Crocuses

Early this spring, when we went through an unnatural warm spell, I stopped and talked to a neighbour who was clearing her yard of winter's debris. We talked about the weather's effect on tender spring plants and how an expected long frost and snowstorm could damage the crocuses already in bloom and the lilies-of-the-valley sprouting in her back yard. We agreed that such changes could also affect human behavior. She then confided that she was worried about her thirteen year old daughter. The young lady claimed to be very much in love with a young man and the mother felt she was too immature to feel so deeply, that she would be emotionally hurt. I had no advice to offer but I did write a tanka about the crocuses a few days later.

After some thought and careful consideration, the tanka turned out like this:

so early this spring
crocuses struggle
to bloom
how can I warn you
of impending frost?

Then I realised that this was not only a poem about a natural phenomenon, a thoughtful observation and its emotional impact, but also a metaphor for the situation the neighbour lady and I had talked about.

Her daughter, like a crocus, was doing her best to bloom as she was meant to; her mother thought the time was not 'ripe,' that it was too soon. She could see the possible difficulties, the hard frost looming in the near future, and felt inadequate to give her a warning she would heed.

Life and poetry, young girls and crocuses: oh, how they mingle!

TANKA

Recently I was honoured to receive a real introduction to the Japanese poetry form, tanka. I had been aware of it for a long time but never tried to explore it; I saw it as an extended haiku, a haiku with two unnecessary lines added, a bastardized form if you will. I was wrong, very wrong. The tanka form is the older of the two. Haiku developed from the objective part of the tanka, and developed rules about seasonal words, etc. which do not restrict tanka.

Tanka consists of two sections. One is the objective observation of something affecting the poet and often expressed almost like the haiku that derived from it. The second is the emotional and personal reaction of the poet to the described matter, a very subjective statement. The blending of these two into a cohesive whole make the tanka.

Forget about syllable counts and other frivolities. Japanese kanji and other linguistic elements do not compare closely to syllables. It is better, as in haiku, to use the smallest number of simple words.

For form's sake we continue to use a five line layout. If the first segment is the objective, the haiku observation, the latter should be the subjective and emotional expression. The middle line may often become a turning point between the two, a part of both observations, but again there is no steadfast rule.

And, as in any good poetry, show rather than tell.