What is a famous tanka?

Question

What is a famous tanka?

Answer 1

Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of Japanese poetry. Waka literally means Japanese poem in Japanese. The word was originally coined during the Heian period to differentiate native poetry from the kanshi ("Chinese poems") that all educated Japanese people were also familiar with.

Tanka

Tanka consists of five units (often treated as separate lines when Romanized or translated) usually with the following mora pattern:

5-7-5 / 7-7.

The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase"), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase").

Tanka is a much older form of Japanese poetry than haiku. In ancient times poems of this form were called hanka ("reverse poem"), since the 5-7-5-7-7 form derived from the conclusion (envoi) of a choka. Sometimes a choka had two envois.

The choka above is followed by an envoi; 銀も金も玉も何せむに勝れる宝子にしかめやも, also written by Okura.

銀も Shirogane mo    What are they to me,

金も玉も Kogane mo tama mo Silver, or gold, or jewels?

何せんに Nanisen ni    How could they ever

まされる宝 Masareru takara Equal the greater treasure

子にしかめやも Koni shikame yamo That is a child? They can not.

[English translation by Edwin Cranston]

Even in the late Asuka period, waka poets such as Kakinomoto Hitomaro made hanka as an independent work. It was suitable to express their private interest in life and expression, in comparison with choka, which was solemn enough to express serious and deep emotion when facing a significant event. The Heian period saw many tanka. In the early Heian Period (at the beginning of the 10th century), choka was seldom written and tanka became the main form of waka. Since then, the generic term waka became almost identical with tanka. The Heian period also saw the invention of a new tanka-based game: One poet recited or created half of a tanka, and the other finished it off. This sequential, collaborative tanka was called renga ("linked poem"). (The form and rules of renga developed further during medieval times; see the renga article for more details.)When a person sends a 'haiku' to a friend, it is a custom to send back a tanka.

Miki Rofu (1889-1964), for example,  wrote "Furusato no" a poem that became famous because it was set to music in lines that alternate 5 and 7 syllables:

Furusato no

     ono no kodachi ni

fue no ne no

    urumu tsukiyo ya.

In her village

    in a stand of trees by a field

a flute's sound

    blurs in the moonlit night.

Answer 2

wallcovering

Map of the World too large

for the space

we trim off everything

south of the Sandwiches

    -- Yvonne Hardenbrook

painting the toenails

of her right foot

my wife in black bikini

beyond her, curved shadows

of white herons

           -- Lenard D. Moore

The night is long

A tavern just off the road

With only one car,

But the man and woman hug

To the song on the jukebox

        --  Lenard D. Moore

in the check-out line

a worn face ahead of me

turns tentatively. . .

realities of desire

fade in final reckoning

     -- George Knox