Customer Reviews

The Tanka Anthology

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I'm new to the world of Tanka's So for me finding a book
that not only shows and explains examples was a god send.
This is my first review not because I haven't read other
good books from Amazon. However this is one with so much
merit its worth the time spent making this. Hope if you
get it you enjoy it as much as I do.

The Tanka Anthology is a good introduction to English-language tanka. Presenting 800 poems in a handsome hardback edition, it is an essential addition to any public or academic library, as well as the collections of individual readers who are serious about poetry in general and tanka in particular. Very few books are available in English devoted exclusively to tanka, even though tanka is the major literary genre of Japan with a history stretching back twelve centuries. It is overshadowed by haiku, a genre developed over the last three centuries. The Introduction, with its discussion of the history and nature of tanka, including related genres such as kyoka, is one of the most intelligible and accessible works readily available in English.

The poetry in the book is good, sometimes excellent, and occassionally even incandescent. Buettner's "this cold morning / the cold of your absence / a presence now / shall I dress it like scarecrows / standing in a empty field" is a chillingly effective work whose joining of natural and emotional imagery is very much in the tanka tradition but updated to speak to modern sensibilities. Yet arguably much of what is in the book is not actually tanka, but kyoka, the comic or satirical genre that is to tanka what senryu is to haiku. Examples such as Maffei's "energy waning / as the afternoon wears on / a grim co-worker / leans into my cubicle / whispering conspiracy" is an image that contains absolutely nothing of the natural world but speaks entirely to life-as-it-is. For a reader who is familiar principally with the courtly elegance of classic waka (pre-modern tanka), such a Dilbertian episode is likely to disconcert. It really isn't Saigyo, but it is real.

Another positive for the work is that it includes multiple poems by multiple authors, for a total of 68 authors in 800 poems. This generally allows the reader to get a feel for the author's style and subject matter, and yet, as large a body of poets as 68 is, there are various other authors I can think of that deserve inclusion. In a work like this a greater breadth helps give a truer picture of the field, although admittedly, at the expense of depth.

No other work like this exists in English. The editors were doing their best to create a work of literary and scholarly merit with both breadth and depth, and they have largely succeeded. Most books covering English-language tanka cover both haiku and tanka which creates the illusion that tanka is a sort of sidedish to go along with the main course. A work of this magnitude that focusses firmly on tanka as the independent and significant literary genre that it is forms a major and welcome addition to the field.

With over 68 poets and over 800 poems, this is still one of the best tanka anthologies available. If the prices here are a bit above your pocketbook, go directly to the source: Red Moon Press (online). You will find it there, at it's original publication price.