Keibooks Announces January, A Tanka Diary, by M. Kei

Keibooks Announces January, A Tanka Diary, by M. Kei

Press Release – For Immediate Release – Please post to all appropriate venues

28 September 2013– Perryville, Maryland, USA

"Step inside this book and meet a magician—a man who knows the secrets of the sea and the land and the sky; a man who can catch the vastness of oceans and the smallness of sparrows in the same few words in five lines."—Joy McCall

Opening with the cold days of January and following the poet through a year of his life, January, A Tanka Diary, is the latest collection from the internationally respected tanka poet and editor, M. Kei. Melancholy, hopeful, or satiric, these are poems alive to the beauty of the world. He has the ability to capture subjects as small as a single snowflake or as big as history, all told with an intimate honesty. In Kei's hands, the ancient five line tanka poem breathes with contemporary life. 

Each tanka appears in the order in which it was written with a date attached. We can see the poet sitting down to write on New Year’s Day, and the multitude of poems and subjects that flow from his pen. We can follow him as he hikes and writes tanka over the bones of a dead deer, and as he explores the mysteries of the natural world. Of course, we follow him to sea in the company of sailboats and pelicans. 

A large collection, January, A Tanka Diary, contains 640 poems of which more than 220 have never been seen before. The rest are collected from the scores of venues in which he has published around the world. Fans of his work will no doubt recognize some of their favorite tanka, but will see them as they were written in the company of other poems from the same date. The author of Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, shows us that he is as sensitive to life ashore as at sea.

somewhere 

in the darkness

inside my heart

the lights of a distant city

are burning

empty

but still attached, 

two clamshells

something like

a husband and wife

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

Comments from Sanford Goldstein, author of Journeys Far and Near:

“In the past sixty-five years I cannot remember a tanka collection as long as M. Kei’s January, A Tanka Diary. The collection contains 640 tanka, 420 published not in his previous collections, but in journals and other places, and 220 new poems. It is a fascinating voyage of discovery of a Kei we have not known this well. The book starts from January 1, 2007, to the next January 1. It surprised me that Kei is so interested in flowers, birds, grass, clouds, sky—of course with his duty aboard floating vessels he is intimate with the ocean. The subjects vary of course, but what I found particularly fascinating is that the two final lines of the tanka bring a surprise and hold up the entire poem. 

“I have no room to cite individual poems, but one that appeals to me is a laundry day in which Kei’s larger underwear is drying outside with his son’s much smaller underwear. Another poem is about his daughter—Kei has come home, opens the refrigerator door to find the chicken inside had been plucked, so he knows his daughter had visited him. Poems of a sexual nature occur, one of which I once criticized as not being in the right order for a sequence. 

“Such an enormous undertaking cannot be read at a sitting. Take your time in reading it. On a second reading I discovered elements I had not thought of. Yes, do read it and experience a new tanka view of Kei’s world.”

Comments from Joy McCall, author of circling smoke, scattered bones:

“Step inside this book and meet a magician—a man who knows the secrets of the sea and the land and the sky; a man who can catch the vastness of oceans and the smallness of sparrows in the same few words in five lines. M. Kei blazes a trail. This is a big beautiful gathering, to keep forever.

“There is great sadness in these poems. There is deep longing. There is humour, too. He makes me smile. There are insights which surprise. There are poems of great beauty that catch the breath. There are everyday poems which remind us we are all human.

“This book will be going with me everywhere I go. I love every poem in it.  But if I have to pick a favourite, it's this one: 

it's a day like any other,

full of melancholy

pessimism,

and yet—somewhere

there are herons

“Some things are beyond my words. If you buy nothing else this year, not even food, buy this book.”

January, A Tanka Diary

ISBN 978-0615871561 (Print) 275 pp

also available for Kindle

$18.00 USD (print) or $5.00 USD (Kindle)

Purchase in print at: https://www.createspace.com/4407330

Also available in print and ebook at Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Keibooks

P O Box 516

Perryville, MD 21903 USA

<AtlasPoetica.org>

Fire Pearls 2 is #1 in Hot New Releases in Poetry Anthologies at Amazon

Thank you all! Fire Pearls 2 is rated #1 Hot New Releases in Poetry Anthologies at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases/books/10250/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsnr

Fire Pearls 2 : Short Masterpieces of Love and Passion is a worthy successor to the classic of contemporary tanka poetry. Covering all aspects of love and passion from the delights of first love to the agony of abortion, over 90 poets featured in 750 poems present every aspect of the human heart from the romantic to the desperate. Edited and with an introduction by the well-known poet and editor, M. Kei, Fire Pearls 2 is an essential acquisition for lovers of fine literature.

Print for sale at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Pearls-Short-Masterpieces-Passion/dp/1489595023/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371759885&sr=1-7&keywords=M.+Kei

Kindle for Sale at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DHM0PUS

Tanka in English at Goodreads

I have finished adding a number of tanka books to Goodreads and updating the covers and other details of listings that existed. You can view the list of Tanka in English at: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5279.Tanka_Poetry_in_English You can add your own favorite Tanka books in English (note there's a separate list for translations from the Japanese), and vote for your favorites.

Twitter Special Focus for Atlas Poetica 9

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place, issue 9, Summer, 2011, will be focussing on Twitter. It's been two years (can it really be so long?) since we did our first focus on Twitter. Twitter continues to grow as a micropoetry community with poets publishing tanka, kyoka, and gogyohka via Twitter. There are several Twitter microjournals such as microcosms and 7x20, as well as archives, such as the Dragonfly Archives (now closed), and Jars of Stars.

For ATPO 9 we will relax our rule requiring first English language rights to accept tanka, kyoka, and gogyohka that have been tweeted and not published in regular or tanka journals. We wish to focus attention on Twitter poets, as encourage and support Twitter poets to submit to the regular tanka journals. Twitter is the single largest publisher of tanka, kyoka, and gogyohka in English, publishing approximately two thousand a year. That's as large as Modern English Tanka, the journal that is now defunct, and larger that Atlas Poetica (we published approximately fifteen hundred tanka, kyoka, and gogyoka a year). Atlas Poetica is the most voluminous publisher of tanka, publishing more tanka per year than any other journal in print or on the web.

As a consequence, Twitter is a major force for introducing tanka to readers and writers, and the workshopping and fellowshipping that occurs on Twitter spurs literary development and appreciation. However, the succinct nature of the forum also means that in depth discussions and analysis are very difficult. Since anyone can publish anything, it is an excellent opportunity for novices to try their hand and receive feedback, but it's also an overwhelming and confusing means of reading tanka if one wishes to be a serious reader. Twitter publishes fifteen hundred micropoems a day. Trying to sort out the tanka, kyoka, and gogyohka from that flood requires time and patience, and means that in spite of the efforts of curators and archivists, a complete record of tanka on Twitter is impossible to achieve.

Atlas Poetica hopes to introduce readers to Twitter poets who deserve their attention, and to provide information and a list of resources for the reader who wishes to dip into the fecund stream of micropoetry published on Twitter. We also hope to encourage Twitter poets to submit their poetry for publication in print and online journals and anthologies so that it will be more durable and accessible.

The reading window for ATPO 9 is March 15 – April 30, 2011. It publishes in July. Complete guidelines, free back issues, and free Special Features are available at: AtlasPoetica.org

Catzilla! Cat Tanka Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions

Catzilla!

Cat Tanka & Kyoka

Catzilla! Cat Tanka & Kyoka is an anthology on the theme of cats edited by M. Kei. It will be published in the fall of 2010. The anthology will feature tanka, waka, kyoka, tanka sequences, tanka prose, tanka acrostics, shaped tanka, extended tanka, and any other creative use of tanka, waka, and kyoka in homage and affection to the felines we have known.

READING PERIOD: April 1, 2010 - June 30, 2010.

SUBMISSION ADDRESS: Keibooks (at) gmail (dot) com

Please do not subscribe this email address to any list, forwards, invitations, or any other item.

TOPIC: They say a genre of poetry has arrived when it produces its first anthology of cat poems. While most cat poems have been long on cute and short on depth, Catzilla! (in spite of its humorous title) seeks works that have significant literary value as well as feline appeal. Cats have been objects of worship or fearful demons, lifelong companions or feral strays skirting the edge of human life for thousands of years. They endlessly fascinate, amuse, and frustrate their human friends (and enemies!), so it is only right that they should have a tanka anthology to call their own.

POETS: Poets are invited to submit up to thirty tanka, kyoka, or waka for consideration for Catzilla! Both new and previously published works are acceptable. Previously published works must show credits including title of the book or journal or other source, city and name of publisher, and the date. Appearing in Catzilla! must not violate any other previously existing rights and the poet’s submission will be taken as certification that they are the holder of the copyright or the lawful representative of the copyright holder.

No simultaneous submissions.

FORM: We are seeking tanka and tanka-variations, loosely defined. Tanka, kyoka and waka are short poems composed of five poetic phrases. Classic Japanese tanka were written in a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, but English-language tanka are less regular. We will accept any variation of tanka, waka, and kyoka. Each five line poem MUST stand on its own merits. When submitting longer works such as sequences or shaped tanka, each tanka must be autonomous; it must make a coherent statement on its own. We prefer untitled poems. Brief footnotes are acceptable when necessary to translate an unfamiliar term or concept.

INTERNATIONAL: We welcome international submissions that include English translations. Correspondence for the anthology will be in English, although we can read Spanish and French and some other languages for queries.

PAYMENT: We regret that the only payment for inclusion in this anthology is publication.

RIGHTS: We require digital and print world anthology rights. This gives us the right to publish a book and an electronic version of the book. It also grants us the right to use the accepted poems as part of promotional materials for the anthology. All other rights remain with the author.

EXCLUSIONARY CLAUSE: In the event of previously unpublished works, we acquire the right of first publication and the author agrees to not submit the works for consideration elsewhere or to publish the works until 90 days after Catzilla appears. After 90 days the author is free to submit or publish wherever they wish, provided subsequent publications credit Catzilla!

MANUSCRIPTS: We prefer to receive email submissions. Please use a large, plain font. NO ATTACHMENTS. All email submissions must be sent as plain text in the body of the email. Please set your spam filters/permission levels to allow our response. If we cannot contact you, your poems will automatically be rejected!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: We strongly recommend joining Keibooks-Announce (at) googlegroups (dot) com to receive updates about the project. This is an announcement-only list that generates no more than 0-4 emails per month.

CONTACT INFO: All submissions must include legal name, pen name (if any), postal address, telephone number and email address. Translators and agents must include a statement indicating that they are authorized to act on behalf of the author(s). In the event of multi-author submissions, the contacting author must include a statement that they are authorized to act on behalf of the other participating author(s). It will be the responsibility of the contacting party to keep the author(s) s/he represents up to date on relevant details of the submission and anthology.

AGE: All contributors must be sixteen years of age or older to comply with privacy laws in the United States.

BIOGRAPHY: No author biographies will be included. Authors should include their country of origin when submitting; this material may be included or omitted at the publishers' sole discretion.

RESPONSE TIME: Rejections will generally be within four weeks. Acceptances may take longer.

PURCHASE: Catzilla! will be available through Lulu.com and major online booksellers. It will be printed in the United States of America. Due to circumstances beyond our control, international buyers may receive better service through Amazon.com or other major online bookstores. Catzilla! will be available as an e-book as well as trade paperback.

Prune Juice

Friend and Colleague, Alexis Rotella, has established a new journal, entitled Prune Juice, to publish senryu and kyoka. This journal will be published twice a year by Modern English Tanka Press. Submissions are now open for humorous, satirical, and witty poetry. Read the full submission guidelines at the home page.

Good luck,
Alexis~

Review: A Chorus of Birds

Utamaro: A Chorus of Birds. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Akamatsu no Kinkei, ed. Kitagawa Utamaro, illus. James T. Kenny, trans. New York: Viking Press, 1981 [Tokyo, 1790]. Accordion fold art book, color interiors, unpaginated.

A Chorus of Birds is the only book of kyoka (humorous tanka) to be translated into English, which makes it of interest just because it is the only book of kyoka accessible to English speakers, but above and beyond that, the book features beautiful illustrations by Utamaro, one of Japan’s most famous woodblock artists. Most famous for his bijin (beautiful women) pictures, Utamaro shows himself to be a master of the natural world. The birds are highly accurate, enabling their species to be identified. Latin, Japanese, and English names for the birds are included in the caption descriptions.

The book is one of many special editions that were ordered by kyoka circles active in the 18th and 19th centuries. Kyoka, ‘mad verse’ or ‘comic tanka’ were present as early as the 8th century and appear in the Man’yoshu; the first kyoka collection, Hyakushu kyoka, (Kyoka on one hundred brands of drinks) was edited by a priest named Gyogetsubo who lived 1265-1328 AD. His book features kyoka parodies of famous literature as kinds of drinks.

By the early 18th century, kyoka was popular in the region around Kyoto and Osaka, then spread to Edo. It branched off and became its own independent genre during this period and was immensely popular; a key element of its appeal was that it did not conform to the restrictions on language and content that applied to waka. Thus any educated person could compose and appreciate kyoka whereas waka was confined to a rarified atmosphere of those families who were skilled in understanding the archaic language and intricate rules that dominated waka of the time.

Arguably, much of our modern English-language tanka with its emphasis on colloquial language and ordinary life is kyoka rather than tanka. It is no surprise that kyoka nearly died out in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when tanka poets threw off the restrictions of the old waka and began writing more direct and personal tanka in ordinary language. Surely the immensely popular kyoka must have shaped the thinking of Japanese poets who reformed tanka, but the influence of kyoka has never been explored in English.

Generally speaking, kyoka in English is understood to be ‘humorous tanka.’ It frequently parodies tanka and has therefore been conceived of as a kind of ‘anti-tanka,’ an erudite game that could be played only by people well versed in tanka itself. Yet the kyoka of A Chorus of Birds belie that. Humor is present, and parody, but many of the verses are so gently romantic that the English reader would be hard-pressed to explain how they differ from what he understands tanka to be.

Yamadori no
Horo horo namida
Sekiwabinu
Iku yo kagami no
Kage mo miseneba

The copper-headed pheasant
Cries and cries
And sheds tear to no end;
For too many nights
Have you stayed away.
--Miyanaka no Tsukinaro

The poem above with its natural image and subjective response giving voice to a romantic plaint is a staple of the tanka genre. What makes this poem kyoka instead of tanka is that it was written in the colloquial language of the day by a person who was most likely a commoner or low ranking samurai, and not in the rarified literary language by a courtier or government official.

Other poems in evince the humorous parody which is the hallmark of kyoka. Consider the following verse:

Na ni tachite
Koi ni ya kuchin
Kitsutsuki no
Tsukikudakaruru
Hito no kuchibashi

True to his name,
The woodpecker
Pecks and pecks away,
Never stopping to listen
to what people are saying.
--Shino no Tamaoke


This parody works on two levels. First, there is the commentary on human nature -- which of us hasn’t encountered a person who resembles the woodpecker of the poem? Ostensibly a bird poem, it is really a commentary on a human foible of the sort well-loved in senryu, the other genre that was immensely popular at the same time as kyoka. The other level of parody is a literary one. The natural image sets up an expectation of the usual romanticized and idealized emotional response, but instead delivers a frank criticism of an unattractive human trait. The expectations of the tanka form have been simultaneously adhered to yet violated, making this poem delightfully fresh.

Kyoka also ventured into territory that was a little risque compared to the restraints of waka. The poem below has a titillating quality that would have been considered vulgar and unacceptable in courtly waka.

Noki chikaku
Fufu to tsuguru
Hitokoe wa
Waga koinaka o
Mita ka uguisu

Near the eaves
I hear the warbler
Sing a song of envy:
He must be watching us
My lover and me.
--Nori no Suiyu

Malice, too, animates some of these verses, again, on a romantic theme.

Taka naraba
Ukina no hoka ni
Hatto tatsu
Kotori mo ono ga
E ni shinarubeki

If I were
A hawk,
I would make a meal
Of the little birds
Spreading rumors.
--Akamatsu no Kinkei

All in all, the poems are enjoyable, the illustrations beautiful, and the prefaces and notes useful. A Chorus of Birds can be found through various secondhand book dealers at reasonable prices. It is an excellent addition to your tanka library.

~K~

M. Kei

Occasional Kyoka - Call for Submissions

From Kyoka Mad Poems

Okay, folks. I've been thinking about this kyoka, and I don't have the space, time or energy to edit a journal, so I have decided to try a small experiment. I have a blog: where I ramble and rant on things poetic and boats. I have decided to try a feature called 'Occasional Kyoka' in which I publish kyoka submissions from others from time to time. There is no fame or glory here, but maybe down the line I'll be able to do another kyoka feature somewhere.

If you'd like to participate in Occasional Kyoka, send me up to ten kyoka for consideration. There is no deadline; I'll be putting up the post when I have the time/urge/enough poetry. Preferably before or during the Christmas break (hey, kyoka is a good stress relief, right). So don't worry about 'the best kyoka,' just something that made you laugh. *I* can use some stress relief right now myself!

You can share this with your friends if you like, but please don't propagate it to other mailing lists since it's not a formal journal. It's just a chance for us to mess about with our poetry a little more and maybe put some of it into an orderly presentation.

~K~

Bibliography of Books Containing Tanka in English

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~K~

Modern English Tanka

Modern English Tanka , the new print and web journal from Denis M. Garrison, has posted my article, '11 Good Kyoka: Experiments in English.' I am curious to see the reactions. In addition, the MET has also published 18 of my tanka and kyoka, which is very gratifying.

Here are just two of the poems from that selection. If you want to read them all, follow the link to the MET.

the dowager houses
stand primly in their ragged porches
looking embarrassed
as ladies do
in such circumstances

~M. Kei

'Dowager houses' was written on a trip to Port Deposit, Maryland. I've shown the poem to some people around here and who know the town and they recognized the truthfulness of the picture. The phrase 'dowager house' really does describe these grand old dames fallen on hard times.


Give me the heart
of an old chief
and I’ll make it
young again,
dancing on the Red Road.

~M. Kei


'Give me the heart of an old chief' was written while remembering when I learned how to do Sneak Up Dance from an extremely fine sneak up dancer. It was a hot afternoon at the Assateague powwow and hardly anybody was around, just me and the headman dancer. He called for a sneak up dance and I had to admit that I had never done it. He looked at me and said, "You're dressed right," and, "Just follow along with me." (I was dressed as a men's traditional dancer, as usual. No fancydancing for these creaky old bones!) There was a boy there who was nervous because it was his first time dancing in the arena, and so, with the wisdom born of thirty seconds greater knowledge than his, assured him, "Just follow the headman dancer and do what he does." And then a Dog Soldier arrived, and admitted he didn't know how to do a sneak up dance, either. Feeling quite the experienced old man at this point, I assured him as well, "Just do what Charlie does."

With that inauspicious beginning, the drum began to play. The basic step is the same: it's the Indian Two Step which is the foundation of most traditional dancese. It varies with bending low as the hunter pantomimes cutting for sign, then short runs as he pursues his quarry, then upright dancing as he lifts his dance staff to Heaven and whoops his thanks to Creator above for success. Usually every dancer does his own thing, acting out his personal story, and in competitions, are judged individually. We all follow Charlie, and swiftly a rapport grew amongst us. Charlie was our chieftain and we his hunting party, following his leadership, fanning out to search the ground, but working together. The synergy was incredible.

And suddenly... old men who had been sluggish in the heat and humidity suddenly popped upright and leaped into the arena to follow Charlie Running Eagle. At least a dozen of us formed his hunting party, each doing his own part as part of the larger whole. The veil of time parted and we were dancing with all the Native men of the past and future who have ever followed or ever would follow the hunting trail.

And so this poem about dancing the hearts of old chiefs, it is a song about the goodness of the Red Road -- the road of tradition and righteousness. It runs from north to south, and it brings all good things. The elders say that if a man has a wicked thing in his heart and he dances, the wicked thing cannot stay but is cleaned from his body. Therefore, a man who makes a habit of dancing cannot have any evil in him. A man who refuses to dance is therefore viewed with suspicion. Dancing cures everything that ails a man.

Tanka Tanka Tanka

Great news! Denis M. Garrison, best known as the editor of Haiku Harvest, is taking on more projects. The man can't stay retired, enit? Anyhow, he has established Tanka Central to be a clearinghouse of information about tanka, waka, kyoka, and related forms. Tanka Central has a library, links to tanka resources and organizations, bibliographies, email lists, and more.

At my suggestion, he has also started the Tanka Roundtable email list for the discussion of tanka, its history, present, and future, prosody, and anything else. Not primarily a workshop list, its for scholars as well as poets.

He has also changed his plans for 3x5 Poetry Review and decided to concentrate entirely on tanka, and has renamed his new journal Modern English Tanka. My article '11 Good Kyoka' will be appearing in the initial issue, which will be out in July. He is also accepting submissions of 1 - 40 (yes, FORTY) tanka and related forms, and will published up to 40 poems by one poet in the journal. He believes in giving the poet space to present his voice, vision, and variety. Modern English Tanka will have both online and print versions.

This is very good news for tanka poets. Best of luck to Denis!

Kyoka vs. Tanka - Examples

Previously I spent a lot of time on 'waka'. Waka are 'tanka', tanka means nothing more than 'short song.' Waka literally means 'Japanese song,' and was originally applied to all forms of poetry written in Japanese, as opposed to Chinese, the other popular language for intellectuels and aristocrats. By the late 19th century waka had become so calcified that it was a living fossil. Masaoka Shiki, fresh from his crusade to reform haiku, launched a reform movement for waka as well. He and other reformers changed the name to 'tanka' to make a complete break with the past. The revitalized genre permitted all kinds of subjects and language that had previously been forbidden. As a consequence, much of what had been kyoka got absorbed into tanka and kyoka died instead of waka/tanka.

This same liberation has not reached North America. As the article on kyoka made clear, English-language kyoka, especially that produced in North American, is characterized by a restriction of subject, language, mood, and techniques that is almost as stifling as what nearly killed waka. By contrast, tanka published in the United Kingom will address topics such as war and lust, which makes for a broader range. Unfortunately, rumors are floating that Tangled Hair, the noteworthy UK journal, may be closing. Always plagued with an irregular schedule, this would not be a surprise.

North American tanka enthusiasts do not take kindly to being told their poetry is stilted and boring and insist that tanka in English is a richly diverse field. If that's so, name me three non-white North American tanka poets who aren't Japanese.

I'll go get a Coke while you think. This may take a while.

And the answer is.... Aside from me, I have no idea. The non-white tanka poets I can think of are living in India, the Philippines, and the Middle East. They participate in international email forums. On the other hand, many tanka poets do not provide racial or ethnic information in their biographies so for all I know, maybe half of all tankateers are not white. But, at the same time, all the photos I've seen of tanka poets look white. Including mine.

I'm a light-skinned person of mixed Native American and European descent. My mother had five kids and a husband so white he pratically glowed... My brothers and sisters are all dark-haired, I'm the odd one with light brown hair. Genetics are a crap shoot. I lost.

I've taken a stab at writing Native American themed tanka. The results are unlikely to be published in any tanka journal anywhere in the world. The following is taken from a Blackfeet Indian legend:


Severed Leg the Moon
pursues the sun and humans
across the sky,
lurching on the one leg they left her,
she plots her revenge.
~M. Kei

Nooooo. I don't see that in the next issue of Simply Haiku. Editor-in-chief Robert Wilson is quite clear about publishing 'Japanese poetry in English.' It's his magazine, he can do what he wants with it. That's the editor's right. And Simply Haiku is a fine magazine. I'm glad it exists. But this is definitely not SH material.

Is the above poem unworthy of the name of 'poem?' That's a matter of taste, but it's certainly a properly formed poem, with strikingly original images, and it engages the attention. Is it tanka? ...... It partakes of natural imagery, 'the moon' is about as mainstream a motif as you can get with tanka. It deals with human emotion; I feel plenty of emotion in the anger of the betrayed and wounded Moon Woman. But it treats of revenge and violence which is taboo in tanka in English. The modern Japanese could write about vengeful woman, but the usual vengeful American woman in tanka is a) rare, and b) usually limits herself to scrawling 'goodbye' in lipstick on a convenient flat surface.

Let's agree that it isn't tanka. It looks like tanka, but it's way outside the North American ouevre. If it looks like tanka, treats of tanka themes, and violates taboos.... it's KYOKA!

Let's try another one. I know, cats! Cats are cute, cuddly and furry! They're fun to pet and they're very popular. People love their cats with big gooshy kisses and think they're just so cute and adorable, they just have to be part of the sweet and friendly genre of North American tanka!


busy
licking his balls,
the cat
pays no attention
to the etiquette debate
~M. Kei

Well... maybe not...

This is another one of the duties of kyoka: to point out muzzy-headed thinking, unexamined assumptions, and ill-conceived ideas. My cat is completely truthful, humorous, cute, and a satire on social niceties and poetic assumptions. Go, cat, go!

I started writing kyoka by accident. The earliest one in my journals dates from 2000, which is when I started writing any poetry worth actually writing down. I didn't know it was called 'kyoka', I didn't learn that an entire genre of this stuff existed and that it actually had a name until the spring of 2006. But the urge to parody poets is as old as poetry itself.


If I sit here
listening to your poetry
very much longer
I will be wrinkled
like an old woman!
~M. Kei

Exercise caution around amateur poets because listening to bad poetry is proven to shorten life expectancy and may lead to murder-suicide.

Kyoka doesn't have to be satire though. Outright silliness is also within the genre. The following kyoka was written when I discovered the senryu of Alan Pizzarelli. Pizzarelli is a fine poet and is the first name that will spring to anyone's lips if you whisper the words 'good senryu poet.' I like this stuff. I do. But I just couldn't get past the name... Admit it, you're thinking what I'm thinking! Alan is probably thinking it too, which would explain why he became a senryu poet.


Pizzarelli,
your name is a deli,
so I fill my belly
in Canyon de Chelley
with your Pizzarelli!
~M. Kei

Don't tell Alan I said this!

It's never ever going to be published in a tanka magazine. It's juvenile and far from art. And tanka's not supposed to rhyme. Never ever! Fortunately, kyoka accommodates the juvenile, the tasteless, and yes, even rhyme. Kyoka of this nature is the Japanese equivalent of the limerick. Just don't make a habit of it, okay? It'll be our little secret.

By this point I hope I have convinced you that kyoka provides a kind of escape valve to that allows 'serious tanka poets' let their hair down and have a little fun. We're all human, we think outside the social prescribed norms. But does kyoka have to be funny? I submit that it does not. Satire can be very dark indeed.


two boiling kettles
of vultures,
one black, one turkey,
and a third of
oblivious tourists
~M. Kei

I like vultures. They're big handsome birds and we have a lot of them around here. City slickers frequently mistake them for eagles and admire them. They feel cheated when they find out it's an ugly old vulture. The difference between the two is not that great. Eagles pick carrion too. I almost hit a golden eagle one day. I came around the bend of a country road and he was picking carrion. He flew up with wings as big as my windshield. Impressive! But vultures are that big too. So why the prejudice against vultures? Every single vulture poem I've written has been rejected by the people who read it as "yuck! vultures are icky!"

When poets don't like something because of the content rather than the form or the treatment, it tells us that said subject is taboo. Tanka is often construed as nature poetry, and vultures are part of nature, but vultures are ruled out. They're gross. Episodes like this put the lie to the fantasy that tanka has no barriers. A great many tanka poets and editors cling to this illusion and aren't going to like me saying they're wrong. But that's kyoka's job: smashing the rose colored glasses.

Fortunately, we can write kyoka about farting, vultures, and George Bush's underwear. There are no limits. Not even the bounds of good taste. Some people might think that's a bad thing, but it's called 'freedom of expression.' If you want to say what you want, you have to let other people say what they want, if you you don't like it. You'd think kyoka would be popular in a democratic society.


if i had been
a smaller, prettier child,
quieter, more obedient,
and less stubborn,
would my father have loved me?
~M. Kei

Kyoka don't have to be tasteless or funny. They don't have to be satire. The great virtue of kyoka is that they give voice to what cannot be voiced in tanka as it currently stands in the English langauge.

I hope kyoka amuse you. I hope they shock you. I hope they hurt you. I hope they open your tanka so that you too will be able to express yourself with all the aching joy of being human.

Kyoka

Kyoka is typically glossed in English as 'humorous tanka.' This is not precisely the case. It would be more accurate to say that kyoka is 'anti-tanka,' earliest kyoka going back to the medieval period are parodies on famous works of literature. Literary parodies, social satire, and comic, even vulgar, verse are all part of kyoka. Every form of humor, including forms that are not considered 'humor' in English are part of the genre, eg, social protest.

It's hard for a person who doesn't read Japanese to know anything about kyoka because very little has been translated into English and even fewer have been written. At the time of this writing I know of only one poem that has appeared in print labeled as 'kyoka,' Johanson's kyoka about a black cat named 'insomnia.' It appeared in Moonset, journal 2, issue 1, Spring, 2006. When I queried Johansson about it he told me that he did not submit it as kyoka; it was the editor, an'ya, who labeled it that. Kudos to an'ya for having the courage to do so! Moonset is an inexpensively produced journal but contains quality poetry. A unique facet of the journal is that an'ya provides commentary on each poem and explains why she chose it. While some pooh-pooh this in the belief that they are perfectly capable of reading the poem and understanding it on their own, I welcome it. We need more people talking, thinking and writing about poetry.

In addition to that one poem, two poems were published in The Tanka Anthology McClintock, Kacian, and Ness, editors, which were labeled 'kyoka style.' McClintock and I have had extensive emailed discussions about kyoka; McClintock sees it as a subset of tanka and doesn't feel any need to separate it out and give it its own label. Ironically, he rejected a poem I submitted to his Tanka Cafe column in Ribbons because it was kyoka, not tanka, and Tanka Cafe is about tanka. As long as we gloss 'kyoka' as nothing but 'humorous tanka' it is possible to see kyoka as a subset of tanka, but once we start writing and labeling things as kyoka which are clearly not tanka, the difference between the two begins to emerge.

I started the Kyoka Mad Poems email list at Googlegroups (see links to the right) to explore kyoka. I did this because I felt that tanka written in English, as a genre, was suffering severe limitations. Recent events have only served to strengthen my feeling, stay tuned for a rant on that topic somewhere in the near future. But for now, let me simply say that mainstream English-language tanka is extremely mannered stuff.

The form, which I have dubbed 'American Mannerism,' is very simple: first half: a natural image, second half, an emotional situation. If you're very creative and clever, you can put the emotional situation first and THEN the natural image. Wow! What excitment. (Close-captioned for the sarcasm impaired.) Diction is often stilted and unnatural and suffers from haikuism, which is to say, the inappropriate application of haiku concepts to tanka. Some tankateers go so far as to insist on a pivot or zeugma in the third or fourth line and many consciously imitate the waka of a thousand years ago. I did this myself... and examples are present in this blog to show it. Imitating the masters is an excellent way to learn the form. But once you learn it, MOVE ON. Find your own voice! Quit writing imitation Japanese waka!

American tanka moved on. Or, to quote Ghostbusters "You forget, I was present an unexplained mass migration of sea sponges!" "Oh c'mon, the sea sponges migrated about a foot!" Now we have American Mannerism, which is medeival Japanese tanka in a coonskin cap, except, not as good. The Japanese may have limited their form, but they didn't limit their imagination. At least, not during the period which the imitaters justly admire. Stagnation set in after Teika.

So what does this have to do with kyoka? Kyoka provides an alternative to mannered tankaism. Kyoka is anti-tanka. It is parody and satire. It makes fun of stuffy old tanka and offers new subjects and new approaches. It's about as popular among tankateers and haikuists as body odor at a beauty pageant, which means those few souls who are consciously trying it out feel rather self-conscious and are trying to fit it into their concept of the tanka tradition. Kyoka Mad Poems has seen a lot of genteel humor and vulgarities and attempts at 'tanka noir.'

Nonetheless, humor is under-represented in English-language tanka, and those poets participating in the lists have felt free to experiment with kyoka in a way that they wouldn't with tanka. They enjoy it, too. Freedom and creativity are fun! Even if kyoka never catches on as an English-language genre it will have been worthwhile if it opens tankateers to new ideas, new approaches, and new subjects. The question is: Will anybody publish it? There are precious few venues that publish tanka as it is, and conservatism being what it is, it is to be expected that most won't welcome this new development. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the new 3 x 5 Poetry Review <3x5poetry.com> will be a good venue for kyoka. Editor Denis M. Garrison is certainly one of the most open-minded of the Japaniform editors, and is friendly to kyoka -- he will be publishing my upcoming article, "11 Good Kyoka," there. Here's hoping for good buzz from that.

Tanka readership is a small part of the haiku readership. Tanka is almost always subsumed as an adjunct to haiku, as the footnote to the much more popular genre of haiku. This is sad because as much as I have criticized the current state of tanka, I like the stuff. Even the excessively mannered works are well written, pleasant, and enjoyable poetry. I don't mind reading such stuff, I just hate to see it held up as the standard to which we should all aspire. There are a number of tanka poets who write very good stuff and I'm positive that if somehow their work could be put before a wider audience, a lot of people would become tanka fans. However, that requires more editors to publish more of the stuff, more journals and anthologies to accept it, and more poets to write it. This post is a cattle prod to get things moving in that direction.