TANKA TAKE HOME - 9th 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

9th October

Once again, here is a beautiful tanka-prose for you this week!

Losing the Way

“In the spring the full moon shines for the warrior who has lost his way.” (old Ojibway saying)

For those of us who have lost our way there is no light in any season to guide us and strangely so we have grown accustomed to the dark, companions now in the absence of all else. Perhaps it is the true warrior spirit then to drop your weapons and leave when you know the battle is over, when you know you have no enemy but yourself, when you know there is no other place to go. And so you carry this darkness with you wherever you go and it is a constant shadowy companion, someone to tell your secrets to, like a ghost lover: there but not really there, almost touching, almost light . . .

this strange absence

of all touch makes me feel

invisible

there are so many ways

a heart can break

(Tanka Prose, January 2011)

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

TTH: How did you get started as a poet? What about tanka inspired you to embrace this ancient form of poetry? In short, why do you keep writing tanka.

Marjorie: I have always written something while growing up: poems that I would give to my teachers, keeping diaries, and sending letters. I always wrote shorter poems and I found The Japanese Haiku by Kenneth Yasuda in a book store and realized that I have been trying to write haiku all my life. From there, I found tanka and fell in love with the sensitivity and subjectivity of that form.

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's tanka-prose resonates deeply, touching on the feeling of being lost or losing our way that many of us experience in one way or another. What does that mean to you? This week's challenge invites you to explore your inner self, reflect on this question, and write about it if you feel inspired. 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.