TANKA TAKE HOME - 16th October 2024 | Marjorie Buettner

hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola & Suraja Menon Roychowdhury

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

poet of the month: Marjorie Buettner

16th October

Once again, here are two beautiful tanka for you this week!

putting away

the silverware--suddenly

I am caught--

upside-down in a world

mercurial and floating

(Second Place, 2008 Saigyo Awards)

new year's day drive

shadows of winter trees

absorbing the light

everything speaks to me now

of the forgiveness of change

(Tangled Hair, Issue 4, 2002)

We had the pleasure of asking Marjorie Buettner a few questions, and she graciously took the time to answer them.

TTH: How do you develop a tanka? Please guide us through the stages of a poem.

Marjorie: First, of course, there is the feeling you get when you need to express something inexpressible but you still try. You watch and listen; you pay attention to the trees moving in the breeze, the birds singing in consort, and, perhaps, the lap of lake water touching the shore, then you write down your images that captured you like a spider's web captures its prey and hopefully by the end of the tanka you realize what those images were whispering to you: it's like an answering music.

More about Marjorie:

Marjorie Buettner, American Pushcart Prize–nominated, award-winning haiku, haibun, tanka, and sijo poet. Her work has been published throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. and won prizes in the James W. Hackett International Award for Haiku (2000 and 2003) the Harold G. Henderson Awards (2002, 2004, 2007, and 2011), the Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award (2003, 2004, 2005), the Robert Frost Poetry Festival (2008 and 2009), and the Kusamakura Haiku Competition (2006), among others. She has taught haiku and tanka at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and presented poetry workshops throughout Minnesota. She is a former editor for the online journal Contemporary Haibun Online and frequently writes book reviews for haiku and tanka journals. Seeing It Now, a collection of haiku and tanka, appeared in 2008; her collection of haibun, Some Measure of Existence (2014), won first place in the Mildred Kanterman Merit Book Awards and was also nominated for the Minnesota Book Awards. Buettner lives in Chisago City, Minnesota.

Are you inspired?

Challenge for this week:

Marjorie uses such beautiful phrases in her tanka. Both of the above tanka are a testament to that. I usually pick poems with a similar thread to showcase. Here, I found myself thinking of the word "reflection". The first one is a literal reflection of an image, while the second conveys reflection as internal dialogue. I was really taken by the phrase "the forgiveness of change"—something to reflect on. What do you think? We'd love to hear your thoughts. Your word for the week is REFLECTION. Make of it what you will. Mostly, have fun!

Give these ideas some thought and share your tanka and tanka-prose with us here. Keep your senses open, observe things that happen around you and write. You can post tanka and tanka-prose outside this theme too.

An essay on how to write tanka: Tanka Flights

PLEASE NOTE 1. Post only one poem at a time.

2. Only 2 tanka and two tanka-prose per poet per prompt.

Tanka art of course if you want to.

3. Share your best-polished pieces.

4. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written. Let it simmer for a while.

5. Post your final edited version on top of your original verse.

6. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.

We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished tanka and tanka-prose (within 250 words) to be considered for inclusion in the haikuKATHA monthly magazine.