WAKA?!?--Preparing for Tuesday's Seminar:
Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature is a very useful, long-serving (1955) collection of poems, selections from tales, a snipet of Genji Monogatari, letters, etc. from the earliest periods through the Tokugawa.
After perusing a number of selections I had one problem...what is a waka? On p. 28 Keene explains a haiku as a seventeen-syllable poem and on p.31 a tanka as a thirty-one syllable poem... useful general information. BUT...
If you want your students to try and write a "waka", "haiku", "tanka", or "renga" it is not very helpful. In the Encyclopedia Brittanica I found the information under the entry "waka" very useful.
---A haiku (pai ju) is a three-line poem of 5-7-5 syllables.
---A tanka (sometimes called a waka) is a five-line poem of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables.
There is also the "linked verse" (Keene p. 314) or "renga" in which three or more poets write alternating "tanka" (31 syllables 5-7-5-7-7) poems which are "linked" by a topic.
In the most famous of Chinese novels, Hong lou Meng (A Dream of Red Mansions), Baochai, Baoyu, Daiyu, and others form a poetry club in which they write alternating verses and poems in contests of merriment.(Hong Lou Meng, chapter 37, volume 2, Foreign Language Press).
I have, as have all elementary teachers and secondary english teachers, taught haiku to my students grades 2-6 and sometimes I taught tanka.
But I thought it would be exciting to try to teach "renga" or linked verse (tanka) to groups of three students and try to have them "link" their poems. I may start out trying "link" three haiku poems at first if the tanka are to difficult for my 2nd graders. I'll keep you posted.
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