Some of you will know that I am the new haibun* editor at Simply Haiku, an online Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry, and in honour of the latest issue this prompt will ask you to work with a minimum amount of words, and a limited amount of poetic tools.
The following poem is a tanka by Dave Bacharach**:
empty flower pots
stacked upside down
inside each other
we wonder why
the kids don’t call
Tanka traditionally have five lines with some kind of ‘break’ in the poem, often around the middle. They don’t have titles, and adopt a similar approach in their construction to haiku, in that the economy of the form demands that every word counts.
What I admire about this tanka is how the image in the first three lines, sets us up for the statement in the last two. The relationship between empty flower pots and wondering ‘why the kids don’t call’ is not explicit, but the poem immediately feels right to me. When I go back and unpick the image to find out why, I note:
1. the flower pots that presumably once held flowers make me think of the home and the children who used to live there
2. 'upside down’ is not the way a flower pot is meant to function, so something isn’t quite right here, or maybe it’s not the season for flowers now
3. there’s both a sadness and an intimacy suggested by the pots being ‘empty’ and stacked ‘inside each other’
I’m sure there are other observations to be extracted from this short poem too, and feel free to post your responses in the comments box.
While I‘m not going to ask you to write a tanka, as there’s far more that needs to be said about the particularities and possibilities of the form, I am going to challenge you to write a five line poem, some of which might end up being tanka:
Write an untitled, five line poem with each line being no longer than 5 words:
The first three lines should contain an expanded image.
The last two lines should contain a statement.
And it goes without saying that each part needs to inform the other.
Bon courage… as people keep saying to us here when they see how much work we have to do on the house!
*Haibun is a form that combines prose and haiku, with each part being autonomous, yet informing each other at the same time.
**Dave Bacharach is editor of Ribbons, a quarterly journal and the official publication of the Tanka Society of America
Showing posts with label image. Show all posts
Showing posts with label image. Show all posts
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
March Prize Poem
I’m torn between three poems this month: Alyss Dye’s ‘Scarves on the Stairs’, Wisty’s ‘Pool’, and Margaret Beston’s ‘Journey’. They’re all very different with regard to subject matter and form, and I like them all for different reasons.
In Alyss’s poem a mother talks about her daughter’s departure from the house. The words earthquake, debris and muddle effectively describe the mess the daughter leaves in her wake, but apply equally as well to the mother’s emotional muddle about a young woman who once needed her guidance so much. In ‘Pool’, Wisty trusts the imagery to show nature’s ability to restore itself after humankind’s destructive interventions. The pool becomes symbolic of peace, reinforced by the image of the ‘flag’ growing at its edge, and the last line – like wings – lifts us as readers, with joy, with hope perhaps. Margaret Beston’s ‘Journey’ is relentless and sinister. The use of the command form, the repetition of familiar phrases, and the objectification of the ‘bodies’ shake me as a reader and I can’t help but think about the London Underground bombings of a few years ago.
In the end, after poems satisfy at the level of craft, then personal preference comes into play, and for this reason, I’ve chosen Wisty’s ‘Pool’. I love the economy of this poem, its rhythm and internal rhymes. The precise description draws me into the scene and atmosphere, but this isn’t just a pretty picture, it makes me think too. And the ideas of redemption and restoration are ones that touch me.
Congratulations, Wisty. I don’t have any contact details for you so if you’d like to send me your postal address (lynne@lynnerees.co.uk) I’ll send you your prize. Allow a week or so for it to arrive as it’ll be coming from France.
Pool
hidden
amongst sallows
and sedge
a pool
where once a bomb
pitted this marsh
now green blades
pierce its rim
and petals
of yellow flag
open
like wings
Wisty
In Alyss’s poem a mother talks about her daughter’s departure from the house. The words earthquake, debris and muddle effectively describe the mess the daughter leaves in her wake, but apply equally as well to the mother’s emotional muddle about a young woman who once needed her guidance so much. In ‘Pool’, Wisty trusts the imagery to show nature’s ability to restore itself after humankind’s destructive interventions. The pool becomes symbolic of peace, reinforced by the image of the ‘flag’ growing at its edge, and the last line – like wings – lifts us as readers, with joy, with hope perhaps. Margaret Beston’s ‘Journey’ is relentless and sinister. The use of the command form, the repetition of familiar phrases, and the objectification of the ‘bodies’ shake me as a reader and I can’t help but think about the London Underground bombings of a few years ago.
In the end, after poems satisfy at the level of craft, then personal preference comes into play, and for this reason, I’ve chosen Wisty’s ‘Pool’. I love the economy of this poem, its rhythm and internal rhymes. The precise description draws me into the scene and atmosphere, but this isn’t just a pretty picture, it makes me think too. And the ideas of redemption and restoration are ones that touch me.
Congratulations, Wisty. I don’t have any contact details for you so if you’d like to send me your postal address (lynne@lynnerees.co.uk) I’ll send you your prize. Allow a week or so for it to arrive as it’ll be coming from France.
Pool
hidden
amongst sallows
and sedge
a pool
where once a bomb
pitted this marsh
now green blades
pierce its rim
and petals
of yellow flag
open
like wings
Wisty
Friday, February 01, 2008
January Prize Poem
I’ve chosen the moving poem ‘Hibaku’ by Margaret Beston as the prize-winning poem for January.
The form works very effectively with the subject matter: each couplet contains an image, and each image builds from the previous to create a specific physical scene. The progression of the poem is measured: this isn’t a poem of anger, it’s more Wordsworth’s ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’; a poem of acceptance and moving on. It’s hard to imagine how anyone can really accept and escape from such an event, but the poem, for me, is a testament to the power of the human spirit, and I feel honoured to be in the presence of this ‘voice’.
It’s a very difficult task to write about other people’s tragedies, particularly ones of such huge proportions, like the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Holocaust. But one way of tackling them is to create a specific persona, or voice, to speak of their particular experience, in this case the collective persona of the Hibaku, in the first person plural. That way we avoid self-aggrandisement, or any sense that we’re making someone else’s story ‘our story’.
The poem’s language is consistently very well chosen but I particularly like the image of the ‘butterfly leaves’ in the 4th couplet. It makes me think of ‘the butterfly effect’ (the phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly‘s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear, or prevent a tornado from appearing) and how even small events can have repercussions, that our actions, and even our thoughts, have an effect on other people and our environment. A good poem makes me feel and think, and ‘Hibaku’ does just that.
Many congratulations, Margaret. Your ‘prize’ is in the post. And here's the poem for everyone to enjoy.
Hibaku *
In the precinct of the Kokutaiji Temple
the camphor tree has been uprooted
the fireball has scorched the bark
of phoenix trees, hollowed out their trunks
charred stumps of temple ginkgos
scar the landscape, their
butterfly leaves incinerated
by the apocalyptic blast
no life, no greenery, our city
is a sterile wasteland
then we see the water of the Ota river
running fresh and clear and
beneath scorched earth
green roots spread and grow
sending out defiant shoots
‘bearers of hope’
like the rainbow appearing
when black rain fell
we will lift the phoenix trees
plant them deep among the ashes
spread their seeds of peace
around the world and
in April fragrant Oleander blooms
will fill the acrid air.
Margaret Beston
* ‘Hibaku’ is the name given to survivors of the Hiroshima A-bomb.
The form works very effectively with the subject matter: each couplet contains an image, and each image builds from the previous to create a specific physical scene. The progression of the poem is measured: this isn’t a poem of anger, it’s more Wordsworth’s ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’; a poem of acceptance and moving on. It’s hard to imagine how anyone can really accept and escape from such an event, but the poem, for me, is a testament to the power of the human spirit, and I feel honoured to be in the presence of this ‘voice’.
It’s a very difficult task to write about other people’s tragedies, particularly ones of such huge proportions, like the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Holocaust. But one way of tackling them is to create a specific persona, or voice, to speak of their particular experience, in this case the collective persona of the Hibaku, in the first person plural. That way we avoid self-aggrandisement, or any sense that we’re making someone else’s story ‘our story’.
The poem’s language is consistently very well chosen but I particularly like the image of the ‘butterfly leaves’ in the 4th couplet. It makes me think of ‘the butterfly effect’ (the phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly‘s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear, or prevent a tornado from appearing) and how even small events can have repercussions, that our actions, and even our thoughts, have an effect on other people and our environment. A good poem makes me feel and think, and ‘Hibaku’ does just that.
Many congratulations, Margaret. Your ‘prize’ is in the post. And here's the poem for everyone to enjoy.
Hibaku *
In the precinct of the Kokutaiji Temple
the camphor tree has been uprooted
the fireball has scorched the bark
of phoenix trees, hollowed out their trunks
charred stumps of temple ginkgos
scar the landscape, their
butterfly leaves incinerated
by the apocalyptic blast
no life, no greenery, our city
is a sterile wasteland
then we see the water of the Ota river
running fresh and clear and
beneath scorched earth
green roots spread and grow
sending out defiant shoots
‘bearers of hope’
like the rainbow appearing
when black rain fell
we will lift the phoenix trees
plant them deep among the ashes
spread their seeds of peace
around the world and
in April fragrant Oleander blooms
will fill the acrid air.
Margaret Beston
* ‘Hibaku’ is the name given to survivors of the Hiroshima A-bomb.
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