President’s Message:
Nurturing Community

The Tanka Society of America is growing! Thanks to publicity efforts by Kirsty Karkow and her personal encouragement of new members, with support from other officers, our membership numbers have increased to 140. We had a slightly higher number in the year after the society began in April of 2000, perhaps as people joined out of curiosity, but a number of those initial memberships lapsed. Now many new members have joined, and some who lapsed have returned, and it seems to me that our current membership has a deeper and longer-lasting commitment to tanka poetry than ever before. As more people read the recent landmark tanka publication from Red Moon Press, The Tanka Anthology, and catch the enthusiasm of our members and others who write and enjoy tanka, we can hope for a further increase in our membership.

The Tanka Society of America is not just about numbers, of course, but community. For a national organization that does not have quarterly or even annual meetings, building community is a difficult task. Most of the group’s work has to be done by this newsletter, and it rises and falls based on your ideas and enthusiasm as we share poems and personalities and our news and opinions with each other. Our “Favorite Tanka” column has helped to highlight members in the past, and we continue to do so with a selection by Pamela Miller Ness on page 13. Our “Tanka Café” column once again has its tables and silverware set to invite everyone’s participation, and the current column, on the open theme of personal reflection on any subject, begins on page 8.

Beyond these and other member engagements, one of our goals with the TSA Newsletter this year has been to increase member involvement and visibility. As you’ve already seen twice, a new way we’ve done this is with the “Poet and Poem” column, where we’ve invited some of our strongest tanka writers to tell a bit about themselves and a particular tanka of theirs. In this issue, Thelma Mariano takes a turn (see page 6). We’ve also sought to broaden our connection with the tanka community by being more aware of world tanka, as demonstrated by Alison Williams’ “World Tanka” column (page 7). We are blessed, too, with the second installment of Patricia Prime’s interview with Sanford Goldstein (see page 17). And with this year’s new “Member’s Choice Tanka” selection, one of our members chooses a favorite poem from the previous issue’s “Tanka Café” column, and that winner has the honor of choosing the next winner, creating a chain of selections that involves our members in making the choice and in having a different member’s poem selected each time. Michael Blaine’s selection from the previous newsletter appears on page 8.

A highlight for this issue, too, is a pair of articles by Kristen Deming on the New Year’s Poetry Party at the Imperial Court. The first article is reprinted from 1989, and the newly written second article lists American attendees of this prestigious waka and tanka celebration. My thanks to Kristen not only for this historical information, but for her ongoing involvement with the society as an advisor and Japanese liaison. As many of you know, her husband was deputy ambassador to Japan under Walter Mondale, and she has been very active as a haiku and tanka ambassador herself. Kristen has twice been a participant in the New Year’s Poetry Party at the Imperial Court.

Speaking of Japan, it saddens me to share news about the serious illness of one of the worldwide tanka community’s most significant leaders, Hatsue Kawamura, editor of the Tanka Journal published by the Japan Tanka Poets’ Club (read more about Hatsue on page 4). While the journal will continue with a new editor, this change seems to be the end of a remarkable dedication and commitment to world tanka. Our thoughts and prayers are with Hatsue and her family at this difficult time.

As always, you’re invited to contribute to the Tanka Society of America community, whether by sending in a poem for the “Tanka Café” column, writing about a favorite tanka, writing a book review or article, sharing tanka-related news from your region, or by helping the society as needs arise (and, ahem, it’ll be election time again soon!). We’re part of a larger community, too, which includes many tanka writers who may happen not to be TSA members. (And speaking of the larger community, be sure to submit poems this fall for the Tanka Splendor Awards and for the tanka contest run by the Haiku Poets of Northern California!) Our greater mission is to promote tanka poetry, whether by members or not, so we welcome any news by and beyond that created by members. By developing and supporting this community, as individuals and as a group, we can strengthen the appreciation and understanding of tanka poetry—and I believe this is something we have already been doing. If this were not the case, I doubt that our membership numbers would be increasing as they have been!

It has been said that a well-rounded individual is one who balances the heart and mind, someone who is physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and socially “fit.” With this in mind, it has been important to me that our newsletter not only serve as an historical record of tanka happenings and achievements, and be a socially engaging and conscientious community, but also challenge us with stimulating thinking about the genre of tanka poetry. Not only do we receive this in the Goldstein interview and other material, but in the book reviews (see Michael McClintock’s on page 20). These reviews as well as book listings, give us another opportunity to participate in the tanka community by purchasing some of the books, and I hope each of us might seek to do so, not just to read the poetry or to edify ourselves, but as a way to support the work of other tanka writers.

A thank-you or two before I sign off. First, to Larry Lavenz for doing the newsletter printing and mailing this year, which has been saving the organization a significant amount of money. Thanks to an’ya not only for the tremendous amount of work she puts into our newsletter, but also for the little things, such as the seasonal artwork she has added to the masthead of each issue. These details, among many others, help to make a big difference.

And now let me close with a thought about tanka theory. In the previous issue of this newsletter, Peggy Heinrich’s article on the difference between haiku and tanka presented the following two poems by Christine Shook, one a tanka, the other a reworking of the poem as a haiku:

Pairs lying

around the park grounds

I can’t help

wondering which ones

will survive the summer

Couples lying

around the park grounds

summer’s end

To me, these two poems illustrate the difference between haiku and tanka very well. The haiku presents an image in the context of a season. The tanka presents the emotions of the observer, the speculation about the couples in the park. The tanka is much better, in my opinion. The poem loses something valuable as a haiku, at least in this case, though of course haiku can accomplish certain effects that tanka can’t. Ultimately, I very much like the comment from Marian Smith Sharpe from Peggy’s article that haiku is nature, and tanka is nurture. Indeed, it’s that internal voice, the emotional or intellectual speculation, that often sets a tanka apart from haiku, an internal voice that simultaneously reflects ourselves and nurtures others. And isn’t nurture what community is all about? Amid our intellectual stimulation and the sharing of our poetry, let’s also remember to nurture each other on our common tanka path.

   —Michael Dylan Welch