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Mosaic Musings...interactive poetry reviews _ ARCHIVES -> Short Form Poetry -> Shogun's Psalms _ Tanka

Posted by: hellfire Mar 7 10, 07:17

love pleads that you die…

not from ignorance of heart

but deceit of heart

through selfishness, fear and doubt:

divine love, favors the brave

Posted by: Thoth Mar 10 10, 14:26

Hi James,

Somehow responses are slow in this forum. I had one here for over a month with no comment so eventually dumped it.

Back to the poem; I am not an expert on tanka philosophy or construction so had to research a little. Here is what I found at Japanese Poetry Patterns http://thewordshop.tripod.com/asian/Japan/tankadef.html

"The classical tanka contains 31 onji (sound-symbols, the smallest linguistic unit in Japanese poetry). Early translators, assuming that onji correspond to English syllables (they do not), decided that the English equivalent would be a poem of 31 syllables divided into 5 lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. This syllable requirement is still very popular in English tanka, although frequent variations occur. Since we tend to think in accentual-syllabic terms, 5 lines containing 2-3-2-3-3 beats, respectively (regardless of the number of unaccented syllables), is probably closer to the original Japanese intent. However, for teaching purposes, the 31 syllable format is a reliable benchmark, so it is convenient to employ it to begin."

So it appears your poem fits the original English tradition. Tanka, it seems can be rather complicated and employ various poetic devices such as alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia and occasional repetition.

What I see are four coupled statements developing a thought or concept and a conclusion.

love pleads that you die…
not from ignorance of heart
but deceit of heart
through selfishness, fear and doubt:
divine love, favors the brave

The conclusion does not quite fit the build up so I was left a little bewildered since bravery has nothing to do with deceit. Also, the opening statement is emotionally flawed for obvious reasons and tanka traditionally deal with highly emotional issues. Not sure about the punctuation but for me it must be all or nothing. Lower case sentence starts look like mistakes when coupled with mid-line caesuras.

That is my amateur comment for what it is worth James, certainly a fine attempt and better than anything I could put together. Technically well written but perhaps requiring some fine tuning.

Thanks for sharing,

Wally

Posted by: hellfire Mar 11 10, 07:53

thanks wally

appreciate your comments and suggestions.i will look at improving the piece asap

cheers

hellfire