My Orange Parker Pen
This is a tanka prose that was first published in Blithe Spirit 36.1, the journal of the British Haiku Society, in February this year. It is different from the original version, which was about eggs and lockdown and parents. This is about writing a poem and cooking eggs. It deviates slightly from reality as I mention coffee, where we always have tea for breakfast. Tea doesn’t really smell so I took the lazy way out and said we had coffee so I could add an extra sense to the poem.
But first, a tanka, from the same issue. It is based on the annual culling of the Christmas card list as my circle of cousins decreases.
old Christmas card
displayed again
fading slightly
sent by a man
who will not send another
I thought that’s what it was about, anyway. Julia reads it as a story about the Christmas card I have been sending her since 1988. It’s a good one and the message is still relevant. Why waste money, I ask, on another?
Life, seen in a Frying Pan
In lockdown, I decided to make better scrambled eggs and wrote a poem in my head as I stirred and learned. It spilled onto paper, took shape and, like the eggs, looked good. On the first rejection I checked all the words and moved them into better order. On the second I added an anecdote, on the third an allegory. At the fourth attempt I slimmed it down.
After five attempts I wondered if it might be bad, or if editors might dislike poems about scrambled eggs. When you think about it, it isn’t a subject you ever see. Eventually it faded from my mind, as poems like it often do. Recently, stirring eggs and making breakfast for my wife, I breathed in the toast and coffee smells and remembered the first line.
five eggs
two broken yolks
a speck of shell
things which are not perfect
still turn out well
The pen that Julia made at the wood turning group
I wasn’t familiar with tanka, but I like both of those very much. Is it okay that the second one has a rhyme? (Because I think I like the rhyme).
It’s interesting that both the intended and the second reading of the Christmas card tanka fit so well. I suppose a poem so short will always be open to different interpretations.
It went down on paper exactly as it came into my head and was a matter of considerable soul-searching whether I removed the rhyme or not. Generally it is discouraged. However, I sent it in with a group of others and this was the one that was selected.
With respect to meanings, it is a case of leaving what they call “dreaming room” so that people can fit their own meaning to the poem.
Greatly enjoyed your post and the poems and the comments on same. You and your circle of friends are most amusing. It is nice to learn that other couples exchange the same greeting cards year after year since they remain beautiful, the message still pertains after many years, they’re free (now) and the practice is environmentally sound. Thanks for making the effort to share your thoughts. You make me smile. This morning you made me laugh out loud. 😉
It was a habit I got from my father. he gave my mother the same birthday card for over 40 years of their 60+ year marriage. If it worked for him I thought it might work for me. As for the “circle of friends”, they accumulated over time and they they have helped me through lockdown and a few other problem times. That seems to be how blogging works. Now you are here too . . . 🙂
Very very good. It really doesn’t matter what the subject is if the poems are good
Thank you Derrick. I agree with you, though there are others who talk of “aesthetics”.
I enjoyed both of your tanka poems, and seeing Julia’s pen she made in her wood turning group. Keep being creative, both of you!
Thank you Lavinia. We will do our best. 🙂
I’ve only begun to understand tankas through you. But I still need to know what exactly makes the Christmas card poem a tanka.
A poem in five lines, 31 syllables or less, no rhymes, no title. Like me, they are simple things. Traditionally loves poems. I just read a definition that says they are only suitable for “deep” themes and if you want to write a poem about bacon and eggs you should use another form. Oh dear!
Or, a more erudite definition from “Simply Haiku” in 2009 – “. . . the contemporary tanka in English may be described as typically an untitled free-verse short poem having anywhere from about twelve to thirty-one syllables arranged in words and phrases over five lines, crafted to stand alone as a unitary, aesthetic whole—a complete poem.”
The thing is that you make it look so easy when we read them, that it is hard for us to comprehend the hard work that must go in to making them. You make me think that I could write poetry even though I know I can’t.
Of course you can. Your life is far more interesting than mine and your facility with words is plain in your blog. All you need is confidence and the desire to fritter your life away on the pursuit of a few words in the middle of a page.