Four Favourite TankaFirst published in Gusts #4, Fall/Winter 2006,
page 10. Originally written in March and May of 2006.
White Flowers in the Sky is a book by
Anna Holley and Aya Yuhki, tanka poets who live in the United States and Japan,
respectively. For those interested in the book, it was published in 2005 by
Banraisya, Inc. in Japan (paperback, 164 pages, 5 by 6.5 inches, ISBN
4-901221-15-9), and is available at www.amazon.com.jp or through Kinokuniya
Bookstores if America for $25.00. This is not a review of White Flowers in the Sky, but a commentary on two pairs of poems
from the book.
if only there
are
for a single day white,
pink, and violet
in the color morning
glories,
of a morning-glory I
would like to be
I would like to bloom cerulean
blue
—Anna
Holley —Aya
Yuhki
In the call-and-response poems that make up White
Flowers in the Sky, these two poems are among my favourite. The poet James
Wright once wrote “Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would
break into blossom.” In these poems, Anna and Aya do step out of their bodies
and become morning glories. This is each poet’s mind at play, taking fresh
leaps of delight, and it is the reader’s delight, too, to break into the same
blue blossoms.
my dog and wild pigeons with no
word
share the same sunny spot spoken between
us,
a day when sitting
together
I am grieving under
the autumn sky
over racial conflict a
cat and I
—Aya
Yuhki —Anna
Holley
This pairing of poems, also from White
Flowers in the Sky, shows how tanka can be extended into a form of
collaboration. One poem extends the other yet shifts away, like the verses in a
renku or the two parts of a tan-renga, creating its own energy. We are not told
the nature of the racial conflict in Aya’s poem, but we take solace from the
dog and pigeons that remain at peace with each other. Anna shows the unspoken
harmony between herself and a cat—not her
cat, but a cat, one that she
presumably did not already have a relationship with. Whereas Aya observes
harmony between a dog and birds, external to herself, Anna’s response poem
takes that vision a step further and presents harmony between herself and an
animal, making the lesson one that she has internalized. Though an autumn sky
adds a tinge of somberness, we are still touched by the poem’s hope.
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