Prose, Tanka Tradition: An Interview with Jeffrey Woodward

Claire Everett

Jeffrey Woodward currently edits Tanka, from the eighth century Haibun Today and formerly edited Modern Manyōshū until this day, have often been Haibun & Tanka Prose. His poems and elicited by other tanka. Your poem, Claire, essays appear widely in periodicals in is an invitation to others to respond. This North America, Europe and Asia. A dialogue in verse can engage two collection of his Western and Eastern contemporaries or it can reach back in poems, In Passing, was published in 2007. time and link today’s poet with one long He edited The Tanka Prose Anthology in dead. My tanka that you’ve so kindly 2008. quoted is an example of the latter conversation; it is, in fact, a variation upon Jeffrey, as a preface to our interview, I Semimaru’s poem, preserved as #10 in the want to mention how, in the inaugural thirteenth century anthology Ogura issue of Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose Hyakunin Isshu (100 Poems 100 Poets): (Summer 2009), you described, in your editorial, how writers and readers of coming from mixed prose and verse genres often find or going to themselves at a crossroads where they the capital might feel inclined to reflect the road friends and strangers that led there and the many possible meet and part routes that lie ahead. I am hoping this interview will provide an opportunity for Semimaru’s theme is one of universal you to assist us in doing just that. It also mutability or transience. Acquaintances struck me that the following tanka and strangers alike, on their way to or from excerpted from your own tanka prose the capital, meet only to part. I am here piece ‘A Record of Semimaru’ seems today and gone tomorrow. That all is in particularly pertinent: flux is Semimaru’s existential certainty; one might say, in fact, that change is his one comes now one goes capital. I felt a particular kinship with this one is known and one is not tanka and with its depiction of the material all are travelers here absence of any reliable or permanent merely passersby who part center. The stability of Semimaru’s capital, on the road to the capital 1 in the end, is illusory and, in that respect,

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 61 shares the dubious character of our vain In its rudimentary form, tanka prose and bustling modern ones. served as a contextual frame for the accompanying , taking the form of a As editor of Haibun Today, you are preface (kotobagaki) or poem tale (uta doing much to promote the reading and ). In The Tanka Prose Anthology practice of tanka prose. With journals such (Modern English Tanka Press, 2008), you as Lynx and Atlas Poetica publishing tanka describe the prose of this stage in the prose, more and more readers and writers history of as being are being drawn to the “adventure and “rarely more than a handmaiden to the promise of a new world.” Jeffrey, could you poem.”2 Perhaps you could elaborate on begin by telling us how and when you first this and explain how these prose became interested in tanka prose? accompaniments evolved over time?

I was drawn to tanka prose initially as a A description of early prefaces and a practical matter. I wrote haibun and, in poem tales as humble framing devices for my efforts to press the prose half of that tanka is a fair generalization, Claire. equation closer to poetry and farther from Sophisticated exceptions to that rule, journalism, I felt in longer compositions nonetheless, can be read in the eighth that the sketchy, fragmentary nature of century Manyōshū. was a liability. I wrote tanka also. Many prefaces or kotobagaki are Tanka, in my view, has greater definition entirely functional and limited to a cursory than haiku as a form; it was logical, if not description of the tanka’s occasion or inevitable, to turn there for a solution. topic. Look at the Kokinshū,3 for example, My interest in tanka prose as a reader where the occasion of tanka 325’s precedes this affinity for tanka as a composition is perfunctorily recorded as practising poet. I’d studied examples of “Composed while stopping for the night Japanese tanka prose, particularly from the on a journey to the Nara capital” while , on various occasions in the tanka 257’s occasion is a social event years preceding this—’s —“From the poetry contest held at the Tosa Diary and the Diary in residence of Prince Koresada.” The the Earl Miner translations; Tales of Ise, the prefaces in the Kokinshū, often enough, anonymous An Account of a Journey to the blandly document the conventional topic East and Nun Abutsu’s Journal of the of the poem: for tanka 336, “On plum Sixteenth Night Moon in their Helen Craig blossoms in the snow,” or for tanka 339, McCullough versions. Those few titles are a “On the year’s end.” fair sampling, respectively, of tanka prose’s Sometimes greater context is provided, incarnations as diary, memoir, poem tale, as in the kotobagaki to tanka 589: and travelogue. Tanka prose, as I was to learn subsequently, offers much more.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 62 Tsurayuki sent this letter in the railroad tracks, of recollections of Shiki’s Third Month, when he heard that pastoral youth and participation in someone else was visiting and sessions of horsetail-gathering. These are writing to a woman he had known: poems of delight in a countryside that the poet, confined to his sickbed and facing my heart is not like imminent death, is now barred from the dew which settles on the visiting: flowers unconcerned— each time you bend before the those horsetail plants wind my torment increases 4 I once picked in the fields by my home— Here, the reader is provided with the this I now recall season (“Third Month”) and circumstance in an alien land 6 (“someone else was visiting . . . a woman he had known”) that inspired Tsurayuki’s Shiki’s prose is richer in mood and tanka; he, furthermore, discovers that the nuance than the preface I cited to the poet’s theme is one of naked jealousy. This Tsurayuki poem. However, Shiki’s preface is nascent narrative, the rudimentary does share, in common with the examples elements for a tale. Even so, the primary above, the transitional declarative purpose of this preface is to explain to the statement that links prose to verse—“a reader the why-and-wherefore of the mood came over me to make the following excellent poem’s composition. tanka . . . .” Greater unity of purpose Compare the Tsurayuki kotobagaki to between prose and verse, of course, can be Masaoka Shiki’s preface to a tanka established by the conscious suppression sequence written in 1902: of these expository connectives that, in one sense, are the trademark of much Japanese Nothing is tastier than horsetails, tanka prose from the Manyōshū to modern and nothing is more delightful than times, these insistent reminders that a gathering them. Hekigoto, who went poem was written because of this to Akabane Village on an excursion, circumstance or that occasion. The reader, brought some back. When he told in fact, might be left safely to infer as me he was going there again, a much by the presence of the tanka after mood came over me to make the the prose. Modern tanka prose in English, following tanka, imagining the therefore, stubbornly eschews such scene of horsetail-gathering. 5 explanatory links and chooses, instead, to blend prose and tanka closely into a The ten tanka that follow Shiki’s prose harmonious whole. focus upon scenes of horsetail ferns neglected in the fields, of horsetails beside

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 63 Following Ki no Tsurayuki’s Tosa Diary focused upon the verse-type employed and the anonymous Tales of Ise, I believe with prose, since this verse was invariably Japanese prose and waka went through an waka, but was directed instead toward the astonishing metamorphosis, flourishing in narrative or expository model of the prose- a wide variety of new contexts, for instance tale, memoir, history and so forth. It is only diary, biography, and military chronicle? much later, with the rise of no and of its offspring haibun, that A rough idea of the extent of this distinctions between verse-types become dramatic proliferation of works that necessary in examples of Japanese combine prose and tanka can be had by a prosimetrum. simple enumeration of the classifications that medieval Japanese literary scholars What part did Shikibu’s Tale devised to account for its diversity: diary of Genji play in the development of tanka (nikki), biography (denki), travelogue (kiko) prose as a powerful medium that not only and preface (kotobagaki). A tale is a established context for the poem, but monogatari but distinctions are made with served to elucidate it to the point that it respect to the kind of tale: poem (uta), was no longer subservient to the poem and romance (tsukuri), historical tale (rekishi) indeed, that tanka and prose were capable and military chronicle (gunki). of reciprocal enhancement? Boundaries between the various types of early Japanese prosimetrum, or mixed The early elevation of verse or later prose-plus-verse writing, are quite blurred hegemony of prose are two extremes of the as observed by such influential scholars as tanka prose spectrum. Murasaki Shikibu’s Jin’ichi Konishi and Earl Miner; one and (circa 1008), one might the same composition may be termed argue, represents the culmination of the variously a tale (monogatari), diary (nikki) or latter development. In Genji, the precise poetry collection (shū). The scholarly descriptions, absorbing characters and taxonomist can distinguish further, in animated style of Murasaki’s prose those writings classed as nikki, between the threaten to reduce the accompanying diary with dated entries and the memoir tanka to the incidental role of a lyrical with its freer treatment of chronology. aside. One possible reason no single term Murasaki Shikibu, however, is not only was employed for prose-plus-tanka the author of Genji. Richard Bowring writings is this: from the close of the translated and collected under one cover Manyō period until the rise of renga, waka, both her memoir and her annotated poetry our modern tanka, so dominated the collection as Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary Japanese literary landscape that little else and Poetic Memoirs. The shū consists of 120 was considered worthy of the name poetry. plus waka, each preceded by a kotobagaki, Critical attention, therefore, was not and these prefaces range from the merely

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 64 serviceable or expository sentence to a Jeffrey, I’d like to talk now about the highly poetic and suggestive wedding of variety of forms which modern tanka prose prose and waka that resembles modern may take. How does the basic unit of one English practice. Look, for example, at paragraph and one tanka differ from its entry 46, an ekphrastic work on the subject inverted form of one tanka, one paragraph? of a painting: When the paragraph leads, the closing Two or three women had opened up a tanka caps the prose, Claire, and is the side door and were sitting there culminating point of the composition, a viewing the pear blossom. Everyone sign of the work’s fulfillment. Placement of else had fallen asleep, but one old the tanka first and paragraph last disrupts woman had her chin in her hands and our common expectation. In this was gazing intently at the scene. inversion, the tanka may possess narrative or expository qualities that we ordinarily Hidden in the darkness associate with prose, whereas the Of a spring night paragraph that now concludes the It has no color, composition acquires, to some degree, the An aged heart climactic characteristics that we Intent on the fragrance.7 customarily ascribe to tanka. Consider, for example, Dru Philippou’s “Sloughing Off”: Murasaki’s nikki, by way of contrast, stands closer to the triumph of prose as what blooms exemplified by Genji monogatari than to the and bones she keeps general celebration of waka that is they are props demonstrated in her shū. The memoir, in that she will paint fact, balances lengthy prose passages of with her mountain exacting description of court costume and court ceremony with digressions that I would walk to Cerro Pedernal and display Murasaki’s acute psychological see myself bounding up the flat- insight. Where do the waka lie in all of topped butte in no time. At the top, this? There are precious few of them (less where Georgia O’Keeffe’s ashes than twenty, I believe) and they generally were scattered, I could race along function in one of two capacities, either as the narrow ridge with the wind’s formal praise for ranking members of the warm handclasp and plunge court or, where two waka are joined, as headlong into the blue, sloughing poetic exchanges between court ladies or off my skin among pink hollyhocks, between the same ladies and their suitors. to return home as a stranger.8

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 65 The concord of flowers and bones in by design; both have a penchant for the tanka, of rejuvenation and death, has episodic development, for leaping over many precedents in lyrical poetry; such superfluous matter and lingering upon material, too, is in keeping with the essential detail. Both stem from the same painting of Georgia O’Keefe, the Japanese root, the waka or tanka that first composition’s nominal inspiration. But the came to maturity in the Manyōshū. tanka, when all is said and done, serves as the necessary backstory for the fantasy In your essay ‘Prose and Verse in flight, if you will, of the paragraph it Tandem,’ you propose that verse sequences precedes. The poetic core of Philippou’s within prose are more prevalent in tanka piece can be found in the closing prose pieces than in examples of haibun sentence, in the narrator’s acceptance of and you attribute this less to prescribed the “wind’s warm handclasp” for her traditions within English language tanka resolute descent, a leap that is meant to and haibun circles and more to ancient secure her “return home as a stranger.” Japanese tanka traditions and the very nature of tanka itself.9 Could you elaborate With reference to the response poems on this? and tanka pairings exhibited in the Manyōshū period and the popularity in Tanka, as early as the seventh and recent years of tanka sequences in eighth centuries, were exchanged. Custom English, what distinct features does tanka required that the recipient of a tanka prose have over sequences? respond in kind. A reply often echoed the original gift by borrowing freely from its The presence of prose—so pliable, so language and imagery; such repetition receptive to sudden variations in tempo or drew the call and response poems together style—distinguishes tanka prose from in an act of intimate association. These tanka sequences. The contrast of the two poetic pairings, in the Manyōshū and later modes of writing, prose and verse, is not imperial anthologies, illustrate tanka’s available to the tanka sequence by native affinity for integration, for the definition, and while the sequence is as construction of sequences of two or more capable as tanka prose of marked shifts in poems. Consider the deliberate reiteration pace from tanka to tanka, the sequence in this example, an exchange between the cannot offer the immediate and dramatic Mother of Michitsuna, author of “The counterpoint of prose and verse rhythms. Gossamer Journal” (Kagerō nikki), and Tanka prose, too, often incorporates tanka Lady Tokihime, where the “water oats” are sets or sequences within its broader frame. the court ladies who mutually lament their In other respects, the tanka sequence neglect by the “reapers,” their husbands: and tanka prose have much in common. Both value understatement and ambiguity

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 66 Where might be the swamp / in which Yamabe no Akihito, in a chōka that they can put down roots— / those commemorates an imperial outing, devotes water oats / the reapers have fifteen verses to a vivid depiction of an harvested, / cutting to the very bottom? elemental seascape and the rustic seaweed- harvesters who inhabit it. His hanka is soko ni sae / karu to iu naru / composed of two tanka that recall the makomogusa / ika naru sawa ni / ne o sweeping tide, the “gemlike weeds” and a todomuramu near island:

The marsh from which / the water oats When the tide comes in have vanished / is this one at Yodo: / And the gemlike weeds on the rocks people said they had struck root / in Of this island coast the bottom where you dwell. Hide themselves slowly in the waves, Will our thoughts go after them? makomogusa / karu to wa yodo no / sawa nare ya / ne o todomu chō / sawa When the tide pours in wa soko to ka10 Across the flats of Waka Bay The seastrand vanishes, The influence of tanka’s traditions And the cranes with raucous cries upon tanka prose can be discerned most Fly off to shelter in the reeds.11 clearly in a reading of the Japanese chōka, the long poem of the Manyō period. The A simple glance at the romaji body of the chōka consists of alternating transcription of the original will reveal lines of five and seven syllables but, from how the reiteration of key words closely the time of Hitomaro on, the chōka was links the main poem to the envoy and the completed by a hanka—an envoy of one, two tanka to one another. “Oki tsu shima,” two or several tanka. Hanka means “verse “shio,” “tamamo,” “michi”—they strike that repeats” and that is precisely what the repeatedly with force, like the waves tanka in this poetic appendix do; they against the rocks. recapitulate and amplify the chōka’s main Contemporary tanka prose shares this motifs. Each tanka in the envoy is related propensity for employing verses in not only to the parent poem, the chōka, but sequence, whether at the beginning, to its siblings also. These relationships middle or end of the compositional prefigure how the individual tanka of a design. A modern example of tanka prose sequence within a larger tanka prose that parallels the chōka’s incorporation of a composition adhere to the prose body as formal envoy with repeated elements can well as to the other members of their tanka be found in Michael McClintock’s ‘Before set. Croissants and Coffee’:

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 67 Briefly, before the morning inclusion of multiple tanka was not always commute, before the bakery set out balanced by the “brevity and lightness” of its morning bread to cool on the the prose. Do you think these possible racks, before the postman’s alarm criticisms are warranted and that if this rang beside his bed, and the dog was the perception of some editors might scratched, wanting out, a summer it have limited the number of venues rain fell on the streets and receptive to tanka prose of this type? boulevards of Paris. The tanka and prose elements should You slept—I saw a dream tiptoe balance harmoniously, whether the upon your brow and would not composition offers one paragraph and one wake you. I watched alone on the tanka or the complexities of many tanka balcony the wet, shining pavements and many paragraphs. The demand for mirror the clouds. unity and for subordination of the parts to the whole, however, is not a problem From below, unique to tanka prose; it is an aesthetic I hear the bread racked consideration, on a smaller scale, of the and readied; single tanka and it is a concern of the across the way a dog sonnet and as well. Where this trots from its door. balance is wanting, Claire, criticism is justified and I, too, am sensitive to such The postman’s van shortcomings in execution or conception. speeds by in needful haste: You alluded to the possible the rain has ceased, reservations of various journals with you awake, respect to tanka prose. Tanka periodicals, and we embrace. 12 such as Eucalyptus, red lights, Ribbons and Gusts, are often small format, print-only Bread, postman, dog and rain rebound publications. The mundane practical and echo from prose to tanka, from tanka consideration of space limitations, in such to prose. venues, may work against an editor’s possible acceptance of tanka prose. Again, in ‘Prose and Verse in Tandem,’ There is also the question of the you point out the prevalence of multiple novelty of this enterprise in English- tanka and tanka sequences within tanka language practice. Early examples of tanka prose. While journals such as Modern prose can be found in the 80s and 90s but English Tanka and Atlas Poetica consistently publication of the same occurred only published such examples of tanka prose, sporadically. Nor can it be said that much Jeffrey, other journals appeared to be more of this early writing commends itself to reticent. It has been suggested that the today’s reader; it demonstrates scant

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 68 cognizance of tanka prose in its classical poetry has evolved and we have seen the and medieval Japanese context and adoption of more minimalist and therefore the English “translation” loses experimental forms, such as gogyoshi, do much. The existence of tanka prose in you think it is fair to say that the ‘spirit of English was virtually subterranean until its tanka” has acquired an air of “anything emergence upon a firm footing in 2007; it goes?” flew “under the radar” and was invisible not only to many tanka editors but to most Two temptations beset tanka. The first practicing tanka poets. lies in an appeal to ossified ‘tradition,’ in a Tanka prose, nevertheless, has an misinterpretation or falsification of tanka ancient provenance within the tanka that aims at slavish imitation of Japanese genre; it has been present, in one form or models in subject and form. True another, from the Manyōshū until the tradition, it seems to me, can be present. So the appearance of newness is deciphered only by serious study of tanka only that—an appearance. Tanka prose is literature and history, by the identification deeply embedded in tanka’s history and of those vital qualities that transcend shares its aesthetic. The tanka community, generational change as well as by an therefore, is not without obligation to identification, on the negative side, of support tanka prose and neglects it only at capricious trends and stylistic its own peril—squandering, thereby, a rich mannerisms. The second tempation arises portion of its own inheritance. from a rejection of true tradition as an impediment to artistic freedom and the In your essay ‘The Elements of Tanka consequent abandonment of tanka form Prose,’ the question was posed, does tanka and aesthetic—license, in other words, or prose suggest prose that is composed in the attitude that “anything goes.” the ‘spirit of tanka?’ 13 From my reading, I Sanford Goldstein, in his essay ‘Not have seen the rich diversity of this genre Again! Tanka Strings and Sequences,’ and how the number of tanka and their lamented: “The world of tanka is extending placement within the piece can influence beyond its clear definitions . . . . The the overall character and flavour of the tendency is to create new worlds in place prose. For example, in one of your own of an older, more stable order, an compositions, “Glass Lake,” the opening increasingly complex world that seems to tanka takes on the role the accompanying go along with the complications of prose might often carry, providing a modernity. This diffusion includes the backdrop for the lyrical prose that follows. writing of . . . short prose pieces with In many of Patricia Prime’s pieces, such as tanka . . . . And so the wayward tanka world ‘Wings over Water,’ we see the use of continues.” 14 refrain, the suppression of punctuation Now, I respect Goldstein’s work as both and the heightening of lyricism. As tanka tanka poet and translator but his

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 69 characterization of tanka prose as a initiated by the prose preface while a final modern “diffusion” of an “older, more set of three tanka, in an objective voice, stable order” and as a reflection of “the repeats and dwells upon the main motifs wayward tanka world” is curious, if you will of the composition as a whole. Prose and forgive my understatement, and flies tanka are fully integrated by the many demonstrably in the face of tanka’s variations played upon the erotic history. Sanford did not invent tanka prose undercurrent of such images as the when he published his ‘Tanka Walk’ in delicate gem-like fish, the froth of the 1983 nor did I invent tanka prose when I rapids on the rocks and the wet skirts of published my essay ‘The Road Ahead for the maidens. ’ in 2007. Tanka prose is as old—or nearly so—as tanka itself. In your interview with Ray Rasmussen, Look at the Manyōshū only. You will ‘Terra Incognita: The World of Haibun and discover numerous examples of eighth Tanka Prose,’ you say “every form has its century tanka prose sprinkled throughout own tradition, its own set of conventions, its pages. One work by Ōtomo no Tabito and with application, a form and attendant should be singled out here as an example conventions can be learned.”16 Would you of the sophistication and artistry of this say this is true of tanka prose, Jeffrey, or is early tanka prose; it is entitled ‘An the genre still—and perhaps destined to Excursion to Matsura River’ and can be remain—in a state of flux? readily found in translations of the Manyōshū by Edwin A. Cranston, Ian Tanka prose is one species of Hideo Levy and the Nippon Gakujutsu prosimetrum; it combines, like other Shinkokai or Japanese Classics Translation members of that genus, the two modes of Committee.15 I would like to encourage writing, prose and verse, but can be tanka poets and editors to study it. Tabito’s distinguished from its fellows by a ‘Excursion’ opens with a prose preface that preference for tanka as its verse richly describes the chance meeting on the component. Tanka prose is constructed river of an elderly first-person narrator and upon a building block or basic unit—one some provincial maidens; he is so taken by paragraph, one tanka—and admits greater their beauty that he inquires if they are not complication in structure through “immortals,” but they, in reply, insist that compounding of either one or both of they are nothing more than “the daughters these elements. Variation in the number of fishermen.” Allusions to classical and placement of tanka in relation to the Chinese poetry are woven into the prose is the prime source of its rich formal flirtatious repartee that completes the diversity. That, in brief, is a simple prose section. Eleven tanka follow; the first definition of the form of tanka prose. eight continue the dialogue between the Broadly speaking, recall that our narrator and young women that was subject, like the tanka sequence, is a

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 70 member of the tanka family and therefore tanka; one can omit this marker without operates within the traditions and any loss to the total composition and, from conventions of that genre as adapted by the late Heian period forward, poets the English-language tanka community increasingly do so, abandoning a from Japanese models. Some Japanese convention that dominated the earlier conventions are applicable to English tanka prose of the Manyōshū and Tales of practice and some are not. Some Ise. This suppression of the transitional conventions, too, are victims of history and phrase is the norm in modern English face extinction due to changes in taste or practice. Look at Bob Lucky’s ‘Three’: to the natural evolution of a literary form. A relevant example of this latter In the village the church bell circumstance can be cited from the intones the hour. We arrive just in historical development of tanka prose. time to hear the monotonous Common to tanka prose of the classical clanging of noon noon noon noon Japanese period is reliance upon stock —like a dotted line dividing explanatory phrases to signal a transition morning from the rest of the day. from prose to tanka: “Thus she composed After a long and leisurely lunch, we this poem,” “He wrote a letter with the check into a pensione and go out to following,” or “She replied.” explore. The clock strikes three Consider this extract from The Tale of three three. It is inexplicably sad, Saigyō as translated by Meredith like a dirge: three three three. McKinney: Stopping in a café, we have a brandy we don’t need, and then Day and night in his thatched hut several espressos, as we stare at the he longed for the Buddha’s coming. remainder of the afternoon. But old friends who did not share his feeling came to see the cherry around the steeple blossoms, and their talk of old times the clamor of bats disturbed his peace of mind. gathering dusk Annoyed, he wrote: when I touch you you look at your watch 18 It is the one sad sin Lucky’s work, I believe, shows us how of the cherry blossom the absence of an overt transitional phrase that people come in such crowds reflects the tendency, common to modern to see it. 17 English practice, of seamless integration of prose and tanka. Here, “Annoyed, he wrote” is a pointer that directs the reader from paragraph to

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 71 In ‘The Road Ahead for Tanka in of the sequence diminished by a judgment English,’ you describe how early examples that one tanka can boast of autonomy of tanka prose in Japanese literature saw while another remains a servant to the waka enshrined within the prose, an context? approach which you called the “lapidary style.”19 Do you think in modern English In connection with the previous tanka prose the tanka should be capable of question, Denis M. Garrison described the autonomy, or with the prose, should it “dreaming room” quality of multivalent merely serve to contribute to the aesthetic tanka, i.e., the “empty space inside the whole? poem which the reader can fill with his personal experience, from his unique I’m not unduly concerned about social context.”20 Jeffrey, do you think the prescribing rules for either compositional inclusion of prose impinges on the element—paragraph or tanka. I strive, “dreaming room” quality of the tanka instead, to identify and isolate the within a tanka prose piece, or, conversely, exemplary tanka prose work for an does the tanka devalue the prose? intimate study of how writing’s two modes relate to one another therein. Poetry I view the contemporary example of precedes criticism and, if rules are tanka prose in English as a complete poem wanted, prudence requires us to derive our in its own right and therefore do not guidelines from an empirical analysis of distinguish between this tanka and that the best writing that the genre has to offer. prose. I do not set the two modes of Descriptively, some writers begin with writing at odds. If Garrison’s concept of a pre-existing tanka and write prose to its “dreaming room” is applicable to our order; some writers compose tanka and subject, neither paragraph nor tanka can prose in one sitting. Some tanka, if lay exclusive claim to it. extracted from a tanka prose work, might The prose and tanka of a single be capable of a meaningful and composition, Claire, mutually influence independent existence; some tanka might one another. Many poets write prose not. “around” a pre-existing tanka. Once they Can’t we say much the same, however, place their tanka in its new prose context, of the individual tanka that comprise a meaning is altered and sometimes tanka sequence? Does the reader dwell, in radically. The presence of tanka, of course, reading the same, on the excellence of one conditions the prose also, but few tanka alone? Or is the reader’s attention commentators, in my experience, have paid directed by the orchestration of several attention to that circumstance. tanka working in concert toward one end? If the reader, upon finishing the work, is I have been struck by the diversity of satisfied by the poetic object, is the value subject matter in my reading of tanka

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 72 prose, from poignant personal accounts of of the ninth century Tale of the Bamboo family life from writers such as Bob Lucky, Cutter (Taketori monogatari); they also bear to the lyrical pieces favoured by Michael traces of the Brothers Grimm and of the McClintock, through to the travelogues French tales of Charles Perrault and composed by writers such as Jane Madame d’Aulnoy. Ingrid Kunschke, in Reichhold and Miriam Sagan, or dramatic, ‘Thistledown,’ personifies the wind and, in historical accounts such as your own her brisk opening, establishes a gentle, chilling ‘The Trial of Dorothy Talbye, wistful tone that typifies her contribution 1638’. There is clearly much scope within to this recent turn in tanka prose: this versatile genre. Do you envisage any limits to the possible routes it might take? That night the wind died down.

I share your assessment of tanka prose, I’ve had enough, he said to himself. Claire, as wide-ranging. Its boundaries, if Who cares anyway? No one does. circumscribed at all, may coincide largely Not for me, that is. And he lay down with the breadth, or lack thereof, of the to sleep among the thistles at the far poetic imagination and skill of the form’s end of the meadow. 21 practitioners. The norm in contemporary practice, to date, has been a composition of Giselle Maya, in “Wild Boars modest length that may be most easily Enchanted,” situates the mysterious in the characterized as an abbreviated memoir or commonplace activities of our daily confessional anecdote, the crystallization existence: of one significant event or experience in the author’s life. Departures from that As I was painting ochre pigment model do not often involve expansion or onto the walls of my little stone greater length but, instead, represent a cabanon at dusk, I heard some shift away from a focus on the writer’s crackling of branches, as though person in favor of a text that is engaged in someone were coming to visit. literary allusion, in ekphrasis or in what, Sometimes Madame Bosio brings for lack of a precise term, I might call me iris roots or comes with her dog prose poetry. to chat a while . . . .22 One noteworthy exception to this observation can be found in the rapid This touching, personal revelation of development, in 2008 and 2009, of an the poet in her garden functions as a English equivalent of the Japanese poem prelude to her discovery of a family of wild tale—fictions that lie close, in origin, to boars who, magically possessed of the folklore and children’s stories. An power of speech, plead for refuge. A local inspiration and model for these attempts hunter later catches sight of the matriarch can be found in the fairytale-like qualities of this boar clan, is transformed into a

Atlas Poetica • Issue 9 • Page 73 boar and pleads with the poet for a kiss to 10. Helen Craig McCullough, Classical reverse the charm. Such is the world of the Japanese Prose: An Anthology, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 111-112. poem tale in tanka prose! 11. Edwin A. Cranston, A Waka Anthology: To look ahead, however, is often to look Volume One The Gem-Glistening Cup, Stanford behind and, in speculating about new Univeristy Press, 1993, p. 309. avenues for tanka prose tomorrow, to 12. Michael McClintock, “Before Croissants revisit yesterday. In , there are and Coffee,” Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose 1, extended histories and biographies, Summer 2009, p. 129. military chronicles and diaries, travelogues 13. Jeffrey Woodward, “The Elements of Tanka Prose,” Modern English Tanka V2, N4, and tales. I see no fixed barrier to the Summer 2008, p. 194. ambition of tanka prose in English, no 14. Sanford Goldstein, “Not Again! Tanka reason why it cannot parallel or rival its Strings and Sequences,” Atlas Poetica 5, Spring classical ancestor in variety and in scale. 2010, p. 65. 15. Cranston, op. cit., pp. 552-554; Ian Hideo Notes Levy, The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Manyōshū, Volume One, Princeton University 1. Jeffrey Woodward, “A Record of Press, 1981, pp. 371-375; and 1000 Poems from Semimaru,” Modern English Tanka V2, N2, the Manyōshū: The Complete Nippon Gakujutsu Winter 2007, p. 174. Shinkokai Translation, Dover Publications, 2005, 2. Jeffrey Woodward, Ed., The Tanka Prose pp. 258-259. Anthology, Modern English Tanka Press, 2008, 16. Ray Rasmussen, “Terra Incognita: The p. 10. World of Haibun and Tanka Prose,” 3. Laurel Rasplica Rodd, Kokinshū: A Contemporary Haibun Online V5, N4, December Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern, Cheng & 2009. Tsui, 1996, pp. 121-143. 17. Meredith McKinney, The Tale of Saigyō, 4. Ibid., p. 218. Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies, No. 25, 5. Shiki Masaoka, Songs from a Bamboo Center for Japanese Studies, University of Village, translated by Sanford Goldstein and Michigan Press, 1998. p. 35. Seishi Shinoda. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1998, p. 18. Bob Lucky, “Three,” in The Tanka Prose 247. Anthology, op. cit., p. 76. 6. Ibid., p.251. 19. Jeffrey Woodward, “The Road Ahead 7. Richard Bowring, Murasaki Shikibu, Her for Tanka in English,” Modern English Tanka Diary and Poetic Memoirs, Princeton University V2, N2, Winter 2007, p. 181. Press, 1985, p. 231. 20. Denis M. Garrison, “Dreaming Room,” 8. Dru Philippou, “Sloughing Off,” Haibun Modern English Tanka V1, N3, Spring 2007, p. 4. Today V5, N1, March 2011. 21. Ingrid Kunschke, “Thistledown,” 9. Jeffrey Woodward, “Prose and Verse in Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose 1, Summer 2009, Tandem: Haibun and Tanka Prose,” Modern p. 71. Haibun & Tanka Prose 2, Winter 2009, p. 158, 22. Giselle Maya, “Wild Boars Enchanted,” and n. 13, pp. 162-163. Haibun Today (Nov. 26, 2008). ❏

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