Seventy-Nine Tanka

By William C. Hyland

Tanka is the last surviving genre of classical Japanese poetry. The tanka is meant to describe a moment, an emotion, an image with such clarity that you feel as if you are in the moment. I present my moments to you in the hope that you experience them as I did, that you will see what I saw, and feel what I felt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William C. Hyland
• Release date: Jul 3, 2013

William C. Hyland

Bill Hyland currently lives in Albuquerque, NM, with his wife, daughter, dog, and cat. He is a US Navy veteran (submarine service), considers himself a patriot and has spent most of his life working as a Controls Engineer. His poetry began as a way to exercise his creativity, but soon became a passion. Recently, he has become facinated with the tanka form, combining rigid structure and the need to chose exactly the right words.

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About Tanka

Tanka, which means short poem, is the last major form of waka, poetry that was developed Japan early in the 8th century. Tanka in the English language is relatively new. Translations of classic Japanese tanka became available somwhere around the 1860s, but the form didn’t gain real popularity until after World War II.

Structurally, tanka consist of five units, usually rendered as five lines when translated into English. Each line has a specified number of on units, roughly analogous to syllables in English. Most commonly, the syllables are arranged in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern.

Tanka is intended to evoke a moment, meaning a feeling, an emotion, a scene, etc., to allow the reader to