NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This issue contains 106 tanka containing a variety of different approaches, written by 84 poets. The popularity of tanka, a five line form of poetry originating in Japan, continues to grow in America and the English speaking countries, particularly where haiku has a strong following. This issue contains news of the Tanka Society of America, formed in April 2000.

William Higginson in TANKA WITH FEELING (The Art of Haiku 2000) suggests that in typical tanka, a natural phenomenon presented as itself in the first three lines takes on a metaphorical value in the last two, where an emotional twist often floods back to colour the whole poem, although he also points to the more haiku like tanka of Shiki.

Here in AMERICAN TANKA there appears to be no particular house style, with a wide range of approaches in evidence — what might be described as long haiku; emotional writing, including the traditional tanka focus on love; haiku with comment; two part haiku; double haiku with a common pivot line; and what appear to be more like Western blank verse. They are all here, and make for enjoyable reading, from the haunting:

	you leave
	nothing but empty nails
	on the walls
	nothing but snagging reminders
	of nothingness

	my father
	in the waiting room
	watching fish —
	his face sea-green
	his eyes floating

New for this issue is a summary of the background and/or interest of the poets. Although the work must always stand on its own merits these kind of notes often makes interesting reading, especially where the writer comes from a different or unusual background.

To be recommended. It kept me going back to refresh my memory, and made me want to try my hand at the form.

Editor Laura Maffei dedicates this issue to the memory of the dead of 9/11. She says that she thought of changing the content to suit the dedication, but finding that

a few of the poems read differently now, in this recent aftermath, than they did before.

	already autumn:
	the first chill
	and my thoughts
	follow the blue smoke
	of distant chimneys

	these spells of weeping
	i fear to let go as if
	they, like that frayed rope
	stretched from boat to pier,
	could keep me tied to you

	winter
	over hazy mountains
	the wires
	connecting electric towers
	lead my drifting heart

It looks good, every tanka gets a page to itself. The whole idea of the magazine seems to be summed up by this one from Paul O. Williams:

	How did the tall tree
	cram all its reflection
	into this small pool?
	I erase it with a stone.
	Right away it starts over.

This magazine is an international journal devoted exclusively to single English-language tanka. Here are a few examples (from the 60-odd total) by Ann Cooper:

	past midnight
	battling income tax
	at my desk
	framed by the window
	a red fox, motionless

	on this gray day
	geese flying in a V—
	i am left behind
	palms pressed
	to the frosted window

	from the window
	I watch as you leave
	taking
	our son's hand
	and his every other weekend