3 Tanka written in English
The writing of tanka in English started slower than the writing of English-language haiku, with the first English-language tanka collections dating from 1974. There is still much less tanka written than haiku, but interest in tanka in English is growing.
Different from Japan, where poets often write primarily or only in one poetry form, many English-language tanka poets also write other short poetry forms including haiku, senryu, and cinquain, and most early English-language tanka appeared in journals that featured a variety of small poem forms (the main American Haiku magazines publish only haiku and sometimes senryu). It has only been recently that there have been journals devoted exclusively to tanka, including American Tanka (1996) and Tangled Hair in Britain. It was in April 2000 that the Tanka Society of America was formed.
4 Famous Waka and Tanka Poets
5 Resources
5.1 Waka anthologies
- Brower, Robert H., and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry, Stanford University Press, © 1961 BooksEnthsiast.com pbk [527 pp. a standard academic study]
- Carter, Steven D., editor and translator, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology. Stanford University Press, 1991 [waka, tanka, linked poetry, haiku and senryu with translations and annotations]
- Carter, Steven D., editor and translator, Waiting for the Wind: Thirty-six Poets of Japan's Late Medieval Age, Columbia University Press, 1989
- Cranston, Edwin, editor and translator, A Waka Anthology, Volume: The Gem-Glistening Cup, Stanford University Press, © 1993 BooksEnthsiast.com cloth BooksEnthsiast.com pbk [988 pp. includes almost all waka from the Kokiji (Record of Ancient Matters completed 712) through the Man'yoshu (Collection for Ten Thousand Generations c.759) and also includes the Buddha's Footstone Poems (21 Bussokuseki poems carved in stone at the Yakushiji temple in Nara, c. 753). Part of a four-volume project.]
- Keene, Donald, compiled and edited, Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Grove Press, 1955
- McCullough, Helen Craig, Brocade by Night: 'Kokin Wakashu' and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry, Stanford University Press, 1985
- McCullough, Helen Craig, Kokin Wakashu: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry, with 'Tosa Nikki' and 'Shinsen Waka, Stanford University Press 1985
- Miner, Earl, An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry, Stanford University Press © 1968 [based on Brower and Miner]
- Philippi, Donald, translator, This Wine of Peace, the Wine of Laughter: A Complete Anthology of Japan's Earliest Songs, New York, Grossman, 1968
- Sato, Hiroaki, and Burton Watson, editors and translators, From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry (multiple editions available)
