For years I've run a poetry Twitter called @1001Tanka, with the goal of writing 1001 Tanka poems and eventually collecting them into a book. I still have a long way to go. As Twitter collapses, I thought this was as good a time as any to begin migrating those poems over here. Traditional Japanese tanka poems consist of 31 syllables written in a single, unbroken line. In English translations, the tanka tends to take on a five-line form. Midway through a tanka poem, there's a change in perception. In a sonnet, it's called the volta. In a haiku, there's typically a "turn" between lines two and three. As with a sonnet, the change occurs as a transition from examining an image to examining a personal response. Many of my Tanka poems do not fit neatly into that definition. Rather, I like to use the restrictions imposed by the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable format to explore my emotions in a snapshot, like a picture of my feelings. Many of these poems are written on the spot, wi...
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