pi & anne

Revisiting Jane Reichhold‘s take on tanka. I wish we’d go back to that, and even further, as we’re writing tanka in English, and the English language is rich in its own sense and doesn’t have to copy the way Japanese use their own language masterfully. —I feel stiffled.

I feel stiffled in the way that the first thing poets (haiku genre) say about my use of capitalisation and punctuation is that that’s no good to do in tanka. I disagree heavily. I believe these to be very powerful tools that offer nuance and emotional reading hints.

Not using the broad palette of the English language for tanka is mindboggling to me. Of course: it must be a conscious act. When I use proper punctuation, tanka is more accessible to the reader who doesn’t know anything about tanka/haiku—I like that, a lot!

The question is: what do I want the poem to achieve? For whom do I write? For fellow poets? Or for any human being who can speak English? Do I want tanka to be something we all could burst into uttering (and singing) on our way to the vet or after attending a funeral or cleaning the bathroom? Yes, I do. (And yes, I absolutely loved Buffy The Vampire Slayer bursting out into song in the musical episode Once More With Feeling.)

Tanka can be skillfully written in many ways. I have written tanka all in lower case and with hardly any punctuation, too. And they can be beautiful that way. Beauty can happen in so many ways, though.

Regarding the argument that punctuation or/and capitalisation in tanka distract and limit the ‘dreaming space’: the juxtaposition of images still creates tension and white space. Is it really the punctuation that distracts your mind from “dreaming”, or is it the breaking of conformity, of the ‘rule’, that draws your attention and by this making it impossible for you to think beyond it …?

I was able to find a ton of dreaming space in prose, and novels even.

The questions are: a) do we want to bend the English language to behave like the Japanese to imitate what it does just for the sake of imitation and getting close (and by the way, we’re ignoring how kireji, those small cutting words, work and how they offer nuance and perspective, even hints at time), b) do we really want different writing styles or are the rules never to be broken, whatsoever, and c) do we really want to know why the other poet chooses to write like they do or do we want to be in the position of lecturing how to do it ‘right’?

Curiosity is a wonderful force that leads to open communication and to learning of new perspectives, noticing that diversity in reading and writing styles does not mean one is better than the other. The style must be there for a reason, purposeful, in line with the written, its aim, and the poet.