just the tanka on it and
the second card with your tanka and your name, address, telephone number, and
e-mail address on the front upper left of the card. Entries MUST be typewritten
or printed legibly. Entries that cannot be read be will destroyed.
Enclose an SASE, with sufficient postage (or 2 IRCs for international entries)
if you desire contest results.
ONLY unpublished tanka will be accepted. NO tanka
that is being considered for publication or entered
into tanka contests elsewhere. NO tanka that has been
published on-line or in on-line tanka workshops should be entered.
TANKA IN ENGLISH ONLY.
Judge: Pamela A. Babusci, international award-winning tanka poet.
Note: The contest will be judged blindly. Karen Shiffler will receive all entries
and send ONLY the blind entries to the judge.
Send entries to: First International Erotic Tanka Contest, Karen Shiffler, 1464 Lake Road Webster, NY 14580 USA.
Questions: E-mail moongate44@gmail.com; subject line: Questions: Erotic Tanka Contest.
Deadline Postmark: Dec. 31st 2008
Eligibility: Open to everyone MUST BE AT LEAST 21 YEARS OLD
TO ENTER
Subject matter: Erotic, sensual/physical tanka. Tanka that expresses
love in all its manifestations. Please NO pornography!!
Prizes: First Place $100 Second Place $50 and Third Place $25
Prize monies maybe reduced if there are insufficient funds due to
number of entries.
Entry Fee: $1 per tanka No limit on number of tanka submitted.
Checks, money orders, made payable to Pamela A. Babusci, or cash.
Foreign entries CASH ONLY, U.S. MONIES.
Rules: Submit tanka on 3x5 index cards. One card with just the tanka on it and
the second card with your tanka and your name, address, telephone number, and
e-mail address on the front upper left of the card. Entries MUST be typewritten
or printed legibly. Entries that cannot be read be will destroyed.
Enclose an SASE, with sufficient postage (or 2 IRCs for international entries)
if you desire contest results.
ONLY unpublished tanka will be accepted. NO tanka
that is being considered for publication or entered
into tanka contests elsewhere. NO tanka that has been
published on-line or in on-line tanka workshops should be entered.
TANKA IN ENGLISH ONLY.
Judge: Pamela A. Babusci, international award-winning tanka poet.
Note: The contest will be judged blindly. Karen Shiffler will receive all entries
and send ONLY the blind entries to the judge.
Send entries to: First International Erotic Tanka Contest, Karen Shiffler, 1464 Lake Road Webster, NY 14580 USA.
Questions: E-mail moongate44@gmail.com; subject line: Questions: Erotic Tanka Contest.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Tanka Splendor Awards 22008
NINETEENTH
INTERNATIONAL
TANKA SPLENDOR
AWARD
2008
Sponsored by AHA Books
1. Thirty-one tanka and three tanka sequences will be awarded publication in Tanka Splendor 2008 and for each winning entry the author will receive a $20. gift certificate for books from AHA Books.
2. Deadline: Midnight September 30, 2008. Do not send entries before June 1, 2008, please.
3. Each author may submit either a group of up to three (3) unpublished tanka or one tanka sequence of any length. All material must be original and not under consideration elsewhere.
4. There is no entry fee.
5. Individual tanka should be in English, written in five lines containing 31 or fewer syllables, preferably without titles.
6. The tanka sequence should consist of a title with three or more tanka, each of which contains 31 or less syllables written in five lines.
7. Send your entry either by using the form below. It works fine even though it may tell you it doesn't have any idea of what is happening - so don't worry. You will get a confirmation that your poem has been received and accepted. Entries may also be sent by regular post. These will be entered in the contest but the author will be unable to take part in the judging. Send mail entries, typed on sheets of paper to:
TS2008 Contest
pob 767 / 1250
Gualala, CA 95445
8. The judging will be done only by the persons with a valid e-mail address who have entered the contest. Each contestant will receive an e-mail with an address on the web showing the anonymous poems for judging. The contestants are invited to declare their choices for the best single tanka and best sequence. After tabulating these votes the 31 single tanka and three sequences which receive the most votes will be published as Tanka Splendor 2008 as an AHA Books Online and winners will be notified with the gift certificates.
9. Rights return to authors upon publication. Entries cannot be returned.
Send your tanka entries to the Tanka Splendor Awards Contest with this form. Be patient with the funny form. It may seem to scramble your lines, but be reassured that when they come to me they are okay. I will send you a confirmation and you can see then that the computer was kind after all.
Read the winning entries in Tanka Splendor 2000.
Or in Tanka Splendor 2001.
Or in Tanka Splendor 2002.
Or in Tanka Splendor 2003.
Or. . . Tanka Splendor 2004.
Tanka Splendor 2005
Tanka Splendor 2006
Tanka Splendor 2007
Back editions of Tanka Splendor for the years 95, 97, 98 and 99 are still available from AHA Books for $5.00 each postpaid. Send a check by post to AHA Books, pob 1250, Gualala, CA.
Tanka Splendor Awards Contest and rules are Copyright © AHA Books 1989 - 2008.
To read the winning poems of previous contests go to AHA Books Online.
To read more about the genre tanka.
INTERNATIONAL
TANKA SPLENDOR
AWARD
2008
Sponsored by AHA Books
1. Thirty-one tanka and three tanka sequences will be awarded publication in Tanka Splendor 2008 and for each winning entry the author will receive a $20. gift certificate for books from AHA Books.
2. Deadline: Midnight September 30, 2008. Do not send entries before June 1, 2008, please.
3. Each author may submit either a group of up to three (3) unpublished tanka or one tanka sequence of any length. All material must be original and not under consideration elsewhere.
4. There is no entry fee.
5. Individual tanka should be in English, written in five lines containing 31 or fewer syllables, preferably without titles.
6. The tanka sequence should consist of a title with three or more tanka, each of which contains 31 or less syllables written in five lines.
7. Send your entry either by using the form below. It works fine even though it may tell you it doesn't have any idea of what is happening - so don't worry. You will get a confirmation that your poem has been received and accepted. Entries may also be sent by regular post. These will be entered in the contest but the author will be unable to take part in the judging. Send mail entries, typed on sheets of paper to:
TS2008 Contest
pob 767 / 1250
Gualala, CA 95445
8. The judging will be done only by the persons with a valid e-mail address who have entered the contest. Each contestant will receive an e-mail with an address on the web showing the anonymous poems for judging. The contestants are invited to declare their choices for the best single tanka and best sequence. After tabulating these votes the 31 single tanka and three sequences which receive the most votes will be published as Tanka Splendor 2008 as an AHA Books Online and winners will be notified with the gift certificates.
9. Rights return to authors upon publication. Entries cannot be returned.
Send your tanka entries to the Tanka Splendor Awards Contest with this form. Be patient with the funny form. It may seem to scramble your lines, but be reassured that when they come to me they are okay. I will send you a confirmation and you can see then that the computer was kind after all.
Read the winning entries in Tanka Splendor 2000.
Or in Tanka Splendor 2001.
Or in Tanka Splendor 2002.
Or in Tanka Splendor 2003.
Or. . . Tanka Splendor 2004.
Tanka Splendor 2005
Tanka Splendor 2006
Tanka Splendor 2007
Back editions of Tanka Splendor for the years 95, 97, 98 and 99 are still available from AHA Books for $5.00 each postpaid. Send a check by post to AHA Books, pob 1250, Gualala, CA.
Tanka Splendor Awards Contest and rules are Copyright © AHA Books 1989 - 2008.
To read the winning poems of previous contests go to AHA Books Online.
To read more about the genre tanka.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
A Few Poems from Slow Motion
Slow Motion contains 350 poems, most of which are tanka, but also including tercets, short verse, and prose. A few sample poems are below:
the black
and white diamonds
of Holland Island Bar Light—
this too
belongs to cormorants
southern breakfast
asparagus fresh from the garden,
eggs and bacon
served on broad china plates
in an old plantation house
a little white boat
always busy
never doing anything
always going somewhere
happy never to arrive
a few vague stars—
although drunk,
the sailors
gaze up
in reverence
mild weather—
yet the dark warning
of clouds
piling up
beyond the mast
a polydactyl cat
walks the bulwark—
he, too,
is the offspring
of sailors
with worn out
sailing gloves I pull
the torn leech,
me and the boat
both feeling our age
the leaning tower
of Sharp's Island Light . . .
all that remains
of a vanished island,
a vanished time
Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, can be ordered
from Modern English Tanka Press at: http://www.lulu.com/content/2537507
the black
and white diamonds
of Holland Island Bar Light—
this too
belongs to cormorants
southern breakfast
asparagus fresh from the garden,
eggs and bacon
served on broad china plates
in an old plantation house
a little white boat
always busy
never doing anything
always going somewhere
happy never to arrive
a few vague stars—
although drunk,
the sailors
gaze up
in reverence
mild weather—
yet the dark warning
of clouds
piling up
beyond the mast
a polydactyl cat
walks the bulwark—
he, too,
is the offspring
of sailors
with worn out
sailing gloves I pull
the torn leech,
me and the boat
both feeling our age
the leaning tower
of Sharp's Island Light . . .
all that remains
of a vanished island,
a vanished time
Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, can be ordered
from Modern English Tanka Press at: http://www.lulu.com/content/2537507
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Slow Motion: Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack
Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack by M. Kei
Published by Modern English Tanka Press
"Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack" by M. Kei is a
break-through collection of waterman poetry from the Chesapeake Bay
by a poet who actually knows what he is talking about. M. Kei crews
on the title boat, the Skipjack Martha Lewis. Kirsty Karkow, prize-
winning poet and author of "water poems" and "shorelines," says: "A
Skipjack is a historic vessel where form follows function with a
rough beauty. These characteristics are apparent in the sensitive,
poetic voyages of an aging boat and the men who work her sails. This
history and trip log is sure to delight any sailor or lover of the
Chesapeake Bay . . . and of poetry."
Baltimore, Maryland–May 27, 2008–Slow Motion : The Log of a
Chesapeake Bay Skipjack by M. Kei has been published in trade
paperback by Modern English Tanka Press, Baltimore, Maryland. This
break-through collection of waterman poetry from the Chesapeake Bay,
by a poet who actually knows what he is talking about, is sure to
delight any sailor or lover of the Chesapeake Bay and of poetry. The
poet M. Kei crews on the title boat, the Skipjack Martha Lewis, out
of Havre de Grace, Maryland. The short lyric forms used in Slow
Motion are perfect vehicles for the laconic voice of the waterman.
Kei has captured a bit of Chesapeake magic in a bottle and all who
love the Bay, boating, and poetry, are a little richer for it.
"Kei, in his Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, has
made these poems on the Chesapeake Bay with its sailboats and workmen
and beauty into a tour de force. Having read hundreds and hundreds of
modern haiku, I find that Kei's, along with his many tanka,
communicate his joy in the beauty of sky and wave and sea and work.
There is a sustaining harmony in the collection, at times earthy, at
times transcendental, at times Whitmanesque. In this journey of log
poetry, along with commentary and notes, Kei has extended the range
of our poetic world." –Sanford Goldstein, co-translator of
Midaregami, Tangled Hair
About Author:
M. Kei crews aboard a skipjack, a traditional wooden sailboat used to
fish for oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. He is the author of Heron
Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay, and the editor of the
critically acclaimed anthology, Fire Pearls: Short Masterpieces of
the Human Heart. Kei edits the biannual tanka journal, Atlas Poetica,
which is dedicated to poetry of place. His latest project is Take
Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008, of which he serves as founder
and editor-in-chief. He has published more than 800 poems and
scholarly articles in five languages and ten countries. He also
compiles the Bibliography of English-Language Tanka.
For media inquiries or to arrange an interview with the author,
contact: M. Kei by e-mail at kujaku (at) verizon (dot) net. Publisher
information at: www.modernenglishtankapress.com.
This book is available from www.Lulu.com/modernenglishtanka and from
major booksellers; or by order from the publisher. Complete
information and mail order form are available online at
www.modernenglishtankapress.com. Price: $16.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-6152-
1265-4. Trade paperback. 164 pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding,
60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior
paper, full-color exterior ink.
About Modern English Tanka Press:
Modern English Tanka Press is an independent equity publishing house
in Baltimore, Maryland, dedicated to producing books and periodicals
of lasting literary value. A family business, we treat our customers
and partners in publishing like family. Our publications are produced
using modern print-on-demand production and distribution methods. We
publish tanka, haiku, and other fine poetry. Our special mission is
to promote the tanka form of poetry, to educate newcomers to tanka
about this most ancient poetic form, and to work for wider
publication of tanka in both specialty and mainstream poetry venues.
To those ends, we publish the journals "Modern English Tanka," "Atlas
Poetica," "Modern Haiga," and special edition books of tanka, haiku,
and other fine verse. We operate www.TankaCentral.com, the internet
megasite for tanka, with its popular "Tanka News" blog, and the
poetry web hub, www.ShortVerse.com.
Contact:
Denis M. Garrison, owner
Modern English Tanka Press
443-802-1249
Email to dmg (at) themetpress (dot) com.
www.modernenglishtankapress.com www.modernenglishtanka.com
www.atlaspoetica.com
www.shortverse.com www.tankacentral.com www.tankanews.com
www.modernhaiga.com
Published by Modern English Tanka Press
"Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack" by M. Kei is a
break-through collection of waterman poetry from the Chesapeake Bay
by a poet who actually knows what he is talking about. M. Kei crews
on the title boat, the Skipjack Martha Lewis. Kirsty Karkow, prize-
winning poet and author of "water poems" and "shorelines," says: "A
Skipjack is a historic vessel where form follows function with a
rough beauty. These characteristics are apparent in the sensitive,
poetic voyages of an aging boat and the men who work her sails. This
history and trip log is sure to delight any sailor or lover of the
Chesapeake Bay . . . and of poetry."
Baltimore, Maryland–May 27, 2008–Slow Motion : The Log of a
Chesapeake Bay Skipjack by M. Kei has been published in trade
paperback by Modern English Tanka Press, Baltimore, Maryland. This
break-through collection of waterman poetry from the Chesapeake Bay,
by a poet who actually knows what he is talking about, is sure to
delight any sailor or lover of the Chesapeake Bay and of poetry. The
poet M. Kei crews on the title boat, the Skipjack Martha Lewis, out
of Havre de Grace, Maryland. The short lyric forms used in Slow
Motion are perfect vehicles for the laconic voice of the waterman.
Kei has captured a bit of Chesapeake magic in a bottle and all who
love the Bay, boating, and poetry, are a little richer for it.
"Kei, in his Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, has
made these poems on the Chesapeake Bay with its sailboats and workmen
and beauty into a tour de force. Having read hundreds and hundreds of
modern haiku, I find that Kei's, along with his many tanka,
communicate his joy in the beauty of sky and wave and sea and work.
There is a sustaining harmony in the collection, at times earthy, at
times transcendental, at times Whitmanesque. In this journey of log
poetry, along with commentary and notes, Kei has extended the range
of our poetic world." –Sanford Goldstein, co-translator of
Midaregami, Tangled Hair
About Author:
M. Kei crews aboard a skipjack, a traditional wooden sailboat used to
fish for oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. He is the author of Heron
Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay, and the editor of the
critically acclaimed anthology, Fire Pearls: Short Masterpieces of
the Human Heart. Kei edits the biannual tanka journal, Atlas Poetica,
which is dedicated to poetry of place. His latest project is Take
Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008, of which he serves as founder
and editor-in-chief. He has published more than 800 poems and
scholarly articles in five languages and ten countries. He also
compiles the Bibliography of English-Language Tanka.
For media inquiries or to arrange an interview with the author,
contact: M. Kei by e-mail at kujaku (at) verizon (dot) net. Publisher
information at: www.modernenglishtankapress.com.
This book is available from www.Lulu.com/modernenglishtanka and from
major booksellers; or by order from the publisher. Complete
information and mail order form are available online at
www.modernenglishtankapress.com. Price: $16.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-6152-
1265-4. Trade paperback. 164 pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding,
60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior
paper, full-color exterior ink.
About Modern English Tanka Press:
Modern English Tanka Press is an independent equity publishing house
in Baltimore, Maryland, dedicated to producing books and periodicals
of lasting literary value. A family business, we treat our customers
and partners in publishing like family. Our publications are produced
using modern print-on-demand production and distribution methods. We
publish tanka, haiku, and other fine poetry. Our special mission is
to promote the tanka form of poetry, to educate newcomers to tanka
about this most ancient poetic form, and to work for wider
publication of tanka in both specialty and mainstream poetry venues.
To those ends, we publish the journals "Modern English Tanka," "Atlas
Poetica," "Modern Haiga," and special edition books of tanka, haiku,
and other fine verse. We operate www.TankaCentral.com, the internet
megasite for tanka, with its popular "Tanka News" blog, and the
poetry web hub, www.ShortVerse.com.
Contact:
Denis M. Garrison, owner
Modern English Tanka Press
443-802-1249
Email to dmg (at) themetpress (dot) com.
www.modernenglishtankapress.com www.modernenglishtanka.com
www.atlaspoetica.com
www.shortverse.com www.tankacentral.com www.tankanews.com
www.modernhaiga.com
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Ash Moon Anthology
I wrote the blurb for the dustcover of the hard copy edition of Ash Moon Anthology. I'd like to share it with folks because I think Ash Moon is the best anthology yet from Modern English Tanka Press, and at nearly 900 poems and nearly 100 authors, it is the largest tanka anthology published to date. I encourage you all to get your hands on a copy and read it. It is available through Lulu.com/ModernEnglishTanka.
~K
Age. It happens to us all. Advertisements inform us that we can be sexual athletes at ninety, if only we buy the magic cure and follow the exercise guru's advice. Yet the evidence of our own lives is decidedly more human, more problematic, and full of petty perfidies. Age is not simply the prolongation of our youth with the help of a little dye to hide the grey hair but a fundamental process of transformation. We change, and as we change, we are haunted or enlivened by the past we carry with us. Understanding all that we are and have experienced is difficult enough, but communicating it to others is even harder, especially when the gap is dramatic as the one separating today's youth from today's elders. This is the chasm which the poets of Ash Moon cross. Nearly a hundred in number, they are themselves aging or the caregivers and companions of elders. With unblinking honesty they record their age as it is lived—despair and dereliction along side grace and humor—and what emerges is a true portrait of age with all its awkward complexities.
Readers of Ash Moon will find all these poems written in a fitting form, namely, 'tanka,' the eldest of poetic forms. The oldest continuously anthologized poetry in the world (compared to which the venerable sonnet is a mere stripling), tanka poetry has been the vehicle by which poets ancient and modern have given voice to the myriad beauties and burdens of their lives. The result is a series of snapshots without commentary, allowing the readers to directly experience the poets' vision. They will find much that resonates with them, and much to reflect on. The ash moon hangs over all our heads.
M. Kei
M. Kei is the editor of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka and the author of Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay. He is the editor-in-chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008.
~K
Age. It happens to us all. Advertisements inform us that we can be sexual athletes at ninety, if only we buy the magic cure and follow the exercise guru's advice. Yet the evidence of our own lives is decidedly more human, more problematic, and full of petty perfidies. Age is not simply the prolongation of our youth with the help of a little dye to hide the grey hair but a fundamental process of transformation. We change, and as we change, we are haunted or enlivened by the past we carry with us. Understanding all that we are and have experienced is difficult enough, but communicating it to others is even harder, especially when the gap is dramatic as the one separating today's youth from today's elders. This is the chasm which the poets of Ash Moon cross. Nearly a hundred in number, they are themselves aging or the caregivers and companions of elders. With unblinking honesty they record their age as it is lived—despair and dereliction along side grace and humor—and what emerges is a true portrait of age with all its awkward complexities.
Readers of Ash Moon will find all these poems written in a fitting form, namely, 'tanka,' the eldest of poetic forms. The oldest continuously anthologized poetry in the world (compared to which the venerable sonnet is a mere stripling), tanka poetry has been the vehicle by which poets ancient and modern have given voice to the myriad beauties and burdens of their lives. The result is a series of snapshots without commentary, allowing the readers to directly experience the poets' vision. They will find much that resonates with them, and much to reflect on. The ash moon hangs over all our heads.
M. Kei
M. Kei is the editor of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka and the author of Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay. He is the editor-in-chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008.
Three Tanka by M. Kei
Bolts of Silk (I love the name) has posted three of my tanka. Bolts of Silk is named for the ancient Japanese practice of giving bolts of silk to reward artists, poets, and anyone else that the giver wanted to reward.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Thank you and Update to Keibooks
The following announcement was posted to Keibooks-Announce:
For all of you who have written your kind responses to my previous email, thank you very much. I am honored that Fire Pearls (Perryville: Keibooks) has gained a place in your hearts.
By now you may be aware of some other projects I have been working on, including last year's publication of my first collection Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay (Perryville: Keibooks), as well as the forthcoming Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka (Baltimore: Modern English Tanka Press), and now the forthcoming newest project, Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008 (Baltimore: Modern English Tanka Press).
Up until now I have utilized the link to make it as easy as possible to find Fire Pearls, but since I published a collection of my own last year and plan to publish additional books this year and next, I have changed the storefront's name to Keibooks. The new URL is: , effective immediately. Please update your bookmarks. As always, you can find the storefront by using Lulu's search box.
As always, you can find additional information about myself and my projects at my blog.
Cordially,
~K~
M. Kei
Publisher, Keibooks
For all of you who have written your kind responses to my previous email, thank you very much. I am honored that Fire Pearls (Perryville: Keibooks) has gained a place in your hearts.
By now you may be aware of some other projects I have been working on, including last year's publication of my first collection Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay (Perryville: Keibooks), as well as the forthcoming Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka (Baltimore: Modern English Tanka Press), and now the forthcoming newest project, Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008 (Baltimore: Modern English Tanka Press).
Up until now I have utilized the link
As always, you can find additional information about myself and my projects at my blog
Cordially,
~K~
M. Kei
Publisher, Keibooks
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Take Five : The Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008
PRESS RELEASE
Modern English Tanka Press Announces Take Five : The Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008.
February 12, 2008 - Baltimore, MD
Modern English Tanka Press has announced a new anthology, Take Five : The Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008. This anthology, headed up by editor-in-chief, M. Kei, will review all tanka published in English during 2008 and make selections to showcase the breadth and quality of of English-language tanka poetry. The anthology will be published early in 2009 in both trade paperback and hardcover editions. It is expected to be an annual anthology showcasing each year's best tanka.
The anthology is the brainchild of M. Kei, well-known tanka poet and editor of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka. No stranger to anthology editing, M. Kei previously edited the ground-breaking and critically acclaimed anthology, Fire Pearls : Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart in 2006. M. Kei heads up a team of editors, including Prof. Sanford Goldstein, tanka poet and co-translator of Japanese tanka poets for more than forty years; Pamela A. Babusci, an award-winning poet/artist, whose awards include the Museum of Haiku Literature, Yellow Moon, and Kokako competitions; Liam Wilkinson, curator of the 3LIGHTS Online Gallery of Haiku and Tanka and co-editor of Modern Haiga; Patricia Prime, co-editor of Kokako and reviews editor of Stylus (AUS) and Takahe (NZ); and Bob Lucky, poet, writer, and teacher.
Kei explained that the project would be different from existing tanka competitions because it is an anthology with editors, not a contest with judges. "Our goal is to showcase not only the best tanka being written and published in English today, but also to present excellence in anthology-making. We will not be voting on which tanka to include, but nominating tanka which we will discuss and debate amongst ourselves. We will select work that exemplifies both the best individual tanka and the best anthology we can produce, with due respect to the diversity of tanka in English around the world."
Editors and authors who wish to assure that their works published in 2008 are reviewed by the editorial team may submit two copies of the work to:
Attn: Take Five
M. Kei, Editor-in-chief
P O Box 1118
Elkton, MD 21922-1118
Email: take5tanka [at] modernenglishtankapress [dot] com
Readers who wish to draw the board's attention to works they admire are also welcome to submit copies. All copies become the property of the Take Five editorial board and cannot be returned. Please note, parcels which require a signature cannot be received. If you wish to receive an acknowledgment of your submission, please include a self-addressed, stamped postcard with the package. International correspondents should send an IRC in lieu of stamps. Please inquire before making electronic submissions: unexpected attachments will be deleted.
(end)
Please forward to all interested persons.
Modern English Tanka Press Announces Take Five : The Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008.
February 12, 2008 - Baltimore, MD
Modern English Tanka Press has announced a new anthology, Take Five : The Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008. This anthology, headed up by editor-in-chief, M. Kei, will review all tanka published in English during 2008 and make selections to showcase the breadth and quality of of English-language tanka poetry. The anthology will be published early in 2009 in both trade paperback and hardcover editions. It is expected to be an annual anthology showcasing each year's best tanka.
The anthology is the brainchild of M. Kei, well-known tanka poet and editor of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka. No stranger to anthology editing, M. Kei previously edited the ground-breaking and critically acclaimed anthology, Fire Pearls : Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart in 2006. M. Kei heads up a team of editors, including Prof. Sanford Goldstein, tanka poet and co-translator of Japanese tanka poets for more than forty years; Pamela A. Babusci, an award-winning poet/artist, whose awards include the Museum of Haiku Literature, Yellow Moon, and Kokako competitions; Liam Wilkinson, curator of the 3LIGHTS Online Gallery of Haiku and Tanka and co-editor of Modern Haiga; Patricia Prime, co-editor of Kokako and reviews editor of Stylus (AUS) and Takahe (NZ); and Bob Lucky, poet, writer, and teacher.
Kei explained that the project would be different from existing tanka competitions because it is an anthology with editors, not a contest with judges. "Our goal is to showcase not only the best tanka being written and published in English today, but also to present excellence in anthology-making. We will not be voting on which tanka to include, but nominating tanka which we will discuss and debate amongst ourselves. We will select work that exemplifies both the best individual tanka and the best anthology we can produce, with due respect to the diversity of tanka in English around the world."
Editors and authors who wish to assure that their works published in 2008 are reviewed by the editorial team may submit two copies of the work to:
Attn: Take Five
M. Kei, Editor-in-chief
P O Box 1118
Elkton, MD 21922-1118
Email: take5tanka [at] modernenglishtankapress [dot] com
Readers who wish to draw the board's attention to works they admire are also welcome to submit copies. All copies become the property of the Take Five editorial board and cannot be returned. Please note, parcels which require a signature cannot be received. If you wish to receive an acknowledgment of your submission, please include a self-addressed, stamped postcard with the package. International correspondents should send an IRC in lieu of stamps. Please inquire before making electronic submissions: unexpected attachments will be deleted.
(end)
Please forward to all interested persons.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Atlas Poetica Deadline
Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka is nearing its deadline. Very little space is left. I have been pleased and impressed by the quality of the submissions and the number of international and indigenous submissions. Atlas Poetica aims to be a true 'atlas' of the tanka world, and we are well on our way to that goal.
Also noteworthy are the number of sequences submitted, some quite lengthy, as well as the use of prose with tanka. I deliberately designed Atlas Poetica with a large format to permit more flexibility in the types of poetry that could be effectively presented, and I'm pleased to see that coming to fruition.
There have been only a handful of submissions that clearly did not read the guidelines, but let me make it clear. We are a tanka journal. We are quite flexible about the tanka form and definition, but we will not publish things that bear no relationship to the tanka form. Your forty line free verse rant about the political situation in the Third World doesn't qualify. Turn it into tanka, which means also turning it into poetry and we'll consider it. Some of the poems we received addressed concerns of indigenous peoples in realistic ways, such as reporting poverty, alcohol abuse, and the effects of international adoption or natural disaster, and we welcome more poems upon these and other themes. Tanka need not be all rosy hued romanticism.
Nevertheless, we did receive many poems that present loving views of particular places and cultures, some in idealized forms and others with more realistic views of a place's merits and faults. There is a place for all such poems in the Atlas Poetica. Rant or paean, as long as they are poetry of place in the tanka form, they are welcome.
What we did not receive much of were sequences that incorporated other forms of verse with the tanka. There were no Wilsonian sequences, in which haiku alternated with tanka, no sequences with envoys or other techniques, and no tanka in alternate formation. We did get a little bit of sedoka, but since it didn't meet other requirements, it was declined. Thus the first issue appears as a very powerful endorsement of traditional English format of five phrases on five lines, but we wish to emphasize that this is an artifact of the submissions that came to us.
We encourage multiple forms, and are happy to consider cinquains and cherita (tanka derivatives) as well as other forms in combination with tanka. We are also willing to consider forms that were not derived from tanka, but which share characteristics of tanka, such as the word sonnet. Tan-renga, linked tanka, and renga are also welcome, where renga is understood to be the old style in which verses of three and two lines (total five) are written by multiple poets, with or without formal schema in the Japanese style.
The reading window for Atlas Poetica 2 will be March 1 to May 31, 2008. Please don't wait to the last minute to submit!
Atlas Poetica 1 is on schedule to be release March 1, 2008. It will be available through our publisher's web site, ModernEnglishTankaPress.com.
For more editorial information about the journal, please visit our blog at AtlasPoetica.blogspot.com.
Thank you for your support,
~K~
M. Kei
Also noteworthy are the number of sequences submitted, some quite lengthy, as well as the use of prose with tanka. I deliberately designed Atlas Poetica with a large format to permit more flexibility in the types of poetry that could be effectively presented, and I'm pleased to see that coming to fruition.
There have been only a handful of submissions that clearly did not read the guidelines, but let me make it clear. We are a tanka journal. We are quite flexible about the tanka form and definition, but we will not publish things that bear no relationship to the tanka form. Your forty line free verse rant about the political situation in the Third World doesn't qualify. Turn it into tanka, which means also turning it into poetry and we'll consider it. Some of the poems we received addressed concerns of indigenous peoples in realistic ways, such as reporting poverty, alcohol abuse, and the effects of international adoption or natural disaster, and we welcome more poems upon these and other themes. Tanka need not be all rosy hued romanticism.
Nevertheless, we did receive many poems that present loving views of particular places and cultures, some in idealized forms and others with more realistic views of a place's merits and faults. There is a place for all such poems in the Atlas Poetica. Rant or paean, as long as they are poetry of place in the tanka form, they are welcome.
What we did not receive much of were sequences that incorporated other forms of verse with the tanka. There were no Wilsonian sequences, in which haiku alternated with tanka, no sequences with envoys or other techniques, and no tanka in alternate formation. We did get a little bit of sedoka, but since it didn't meet other requirements, it was declined. Thus the first issue appears as a very powerful endorsement of traditional English format of five phrases on five lines, but we wish to emphasize that this is an artifact of the submissions that came to us.
We encourage multiple forms, and are happy to consider cinquains and cherita (tanka derivatives) as well as other forms in combination with tanka. We are also willing to consider forms that were not derived from tanka, but which share characteristics of tanka, such as the word sonnet. Tan-renga, linked tanka, and renga are also welcome, where renga is understood to be the old style in which verses of three and two lines (total five) are written by multiple poets, with or without formal schema in the Japanese style.
The reading window for Atlas Poetica 2 will be March 1 to May 31, 2008. Please don't wait to the last minute to submit!
Atlas Poetica 1 is on schedule to be release March 1, 2008. It will be available through our publisher's web site, ModernEnglishTankaPress.com.
For more editorial information about the journal, please visit our blog at AtlasPoetica.blogspot.com.
Thank you for your support,
~K~
M. Kei
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Further Thoughts on Lineation in Tanka
My article in the current issue of MET (#6), scratches the surface of the subject. I had not yet figured out for myself exactly what I was trying to get at when I wrote it, but went ahead with it on the assumption that if I stuck my neck out, somebody would respond by trying to chop it off, and that this would advance our understanding of the subject. I was right, somebody did, and it has. Here then is the response I made to him:
Japanese doesn't have meter; it does not stress or accent syllables. There is no variation in sound that determines line length, and in fact, spoken Japanese does vary from its written form. What the Japanese count are the kana, the written form. Thus, a word like 'desu' is written with two kana, and is counted as two kana, but is pronounced as 'dess', one mora. That the pronunciation varies from the written form is of little concern to the Japanese.
When dealing with classical waka, we never know what the originals are because old Japanese had many sounds that have disappeared from modern Japanese, and waka are always translated into strictly formal modern Japanese, which eliminates any irregularities. Thus, when we see Saigyo in Japanese romaji, we are seeing a modern Japanese translation of what Saigyo actually wrote. It is very rare -- and quite befuddling -- to confront the romaji inscriptions of classical waka. Translating from classical Japanese to modern Japanese is just as difficult and perhaps more so than translating from Anglo-Saxon to modern English. When we read Beowulf in English, we are not reading what the bard wrote. Yet if we are to confront the bard's word directly, we can make very little sense of it. So in reality, all our supposed adherence to the aesthetics of classical waka is complete poppycock: we are adhering to some translator's notion of what old waka were like. As far as I know, no one has ever made a direct translation from classical Japanese to modern English. Anything passed through a double layer of translation must depart far from the original.
Yet even in the strictest period of waka writing, under Ki no Tsurayuki and his influence, waka might vary by a syllable or two. When I was first writing tanka and adhering to the 5-7-5-7-7 format, I had a good friend from Japan who was a published poet. She constantly nudged me to not worry so much about counting syllables, telling me the Japanese didn't mind if it was off by a bit.
In the more flexible periods, eg, the modern era and the earliest eras, there was/is considerable flexibility. For example; the ancient form appears to have been alternating long and short lines, with lines varying from 3 to 9 syllables. When it was adopted by the courtiers, they seem to have settled on 5 and 7. Such a pattern is now seen as 'inherent' in the Japanese language, but it is long custom that has made it so. And yet, as noted, variation was still permitted.
I speculate that the Japanese settled on 5 and 7 for reasons having to do with Chinese influence, which saw the world made up of as sets of five -- five musical notes in the scale, five elements, five colors, five directions, etc, and natural harmonics, eg, the seven note scale, and so forth. Gagaku, the classical music of the same period as waka, is quite eerie to Western ears. It's based on the five note scale.
What sounded musical to a Japanese courtier of the Heian period will set the Westerner's nerves on end -- if you dislike bagpipe music, then gagaku will cause real suffering! I do not think we can import the Japanese classical musical system to our tanka and win any admirers. The Japanese model simply does not translate, either in syllables, rhythm, or sound.
See A Waka Anthology, Vol 1, for more details on ancient Japanese prosody.
Another thing to keep in mind is that tanka was not the only form, merely the most popular form. All kinds of forms were in used in ancient Japan, and the Japanese kept inventing new ones, like the ko-uta ('little song'). Thus, a thing that did not adhere to the tanka form might appear as a sedoka or ko-uta or Buddha's footstep poem or one of the many other forms. So the tanka poet was not confined to the 5-7-5-7-7 form; if a poem needed to be something else, it could be. Hell, even the acrostic survived in the courtly anthologies. When we fixate on tanka, we are ignoring the context which provided many more options to the Japanese poet than just 5-7-5-7-7.
Alas, we hear next to nothing about other forms. Thus, if I present a six line poem in a tanka context, the great majority of readers are not going to recognize it as a sedoka, they're going to think it's a defective or experimental tanka. If I use four lines, they aren't going to ask if I'm trying to do a Chinese quatrain or a ko-uta, they are going to see it as a radical tanka.
A Japanese reader would have no such problem.
Japanese rhythm is built on phrases, rather than words or lines. Generally speaking, waka have a single phrase per line. Japanese grammar being what it is, particles of various sorts demark groups of words as belonging together. In Japanese, these words are run together with no space between them, and are pronounced without pauses. This is very different from English with space and pauses between each word, no matter how important or unimportant they are. Thus a Japanese auditor can easily tell where the line breaks fall -- there is a pauses in the flow of sound. How many syllables are in that flow of sound doesn't matter. They aren't counting. They're registering the pauses between groups of syllables, along with certain grammatical markers, to know when a phrase ends and the next begins. English-language tanka is not built on phrases at all, which is why we can have enjambment and single words on lines, and other things. Our language is simply too different.
I could, if I was to imitate the Japanese rhythm, write tanka by eliminating the spaces between words. Thus the lineation would be completely irrelevant. Consider this:
thewoods thatseemedimpenetrable insummer arehollowin December'swind
Voila. A Japanese tanka in English. Written on one line with the breaks appearing at the ends of phrases. Counting syllables or morae is completely irrelevant; the breaks between phrases are obvious. Thus it becomes clear why the Japanese need not be too exacting when counting syllables. It also becomes clear that the need to take a breath is going to break the poem into 'utterances' if we can use that term to refer to the group of words sung between breaths. In poem of these size, two or three breaths is natural to an ordinary speaker; to utter a poem of this length in one breath or five is out of the ordinary, but perfectly feasible. To manipulate the breathing places is part of the poet's technique.
The above poem's breathing pattern is:
thewoodsthatseemedimpenetrableinsummer arehollowinDecember'swind
Such issues are given no attention by poets in English, except for a few who mention 'one or two breaths.' There is no discussion of the impact that such breaths give to prosody, or how such breaks might be exploited for literary benefit, or how they balance one another, or any such thing. The break at the end of L3 does have the virtue of dividing the poem into two roughly equal halves. Such a break is certainly easily accomplished by a singer with no special training. But why limit ourselves to what is simple and obvious?
When you get right down to it; the vast majority of tanka poets and readers working in English -- including most of the well known ones -- haven't a clue what really makes a Japanese tanka work, or what the equivalent is in English. As long as we keep on with our absolutely meaningless rubric of 'five phrases on five lines', we haven't a chance of learning anything about either Japanese tanka or English-language tanka. My article on lineation is primitive, I know, but I operate on the theory that sticking my neck out may provoke discussion, education, and improvement.
I thank you for raising the issue. I had not quite figured out for myself in any conscious way what I was getting at in 'Alternate Lineation,' my thoughts on the matter are much clearer now.
~K~
Japanese doesn't have meter; it does not stress or accent syllables. There is no variation in sound that determines line length, and in fact, spoken Japanese does vary from its written form. What the Japanese count are the kana, the written form. Thus, a word like 'desu' is written with two kana, and is counted as two kana, but is pronounced as 'dess', one mora. That the pronunciation varies from the written form is of little concern to the Japanese.
When dealing with classical waka, we never know what the originals are because old Japanese had many sounds that have disappeared from modern Japanese, and waka are always translated into strictly formal modern Japanese, which eliminates any irregularities. Thus, when we see Saigyo in Japanese romaji, we are seeing a modern Japanese translation of what Saigyo actually wrote. It is very rare -- and quite befuddling -- to confront the romaji inscriptions of classical waka. Translating from classical Japanese to modern Japanese is just as difficult and perhaps more so than translating from Anglo-Saxon to modern English. When we read Beowulf in English, we are not reading what the bard wrote. Yet if we are to confront the bard's word directly, we can make very little sense of it. So in reality, all our supposed adherence to the aesthetics of classical waka is complete poppycock: we are adhering to some translator's notion of what old waka were like. As far as I know, no one has ever made a direct translation from classical Japanese to modern English. Anything passed through a double layer of translation must depart far from the original.
Yet even in the strictest period of waka writing, under Ki no Tsurayuki and his influence, waka might vary by a syllable or two. When I was first writing tanka and adhering to the 5-7-5-7-7 format, I had a good friend from Japan who was a published poet. She constantly nudged me to not worry so much about counting syllables, telling me the Japanese didn't mind if it was off by a bit.
In the more flexible periods, eg, the modern era and the earliest eras, there was/is considerable flexibility. For example; the ancient form appears to have been alternating long and short lines, with lines varying from 3 to 9 syllables. When it was adopted by the courtiers, they seem to have settled on 5 and 7. Such a pattern is now seen as 'inherent' in the Japanese language, but it is long custom that has made it so. And yet, as noted, variation was still permitted.
I speculate that the Japanese settled on 5 and 7 for reasons having to do with Chinese influence, which saw the world made up of as sets of five -- five musical notes in the scale, five elements, five colors, five directions, etc, and natural harmonics, eg, the seven note scale, and so forth. Gagaku, the classical music of the same period as waka, is quite eerie to Western ears. It's based on the five note scale.
What sounded musical to a Japanese courtier of the Heian period will set the Westerner's nerves on end -- if you dislike bagpipe music, then gagaku will cause real suffering! I do not think we can import the Japanese classical musical system to our tanka and win any admirers. The Japanese model simply does not translate, either in syllables, rhythm, or sound.
See A Waka Anthology, Vol 1, for more details on ancient Japanese prosody.
Another thing to keep in mind is that tanka was not the only form, merely the most popular form. All kinds of forms were in used in ancient Japan, and the Japanese kept inventing new ones, like the ko-uta ('little song'). Thus, a thing that did not adhere to the tanka form might appear as a sedoka or ko-uta or Buddha's footstep poem or one of the many other forms. So the tanka poet was not confined to the 5-7-5-7-7 form; if a poem needed to be something else, it could be. Hell, even the acrostic survived in the courtly anthologies. When we fixate on tanka, we are ignoring the context which provided many more options to the Japanese poet than just 5-7-5-7-7.
Alas, we hear next to nothing about other forms. Thus, if I present a six line poem in a tanka context, the great majority of readers are not going to recognize it as a sedoka, they're going to think it's a defective or experimental tanka. If I use four lines, they aren't going to ask if I'm trying to do a Chinese quatrain or a ko-uta, they are going to see it as a radical tanka.
A Japanese reader would have no such problem.
Japanese rhythm is built on phrases, rather than words or lines. Generally speaking, waka have a single phrase per line. Japanese grammar being what it is, particles of various sorts demark groups of words as belonging together. In Japanese, these words are run together with no space between them, and are pronounced without pauses. This is very different from English with space and pauses between each word, no matter how important or unimportant they are. Thus a Japanese auditor can easily tell where the line breaks fall -- there is a pauses in the flow of sound. How many syllables are in that flow of sound doesn't matter. They aren't counting. They're registering the pauses between groups of syllables, along with certain grammatical markers, to know when a phrase ends and the next begins. English-language tanka is not built on phrases at all, which is why we can have enjambment and single words on lines, and other things. Our language is simply too different.
I could, if I was to imitate the Japanese rhythm, write tanka by eliminating the spaces between words. Thus the lineation would be completely irrelevant. Consider this:
thewoods thatseemedimpenetrable insummer arehollowin December'swind
Voila. A Japanese tanka in English. Written on one line with the breaks appearing at the ends of phrases. Counting syllables or morae is completely irrelevant; the breaks between phrases are obvious. Thus it becomes clear why the Japanese need not be too exacting when counting syllables. It also becomes clear that the need to take a breath is going to break the poem into 'utterances' if we can use that term to refer to the group of words sung between breaths. In poem of these size, two or three breaths is natural to an ordinary speaker; to utter a poem of this length in one breath or five is out of the ordinary, but perfectly feasible. To manipulate the breathing places is part of the poet's technique.
The above poem's breathing pattern is:
thewoodsthatseemedimpenetrableinsummer arehollowinDecember'swind
Such issues are given no attention by poets in English, except for a few who mention 'one or two breaths.' There is no discussion of the impact that such breaths give to prosody, or how such breaks might be exploited for literary benefit, or how they balance one another, or any such thing. The break at the end of L3 does have the virtue of dividing the poem into two roughly equal halves. Such a break is certainly easily accomplished by a singer with no special training. But why limit ourselves to what is simple and obvious?
When you get right down to it; the vast majority of tanka poets and readers working in English -- including most of the well known ones -- haven't a clue what really makes a Japanese tanka work, or what the equivalent is in English. As long as we keep on with our absolutely meaningless rubric of 'five phrases on five lines', we haven't a chance of learning anything about either Japanese tanka or English-language tanka. My article on lineation is primitive, I know, but I operate on the theory that sticking my neck out may provoke discussion, education, and improvement.
I thank you for raising the issue. I had not quite figured out for myself in any conscious way what I was getting at in 'Alternate Lineation,' my thoughts on the matter are much clearer now.
~K~
Friday, December 07, 2007
Tanka Bestsellers at Lulu.com
Tanka Bestsellers at Lulu.com
Lulu.com is becoming the de facto home of print on demand publishing of tanka. While tanka books continue to be published with small presses and other print on demand services, no publisher makes public the sales figures for their titles. Since each publisher uses his own method for establishing sales ranks (if they do it at all) it is impossible to compare from publisher to publisher.
The following ranks have been culled from the Lulu.com sales ranks, and are based solely on those rankings. Thus the list can capture only those works published through Lulu.com.
1) Kei, M., ed. Fire Pearls : Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart.
2) Garrison, Denis M., & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 1.
3) Bacharach, Dave, ed. Ribbons : Tanka Society of America Journal, 3:3.
4) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Landfall : Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka.
5) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 3.
6) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 2.
7) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. The Five-Hole Flute : Modern English Tanka in Sets and Sequences.
8) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 4.
9) Blankenship, Gary. A River Transformed : Wang Wei’s River Wang Poems as Inspiration.
10) Goldstein, Sanford, ed. Sixty Sunflowers : Tanka Society of America Members' Anthology for 2006-2007.
11) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 5.
12) Woodward, Jeffrey. In Passing: Selected Poems, 1974-2007.
13) Burns, Roderick. The Salesman's Shoes.
14) McClintock, Michael, & Denis M. Garrison, eds. The Dreaming Room: Tanka in Collage and Montage Sets.
15) Millcock, Allison. pausing for a moment . . . haiga and tanga.
16) Garrison, Denis M. and Michael McClintock, eds. Landfall : Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka.
17) Garrison, Denis M., ed. Haiku Harvest.
18) Rotella, Alexis. Lip Prints : Tanka Collection 1979 - 2007.
19) Garrison, Denis M., ed. Five Lines Down : A Landmark in English Tanka.
20) Kei, M. Heron Sea : Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay.
Small press tanka publishers, editors, and poets are loathe to share publication figures. I have been able to obtain only a handful of numbers, and most of those under a pledge of confidentiality. Refusal to share number of units sold makes it extremely difficult to track which works are actually being sold, and presumably, read. Some critics argue that 'sales' differ from 'readership', and that readership is the more important criterion. That is certainly a valid point, but not many publishers are willing or able to give me readership figures, either. And how does one calculate 'readership', anyhow? A useful figure, it is far more slippery than units sold.
Units sold also performs a valuable function: it puts a monetary value on tanka poetry. I suspect that is why so many people are uncomfortable with it. Yet it's an important measure; if tanka is to sustain itself as a legitimate genre it needs financial support. It needs readers who are willing to pay out cold hard cash to support the small presses and self-publishers who are making the effort to publish and promote tanka.
As much as we might like to sit in our ivory tower and declare ourselves above pecuniary motivations, the truth is, poetry must be paid for. It is the readers that decide how it is paid for, and therefore, what kind of poetry gets printed. While the barriers to self-publishing are getting lower all the time, it still requires an investment of time, money, and skills, a combination that describes a minority of tanka poets. The skills referred to here is not literary skills, but practical skills: book design and layout, cover design, publishing software, marketing, sales, legal (copyright and copyleft), and related efforts, such as packaging and mailing. Does tanka belong only to those who can afford the investment?
The ordinary reader, by choosing which books and journals they buy, determine which poets and consequently, what kind of poetry is worth publishing. Or put it this way: how many poets are going to publish a second book if they only sell twenty of their first book?
Yes, the Internet offers the opportunity to publish for free, or nearly free publication, but you can't wrap up the Internet and put it under the tree. You can't write your own personal inscription to a beloved on the Internet's flyleaf. You can't take the Internet with you when you're sitting in a doctor's office, waiting for an appointment. And there is absolutely no guarantee that any given page or poem will still exist on the Internet tomorrow, next week, or next year. And worse yet, read the fine print on many of those Internet hosting sites — you will discover that by posting your material to that site, you have given ownership of copyright to the website, to do with as they will.
Support literature. Buy books. Buy books by poets you like. Take a chance on poets you're not familiar with. Subscribe to journals. This Christmas, when you're trying to figure out what to buy for all the people on your list, why not buy one of them a book of tanka?
~K~
M. Kei
Lulu.com is becoming the de facto home of print on demand publishing of tanka. While tanka books continue to be published with small presses and other print on demand services, no publisher makes public the sales figures for their titles. Since each publisher uses his own method for establishing sales ranks (if they do it at all) it is impossible to compare from publisher to publisher.
The following ranks have been culled from the Lulu.com sales ranks, and are based solely on those rankings. Thus the list can capture only those works published through Lulu.com.
1) Kei, M., ed. Fire Pearls : Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart.
2) Garrison, Denis M., & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 1.
3) Bacharach, Dave, ed. Ribbons : Tanka Society of America Journal, 3:3.
4) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Landfall : Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka.
5) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 3.
6) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 2.
7) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. The Five-Hole Flute : Modern English Tanka in Sets and Sequences.
8) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 4.
9) Blankenship, Gary. A River Transformed : Wang Wei’s River Wang Poems as Inspiration.
10) Goldstein, Sanford, ed. Sixty Sunflowers : Tanka Society of America Members' Anthology for 2006-2007.
11) Garrison, Denis M. & Michael McClintock, eds. Modern English Tanka 5.
12) Woodward, Jeffrey. In Passing: Selected Poems, 1974-2007.
13) Burns, Roderick. The Salesman's Shoes.
14) McClintock, Michael, & Denis M. Garrison, eds. The Dreaming Room: Tanka in Collage and Montage Sets.
15) Millcock, Allison. pausing for a moment . . . haiga and tanga.
16) Garrison, Denis M. and Michael McClintock, eds. Landfall : Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka.
17) Garrison, Denis M., ed. Haiku Harvest.
18) Rotella, Alexis. Lip Prints : Tanka Collection 1979 - 2007.
19) Garrison, Denis M., ed. Five Lines Down : A Landmark in English Tanka.
20) Kei, M. Heron Sea : Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay.
Small press tanka publishers, editors, and poets are loathe to share publication figures. I have been able to obtain only a handful of numbers, and most of those under a pledge of confidentiality. Refusal to share number of units sold makes it extremely difficult to track which works are actually being sold, and presumably, read. Some critics argue that 'sales' differ from 'readership', and that readership is the more important criterion. That is certainly a valid point, but not many publishers are willing or able to give me readership figures, either. And how does one calculate 'readership', anyhow? A useful figure, it is far more slippery than units sold.
Units sold also performs a valuable function: it puts a monetary value on tanka poetry. I suspect that is why so many people are uncomfortable with it. Yet it's an important measure; if tanka is to sustain itself as a legitimate genre it needs financial support. It needs readers who are willing to pay out cold hard cash to support the small presses and self-publishers who are making the effort to publish and promote tanka.
As much as we might like to sit in our ivory tower and declare ourselves above pecuniary motivations, the truth is, poetry must be paid for. It is the readers that decide how it is paid for, and therefore, what kind of poetry gets printed. While the barriers to self-publishing are getting lower all the time, it still requires an investment of time, money, and skills, a combination that describes a minority of tanka poets. The skills referred to here is not literary skills, but practical skills: book design and layout, cover design, publishing software, marketing, sales, legal (copyright and copyleft), and related efforts, such as packaging and mailing. Does tanka belong only to those who can afford the investment?
The ordinary reader, by choosing which books and journals they buy, determine which poets and consequently, what kind of poetry is worth publishing. Or put it this way: how many poets are going to publish a second book if they only sell twenty of their first book?
Yes, the Internet offers the opportunity to publish for free, or nearly free publication, but you can't wrap up the Internet and put it under the tree. You can't write your own personal inscription to a beloved on the Internet's flyleaf. You can't take the Internet with you when you're sitting in a doctor's office, waiting for an appointment. And there is absolutely no guarantee that any given page or poem will still exist on the Internet tomorrow, next week, or next year. And worse yet, read the fine print on many of those Internet hosting sites — you will discover that by posting your material to that site, you have given ownership of copyright to the website, to do with as they will.
Support literature. Buy books. Buy books by poets you like. Take a chance on poets you're not familiar with. Subscribe to journals. This Christmas, when you're trying to figure out what to buy for all the people on your list, why not buy one of them a book of tanka?
~K~
M. Kei
Thursday, November 29, 2007
FREE Resources for learning about TANKA
The following resources are FREE online, and include ARTICLES and TANKA. Many of them have reading lists and link lists to direct you to further resources.
The Tanka Teachers Guide can be downloaded for free at
In addition, Modern English Tanka journal can be read free online. In addition to the many poems in it, you will find scholarly articles, explaining and analyzing different elements about tanka
Tanka Online has poetry and articles and a recommended reading list
The Tanka Society of America has a web page with some articles and some tanka
TankaCentral.com aims to be the megasite for tanka information. It has a Reading Room with reference material and poetry, including tanka being read aloud by poets (anyone can contribute sound files).
The Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society publishes both tanka poetry and articles about tanka
Happy studying!
~K~
The Tanka Teachers Guide can be downloaded for free at
In addition, Modern English Tanka journal can be read free online. In addition to the many poems in it, you will find scholarly articles, explaining and analyzing different elements about tanka
Tanka Online has poetry and articles and a recommended reading list
The Tanka Society of America has a web page with some articles and some tanka
TankaCentral.com aims to be the megasite for tanka information. It has a Reading Room with reference material and poetry, including tanka being read aloud by poets (anyone can contribute sound files).
The Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society publishes both tanka poetry and articles about tanka
Happy studying!
~K~
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Sportsmanship and Reviews
Recently I have been perusing articles on review writing. There are those who think that if the reviewer can't say something nice, they shouldn't say anything at all, while there are those that think the reviewer's job is to call a spade a spade. On the cheerleaders side, there is the arguments that we want to encourage people to read and you don't do that by being negative about the written word. On the curmudgeon's side is the retort that there is no point wasting people's time with things that aren't worth their attention.
I love to read and I love to write. And Heinlein's rule applies to poetry. He said, "Ninety percent of science fiction is crap. But then, ninety percent of everything is crap." The reviewer's job is to tell the reader what's what, and to do so in an informed and informing way. If he has done his job well, the reader can tell whether the book is something he is interested in even if he doesn't agree with the reviewer.
Fair play is the rule here: The reviewer must be fair in his or her analysis of the merits and demerits of a particular work. He must engage it on its own terms and make a distinction between his personal taste and the accomplishments (or failures) of the writer. This is very difficult work, made even more difficult by the prevailing notion that a 'good' review is one which praises the work (deserved or not) and a 'bad' review is one which points out its shortcomings.
As reading has been losing ground to more exciting media like movies, television, the Internet, and videogames, a sort of desperation has developed among writers and editors and other literary professionals -- it seems we must praise everything in order to convince somebody that all this literary work is really worth something. But effusive and undeserved praise only persuades the reader that we can't tell the difference between toilet paper and poetry.
But there is something else: Fear of retalation. Reviewers -- some of them, at least -- are afraid that writers (and editors and readers) won't like when they write what they really think, and so they say only nice things. This fear is real and warranted -- I have personally been campaigned against by a writer who didn't like my review and who did her damnedest to persuade my editor to kill the review or change as she specified. He didn't, for which I am grateful.
I admit, I wasn't so sure. It was the same editor, who, when giving me a review copy, told me if that if I was going to pan the book, he wouldn't print it. Reviews are a marketing tool. While I totally endorse the notion of effective marketing for a book (and have been criticized for it), I don't agree that a book review is a marketing tool. It's a tool for the buyer, not the seller. That it is useful (or not) to the seller is merely a side effect and not the intended purpose.
I walk an exquisite tight rope. My own integrity requires me to report what it is that I see, both good in bad in a work, and to analyze what the writer was attempting and whether s/he succeeded, and discover things that perhaps the writer didn't realize were there. I have to present my reasons for my statements and support them with quotations from the work, placing it in context of other relevant work. In short, it is a devilish amount of very difficult work, for which I receive no pay at all, rarely any praise, and which exposes me to the ire of unhappy poets who behave like they must have spent most of their school time in the principal's office.
It's enough to make a man throw up his hands and say, "I don't need this." Or, if he is made of weaker stuff, to write only nice things so that people will like him and continue sending him free books. Frankly, I place 'respecting myself' higher on the list of things that make me feel good than 'being popular,' so I've made my decision.
I have to say, I don't particularly like reviewing books. Of all the things I do, it's the least fun, the most work, the least reward, and which most exposes me to the bad behavior of people who claim to be grown ups. I do it because it helps me with my research, which I love. And because I think it needs doing because there are a lot of poorly written reviews and a definite lack of critical rigor in evaluating English-language tanka. Donning my hair shirt, I say, "tanka will be better for this."
Which brings me to sportsmanship: If you can't behave at least as well as a Little League player, go home. The world is overloaded with insecure, egotistical prima donnas of marginal talent and bad manners. We don't need any more. If you submit your work for publication, then it is your duty to do so with grace, accepting that some people will like it and some people won't, and listening carefully when reviewers, readers, editors, or anyone else make comments on your work.
Some of them will be airheads with nothing useful to say and can be ignored, but some of them have valid points that will make you wince. Take what you can use and ignore the rest. Don't argue about it. If necessary you can correct a factual error, but recognize that it is the reviewer's prerogative to say what he thinks. If you think a particular reviewer is incompetent, don't submit your books to that reviewer. Better yet, write reviews yourself. Good reviews, not laudatory reviews.
On the other hand, given the disincentives that exist, I don't foresee many new reviewers in the field. Thus, I propose that book reviews should be eligible for prizes, along with other non-fiction writing about tanka. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no prize given for tanka non-fiction. Perhaps if members of the various organizations demanded it, it would be though. Certainly we ought to recognize and promote our non-fiction writers who write about tanka as well as tanka poets themselves.
~K~
I love to read and I love to write. And Heinlein's rule applies to poetry. He said, "Ninety percent of science fiction is crap. But then, ninety percent of everything is crap." The reviewer's job is to tell the reader what's what, and to do so in an informed and informing way. If he has done his job well, the reader can tell whether the book is something he is interested in even if he doesn't agree with the reviewer.
Fair play is the rule here: The reviewer must be fair in his or her analysis of the merits and demerits of a particular work. He must engage it on its own terms and make a distinction between his personal taste and the accomplishments (or failures) of the writer. This is very difficult work, made even more difficult by the prevailing notion that a 'good' review is one which praises the work (deserved or not) and a 'bad' review is one which points out its shortcomings.
As reading has been losing ground to more exciting media like movies, television, the Internet, and videogames, a sort of desperation has developed among writers and editors and other literary professionals -- it seems we must praise everything in order to convince somebody that all this literary work is really worth something. But effusive and undeserved praise only persuades the reader that we can't tell the difference between toilet paper and poetry.
But there is something else: Fear of retalation. Reviewers -- some of them, at least -- are afraid that writers (and editors and readers) won't like when they write what they really think, and so they say only nice things. This fear is real and warranted -- I have personally been campaigned against by a writer who didn't like my review and who did her damnedest to persuade my editor to kill the review or change as she specified. He didn't, for which I am grateful.
I admit, I wasn't so sure. It was the same editor, who, when giving me a review copy, told me if that if I was going to pan the book, he wouldn't print it. Reviews are a marketing tool. While I totally endorse the notion of effective marketing for a book (and have been criticized for it), I don't agree that a book review is a marketing tool. It's a tool for the buyer, not the seller. That it is useful (or not) to the seller is merely a side effect and not the intended purpose.
I walk an exquisite tight rope. My own integrity requires me to report what it is that I see, both good in bad in a work, and to analyze what the writer was attempting and whether s/he succeeded, and discover things that perhaps the writer didn't realize were there. I have to present my reasons for my statements and support them with quotations from the work, placing it in context of other relevant work. In short, it is a devilish amount of very difficult work, for which I receive no pay at all, rarely any praise, and which exposes me to the ire of unhappy poets who behave like they must have spent most of their school time in the principal's office.
It's enough to make a man throw up his hands and say, "I don't need this." Or, if he is made of weaker stuff, to write only nice things so that people will like him and continue sending him free books. Frankly, I place 'respecting myself' higher on the list of things that make me feel good than 'being popular,' so I've made my decision.
I have to say, I don't particularly like reviewing books. Of all the things I do, it's the least fun, the most work, the least reward, and which most exposes me to the bad behavior of people who claim to be grown ups. I do it because it helps me with my research, which I love. And because I think it needs doing because there are a lot of poorly written reviews and a definite lack of critical rigor in evaluating English-language tanka. Donning my hair shirt, I say, "tanka will be better for this."
Which brings me to sportsmanship: If you can't behave at least as well as a Little League player, go home. The world is overloaded with insecure, egotistical prima donnas of marginal talent and bad manners. We don't need any more. If you submit your work for publication, then it is your duty to do so with grace, accepting that some people will like it and some people won't, and listening carefully when reviewers, readers, editors, or anyone else make comments on your work.
Some of them will be airheads with nothing useful to say and can be ignored, but some of them have valid points that will make you wince. Take what you can use and ignore the rest. Don't argue about it. If necessary you can correct a factual error, but recognize that it is the reviewer's prerogative to say what he thinks. If you think a particular reviewer is incompetent, don't submit your books to that reviewer. Better yet, write reviews yourself. Good reviews, not laudatory reviews.
On the other hand, given the disincentives that exist, I don't foresee many new reviewers in the field. Thus, I propose that book reviews should be eligible for prizes, along with other non-fiction writing about tanka. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no prize given for tanka non-fiction. Perhaps if members of the various organizations demanded it, it would be though. Certainly we ought to recognize and promote our non-fiction writers who write about tanka as well as tanka poets themselves.
~K~
Monday, October 29, 2007
The Ever Expanding Obsession
As readers of this blog know by now, as do all my friends and relatives, there is nothing I like better than sailing wooden boats on the Chesapeake Bay. Yes, I even like it better than poetry, but don't ask me to choose between them! They can be accomplished simultaneously, one lived through the other.
Over the period of October 17 - 22 I once again crewed aboard the Martha Lewis, this time for a trip down the bay to the Crisfield Watermen's Festival. Crisfield is about as far south as you can go on the water and still be in Maryland. I also learned many new an interesting things, including how each and every one of us has a built in map of the Chesapeake Bay. To use it, raise your arm up straight, but put a slight crook in your elbow. The fingers tips are the head of the Bay with Havre de Grace. The elbow is an Annapolis. The armpit is Crisfield. Extending the anatomical metaphor, Norfolk is your rear end. Or to put it this way: If you were going to give the Chesapeake Bay an enema, Norfolk is where you would insert the nozzle. I'll spare you the rest of the watermen's humor I encountered.
Everywhere we go, we meet watermen who tell us about the time they served with Martha or some other skipjack. I have noticed a common thread. Speaking as they do in the common language, intent only on talking about things that matter to them, watermen are developing a peculiar figure of speech. More than once I have heard an older waterman describe himself as working on the Bay "back when winters were cold." Global warming may be a subject of debate to people who lived in climate controlled boxes in cities, but for the people who live and work the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, it is a manifest fact.
When I tell young people that a hundred years ago the Upper Bay used to freeze over and that ice cut from it was Maryland's second largest export, they are astonished. Their grandparents then chime in to tell about how when they were young and the Bay would freeze over, they would walk across the ice from one side to the other. More astonishment. When I ask them when that was, they say the 1950s. Indeed, as late as the 1950s, skipjacks were sometimes caught in the ice and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. Wooden boats are no defense against the slow grinding crush of winter.
But while Crisfield was interesting for many reasons, that which most attracted my attention (aside from a few brief but exciting moments when my glove was pinned against the samson post and the skipjack was swinging out of control at Tilghmans Island), was the three log sailing canoe, Ruby. She belongs to Randy George who lives on Galen's Creek, or as it used to be known and still is known to oldtimers, Red Cap Creek. He kindly invited us to go out on it with him, and three of us accepted.
the magic trick
of dawn:
a slim white sailboat
materializes
from the mist
Arriving at night, the creek and sailboat were invisible. But as dawn rose, the slim white lines of the sailboat emerged from the mist. What a beautiful sight to behold! About thirty feet long, including her Roman-nosed bowsprit, and about six feet wide, she sported a single mast with a skipjack rig. She was built in 1895 and is an example of the working type of log sailing canoe. She had been used for oystering.
The log sailing canoe was evolved by the colonists from the Native American dugout canoe. In the case of the Ruby, three logs were affixed side by side and hollowed out with axe and adze to make the hull. Then her sides and coamings affixed and the whole lot rigged as it pleases. The result is an extremely shallow, narrow, and quick sailboat, so much so that they survive today in the sport of log canoe racing, which is unique to the Chesapeake Bay. The modern log canoe with its trapezoidal sails and hiking boards is a strange and unmistakeable sight. There aren't many of them left, and even fewer that are still rigged as workboats. The oldest canoes in the racing fleet are over a hundred years old.
The Ruby then was a sweet little boat and when I saw it I think I must have felt much as Mole felt when he first saw the Water Rat's little boat, and for much the same reason. As Kenneth Graham said in The Wind in the Willows , "There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
my hand on the tiller
like Water Rat and Mole
with no particular place to go
and no particular desire
to get there any time soon
Randy very kindly let us each have a turned at the tiller, so we sailed down Red Cap Creek to the Big Annemessex River. The marshes were all brown and sere, quite, and with few insects about. The waters were placid and a light breeze blew. The curves of the waters wended through the stands of tall marsh grass, and the higher ground ('high' is a relative term) with its trees and houses fell away. The sky overhead was the purest blue, fading into silver at the horizons.
How my heart went out to it! A skipjack is and always will be beyond my means, but wouldn't it be possible to some day perhaps have myself a log sailing canoe? It's not so very large, and the skills -- knocking out the rotten wood and replacing the Bondo and other makeshift repairs with something more solid -- requires no great skill. Mast hoops made of rope and a sail that I could probably stitch myself . . . why not?
Ah. The real difficulty is not with the boat but the shore. Where to keep it? It won't fit in the living room. Where to store it where it could live safely while I puttered with it for as long as it took my meager funds to slowly patch it back together and return it to the water? I'd live in a shack if it had a bit of creek for a boat. I have, at times in my life, been gifted with chocolate, plane tickets, medication, and old clothes, but never with a waterfront home.
Alas. Such is not be. I've got a job working at Walmart, running my legs off so that people who make as little as I do can have their DVDs and gaming consoles. How they spend, spend, spend on HDTV, the latest pop album, and gadgets for their gadgets. It feels a little strange to be selling people things I have no use for, and if they had any sense, they wouldn't have any use for them either. Once upon a time, little boys messed about in old wooden rowboats and explored the riverbanks and marshes. Nowadays their parents keep them away from those dangerous places and give them better entertainment, like 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Hitman.'
~K~
Over the period of October 17 - 22 I once again crewed aboard the Martha Lewis, this time for a trip down the bay to the Crisfield Watermen's Festival. Crisfield is about as far south as you can go on the water and still be in Maryland. I also learned many new an interesting things, including how each and every one of us has a built in map of the Chesapeake Bay. To use it, raise your arm up straight, but put a slight crook in your elbow. The fingers tips are the head of the Bay with Havre de Grace. The elbow is an Annapolis. The armpit is Crisfield. Extending the anatomical metaphor, Norfolk is your rear end. Or to put it this way: If you were going to give the Chesapeake Bay an enema, Norfolk is where you would insert the nozzle. I'll spare you the rest of the watermen's humor I encountered.
Everywhere we go, we meet watermen who tell us about the time they served with Martha or some other skipjack. I have noticed a common thread. Speaking as they do in the common language, intent only on talking about things that matter to them, watermen are developing a peculiar figure of speech. More than once I have heard an older waterman describe himself as working on the Bay "back when winters were cold." Global warming may be a subject of debate to people who lived in climate controlled boxes in cities, but for the people who live and work the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, it is a manifest fact.
When I tell young people that a hundred years ago the Upper Bay used to freeze over and that ice cut from it was Maryland's second largest export, they are astonished. Their grandparents then chime in to tell about how when they were young and the Bay would freeze over, they would walk across the ice from one side to the other. More astonishment. When I ask them when that was, they say the 1950s. Indeed, as late as the 1950s, skipjacks were sometimes caught in the ice and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. Wooden boats are no defense against the slow grinding crush of winter.
But while Crisfield was interesting for many reasons, that which most attracted my attention (aside from a few brief but exciting moments when my glove was pinned against the samson post and the skipjack was swinging out of control at Tilghmans Island), was the three log sailing canoe, Ruby. She belongs to Randy George who lives on Galen's Creek, or as it used to be known and still is known to oldtimers, Red Cap Creek. He kindly invited us to go out on it with him, and three of us accepted.
the magic trick
of dawn:
a slim white sailboat
materializes
from the mist
Arriving at night, the creek and sailboat were invisible. But as dawn rose, the slim white lines of the sailboat emerged from the mist. What a beautiful sight to behold! About thirty feet long, including her Roman-nosed bowsprit, and about six feet wide, she sported a single mast with a skipjack rig. She was built in 1895 and is an example of the working type of log sailing canoe. She had been used for oystering.
The log sailing canoe was evolved by the colonists from the Native American dugout canoe. In the case of the Ruby, three logs were affixed side by side and hollowed out with axe and adze to make the hull. Then her sides and coamings affixed and the whole lot rigged as it pleases. The result is an extremely shallow, narrow, and quick sailboat, so much so that they survive today in the sport of log canoe racing, which is unique to the Chesapeake Bay. The modern log canoe with its trapezoidal sails and hiking boards is a strange and unmistakeable sight. There aren't many of them left, and even fewer that are still rigged as workboats. The oldest canoes in the racing fleet are over a hundred years old.
The Ruby then was a sweet little boat and when I saw it I think I must have felt much as Mole felt when he first saw the Water Rat's little boat, and for much the same reason. As Kenneth Graham said in The Wind in the Willows , "There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
my hand on the tiller
like Water Rat and Mole
with no particular place to go
and no particular desire
to get there any time soon
Randy very kindly let us each have a turned at the tiller, so we sailed down Red Cap Creek to the Big Annemessex River. The marshes were all brown and sere, quite, and with few insects about. The waters were placid and a light breeze blew. The curves of the waters wended through the stands of tall marsh grass, and the higher ground ('high' is a relative term) with its trees and houses fell away. The sky overhead was the purest blue, fading into silver at the horizons.
How my heart went out to it! A skipjack is and always will be beyond my means, but wouldn't it be possible to some day perhaps have myself a log sailing canoe? It's not so very large, and the skills -- knocking out the rotten wood and replacing the Bondo and other makeshift repairs with something more solid -- requires no great skill. Mast hoops made of rope and a sail that I could probably stitch myself . . . why not?
Ah. The real difficulty is not with the boat but the shore. Where to keep it? It won't fit in the living room. Where to store it where it could live safely while I puttered with it for as long as it took my meager funds to slowly patch it back together and return it to the water? I'd live in a shack if it had a bit of creek for a boat. I have, at times in my life, been gifted with chocolate, plane tickets, medication, and old clothes, but never with a waterfront home.
Alas. Such is not be. I've got a job working at Walmart, running my legs off so that people who make as little as I do can have their DVDs and gaming consoles. How they spend, spend, spend on HDTV, the latest pop album, and gadgets for their gadgets. It feels a little strange to be selling people things I have no use for, and if they had any sense, they wouldn't have any use for them either. Once upon a time, little boys messed about in old wooden rowboats and explored the riverbanks and marshes. Nowadays their parents keep them away from those dangerous places and give them better entertainment, like 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Hitman.'
~K~
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sounds from the Unknown
I have been working on a comprehensive article about the history of tanka publishing in English, which has caused me to revisit Sounds from the Unknown edited by Tomoe Tana and Lucille Nixon.
Nixon describes the elements that make up good tanka as:
"The most important requisite for a good poem is that it come from the heart, that the expression must be real and sincere. The image, in other words, the sensory intake, must be clear, but there must be enough space around it so that the reader may delight himself with it by using his own associations."
All the following are the English translations of the Japanese originals. Both are included in the book.
From the high cliff the boat
I see in the middle of the Hudson River
Looks so very small
As it pulls along its own trail
Through the pure blue water.
~Masa Nishi
As my son opened a bundle
Of his luggage
When he returned,
The room was filled
With the odor of soldiering.
~Keigetsu Fukunaga
At the mountain villa
Where my friend's mother
Has just died,
The magnolia fragrances embraced us,
And words were few, very few.
~Junko Iizuka
At Hallowe'en
The baby goblin
Looking so happy,
Whispered from under the mask,
"This is me."
~Totaro Matsui
The sun shone so brightly
Into the Gilroy mountain stream
That the bodies of the fish
Became transparencies
Of yellow intestines.
~Takako Iino
Today at Pearl Harbor,
From the shore line,
At highest tide,
A gossamer mist,
With the deepest stillness.
~Hagino Matsuoka
Going steadily to study English,
Even through the rain at night,
I thus attain,
Late in life,
American citizenship.
~Kiyoko Nieda
The first person's name
My baby spoke again and again
Was that of Donna—
The little colored girl
Who lives across the street.
~Tomoe Tana
Oh, how very cold!
And how bright the frost this morning
On the silent fields,
As the sharp voice of the pheasant
Passes through.
~Tomo Hasaka
I am possessed
By this metropolitan phantom,
And have become as familiar
With New York in twenty years
As with a well beloved elderly wife.
~Kisaburo Konoshima
I, too, add my rock
To the mound of stones
Piled up
By all those who
Have climbed to the top of this peak.
~Shizuko Murakami
How silently
That tower of forty-two towers
Reflects the dawn,
In the harbor
At Seattle!
~Yosei Nomura
Quite early in the day,
Going to their city jobs,
People sit in buses,
And, oh, the beauty of each face
Reflecting early morning sun.
~Fumiko Kiyotoki
Standing
On the wide desert,
Before the silent wind,
My body sank
Into nothingness.
~Fumiko Ogawa
At Redondo Beach
Where Mexican people dwell,
Ugly oil wells rise,
But on washdays,
Oh, the flaming reds
That flutter in the breeze!
~Masanori Toyofuku
Sounds from the Unknown was published in January of 1964 as a trade paperback. Copies of it are readily found at low cost through the various online used booksellers.
~K~
Nixon describes the elements that make up good tanka as:
"The most important requisite for a good poem is that it come from the heart, that the expression must be real and sincere. The image, in other words, the sensory intake, must be clear, but there must be enough space around it so that the reader may delight himself with it by using his own associations."
All the following are the English translations of the Japanese originals. Both are included in the book.
From the high cliff the boat
I see in the middle of the Hudson River
Looks so very small
As it pulls along its own trail
Through the pure blue water.
~Masa Nishi
As my son opened a bundle
Of his luggage
When he returned,
The room was filled
With the odor of soldiering.
~Keigetsu Fukunaga
At the mountain villa
Where my friend's mother
Has just died,
The magnolia fragrances embraced us,
And words were few, very few.
~Junko Iizuka
At Hallowe'en
The baby goblin
Looking so happy,
Whispered from under the mask,
"This is me."
~Totaro Matsui
The sun shone so brightly
Into the Gilroy mountain stream
That the bodies of the fish
Became transparencies
Of yellow intestines.
~Takako Iino
Today at Pearl Harbor,
From the shore line,
At highest tide,
A gossamer mist,
With the deepest stillness.
~Hagino Matsuoka
Going steadily to study English,
Even through the rain at night,
I thus attain,
Late in life,
American citizenship.
~Kiyoko Nieda
The first person's name
My baby spoke again and again
Was that of Donna—
The little colored girl
Who lives across the street.
~Tomoe Tana
Oh, how very cold!
And how bright the frost this morning
On the silent fields,
As the sharp voice of the pheasant
Passes through.
~Tomo Hasaka
I am possessed
By this metropolitan phantom,
And have become as familiar
With New York in twenty years
As with a well beloved elderly wife.
~Kisaburo Konoshima
I, too, add my rock
To the mound of stones
Piled up
By all those who
Have climbed to the top of this peak.
~Shizuko Murakami
How silently
That tower of forty-two towers
Reflects the dawn,
In the harbor
At Seattle!
~Yosei Nomura
Quite early in the day,
Going to their city jobs,
People sit in buses,
And, oh, the beauty of each face
Reflecting early morning sun.
~Fumiko Kiyotoki
Standing
On the wide desert,
Before the silent wind,
My body sank
Into nothingness.
~Fumiko Ogawa
At Redondo Beach
Where Mexican people dwell,
Ugly oil wells rise,
But on washdays,
Oh, the flaming reds
That flutter in the breeze!
~Masanori Toyofuku
Sounds from the Unknown was published in January of 1964 as a trade paperback. Copies of it are readily found at low cost through the various online used booksellers.
~K~
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
3LIGHTS GALLERY | NEWSLETTER
3LIGHTS GALLERY | NEWSLETTER
Autumn 2007
TANKAFALL | October 1st - December 31st 2007
For our fourth open-submission exhibition since our launch in January we're delighted to present Tankafall, dedicated entirely to tanka. 3LIGHTS is pleased to welcome back writers such as Bob Lucky, Fran Masat and Matthew Paul for this Autumnal exhibition, as well as a host of newcomers to the gallery, many of whom have been making their mark in the pages of modern tanka magazines and journals across the globe.
Tankafall is now open at www.threelightsgallery.com.
If you have submitted poems for inclusion in Tankafall and haven't made it into the final line-up, why not submit again to be considered for our next open-submission exhibition. Details can be found below.
SUBMISSION CALL : NOCTURNE
Closing Date: December 10th 2007
From January 2008, it's lights out at 3LIGHTS! Our first open-submission exhibition of 2008, Nocturne, will be a celebration of the dark hours that fall between dusk and dawn. If you've ever stayed up into the night, sipping black coffee, collecting the haiku, senryu and tanka as they fall onto the lamp-lit page, then you may have the poems we're looking for.
Submit up to ten haiku/senryu/tanka to threelightsgallery@yahoo.co.uk with a brief biography by December 10th 2007.
See our submissions page for more details at www.threelightsgallery.com/submissions.
M. KEI : AUTUMN WATER | October 1st - December 31st 2007
3LIGHTS has been lucky enough to present a selection of M. Kei's tanka previously, but now we're thrilled to present an exhibition of over twenty of his poems.
M. Kei's work is filled to the brim with a drama that can only be found at sea and along its salty coastlines. Whether aboard the Skipjack Martha Lewis or on the shores of his beloved Chesapeake Bay, M. Kei continues to deliver consistently stirring tanka, and his voice on the modern tanka scene is becoming evermore distinct and influential. We’re lucky to have him and it’s a great pleasure for 3LIGHTS to present a hand-picked selection of his tanka, along with a revealing interview with the man himself.
Autumn Water runs until the end of the year. It's now open at www.threelightsgallery.com.
OUR NEW ADDRESS
Since our last exhibition opened in the Summer, we've moved home. Find 3LIGHTS at www.threelightsgallery.com and enjoy a more visual and jam-packed online gallery of haiku, senryu and tanka.
THANK YOU
Finally, a thank you.
3LIGHTS has been open since January 1st 2007 and, since then, has welcomed a vast amount of high-quality submissions of haiku, senryu and tanka from across the globe. We have endeavoured to exhibit successful work in a range of online exhibitions in the hope that your reading experience is enhanced.
We're grateful for every submission and look forward to reading more. Next year we will present another twelve months of themed exhibitions and solo shows from new and established writers. We hope you can join us.
Thank you all.
Liam Wilkinson, October 2007
Editor: Liam Wilkinson
threelightsgallery@yahoo.co.uk
If you do not wish to receive future editions of this newsletter, please let us know. Reply to this email with the subject: UNSUBSCRIBE. We apologise for any inconvenience.
3LIGHTS | GALLERY
www.threelightsgallery.com
3LIGHTS Gallery is an online gallery of haiku and related, short form poetry, submitted by
new and established writers. It is edited and curated by Liam Wilkinson & Diane Sturch.
3LIGHTS is based in the North of England.
Too much spam? Try Yahoo! Mail and we'll help keep the junk out of your inbox.
Autumn 2007
TANKAFALL | October 1st - December 31st 2007
For our fourth open-submission exhibition since our launch in January we're delighted to present Tankafall, dedicated entirely to tanka. 3LIGHTS is pleased to welcome back writers such as Bob Lucky, Fran Masat and Matthew Paul for this Autumnal exhibition, as well as a host of newcomers to the gallery, many of whom have been making their mark in the pages of modern tanka magazines and journals across the globe.
Tankafall is now open at www.threelightsgallery.com.
If you have submitted poems for inclusion in Tankafall and haven't made it into the final line-up, why not submit again to be considered for our next open-submission exhibition. Details can be found below.
SUBMISSION CALL : NOCTURNE
Closing Date: December 10th 2007
From January 2008, it's lights out at 3LIGHTS! Our first open-submission exhibition of 2008, Nocturne, will be a celebration of the dark hours that fall between dusk and dawn. If you've ever stayed up into the night, sipping black coffee, collecting the haiku, senryu and tanka as they fall onto the lamp-lit page, then you may have the poems we're looking for.
Submit up to ten haiku/senryu/tanka to threelightsgallery@yahoo.co.uk with a brief biography by December 10th 2007.
See our submissions page for more details at www.threelightsgallery.com/submissions.
M. KEI : AUTUMN WATER | October 1st - December 31st 2007
3LIGHTS has been lucky enough to present a selection of M. Kei's tanka previously, but now we're thrilled to present an exhibition of over twenty of his poems.
M. Kei's work is filled to the brim with a drama that can only be found at sea and along its salty coastlines. Whether aboard the Skipjack Martha Lewis or on the shores of his beloved Chesapeake Bay, M. Kei continues to deliver consistently stirring tanka, and his voice on the modern tanka scene is becoming evermore distinct and influential. We’re lucky to have him and it’s a great pleasure for 3LIGHTS to present a hand-picked selection of his tanka, along with a revealing interview with the man himself.
Autumn Water runs until the end of the year. It's now open at www.threelightsgallery.com.
OUR NEW ADDRESS
Since our last exhibition opened in the Summer, we've moved home. Find 3LIGHTS at www.threelightsgallery.com and enjoy a more visual and jam-packed online gallery of haiku, senryu and tanka.
THANK YOU
Finally, a thank you.
3LIGHTS has been open since January 1st 2007 and, since then, has welcomed a vast amount of high-quality submissions of haiku, senryu and tanka from across the globe. We have endeavoured to exhibit successful work in a range of online exhibitions in the hope that your reading experience is enhanced.
We're grateful for every submission and look forward to reading more. Next year we will present another twelve months of themed exhibitions and solo shows from new and established writers. We hope you can join us.
Thank you all.
Liam Wilkinson, October 2007
Editor: Liam Wilkinson
threelightsgallery@yahoo.co.uk
If you do not wish to receive future editions of this newsletter, please let us know. Reply to this email with the subject: UNSUBSCRIBE. We apologise for any inconvenience.
3LIGHTS | GALLERY
www.threelightsgallery.com
3LIGHTS Gallery is an online gallery of haiku and related, short form poetry, submitted by
new and established writers. It is edited and curated by Liam Wilkinson & Diane Sturch.
3LIGHTS is based in the North of England.
Too much spam? Try Yahoo! Mail and we'll help keep the junk out of your inbox.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Heron Sea Reviewed in Loch Raven Review
It's very hard to find places to review tanka books, so I'm very pleased that one of our regional journals, the Loch Raven Review has reviewed Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay. The really nice thing about a regional review is that they know the subject matter and appreciate its authenticity.
http://www.lochravenreview.net/2007Fall/george.html#2
http://www.lochravenreview.net/2007Fall/george.html#2
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Asking Passage
The new issue of Lynx is up. It contains a long sequence of mine, 'Asking Passage.' Print journals are chary of their space, so an online journal is an ideal venue for a long work like this.
The sequence is distilled from about 80 poems written on a hike through a vacant lot and field behind my apartment. All the poems were written on the spot -- even the dead deer poems. Is it morbid to crouch over the bones of a fawn writing poetry?
Above and beyond that, today was a banner day. I attended the meeting of the Haiku Poets of Central Maryland. The meeting was well attended with 10-12 people. Cathy Drinkwater Better gave us each a copy of the chapbook she printed up with the poems we had sent her. I got copies of Dreaming Room and Five Lines Down from Denis Garrison, and when I arrived home, Landfall was sitting on my doorstep! A couple of days ago, Yellow Moon 17-20 arrived. I have a stack of reading!
I am thoroughly enjoying Landfall. A sign of good poetry is that it sparks creativity in others. Landfall does. I have written a number of poems, which is slowing down my reading! Every few pages I stop and write some poems of my own.
As usual, I forgot to bring a poem to read and a poem to workshop at HPCM. I swiftly penned a poem to use:
ginger ale
autumn sparkling
in the glass
It was well received. A few people noticed me looking at my bottle of ginger ale and realized I wrote it on the spot. Apparently that is strange. I do that quite normally though. I learned to write poetry by speaking it as part of a conversation. Thus a person had to create an apt expression instantly or else the tide of conversation would pass him by.
~K~
The sequence is distilled from about 80 poems written on a hike through a vacant lot and field behind my apartment. All the poems were written on the spot -- even the dead deer poems. Is it morbid to crouch over the bones of a fawn writing poetry?
Above and beyond that, today was a banner day. I attended the meeting of the Haiku Poets of Central Maryland. The meeting was well attended with 10-12 people. Cathy Drinkwater Better gave us each a copy of the chapbook she printed up with the poems we had sent her. I got copies of Dreaming Room and Five Lines Down from Denis Garrison, and when I arrived home, Landfall was sitting on my doorstep! A couple of days ago, Yellow Moon 17-20 arrived. I have a stack of reading!
I am thoroughly enjoying Landfall. A sign of good poetry is that it sparks creativity in others. Landfall does. I have written a number of poems, which is slowing down my reading! Every few pages I stop and write some poems of my own.
As usual, I forgot to bring a poem to read and a poem to workshop at HPCM. I swiftly penned a poem to use:
ginger ale
autumn sparkling
in the glass
It was well received. A few people noticed me looking at my bottle of ginger ale and realized I wrote it on the spot. Apparently that is strange. I do that quite normally though. I learned to write poetry by speaking it as part of a conversation. Thus a person had to create an apt expression instantly or else the tide of conversation would pass him by.
~K~
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