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Sonam Chhoki
an appraisal by Elizabeth Howard

back home
from the oncology ward
I peel my first orange
the burst of juice and smell
colour of the sun I missed
                  Sonam Chhoki

I am impressed at the quality of the work in the tenth edition of the tanka journal, Eucalypt. The task of choosing one tanka over all of others is rather overwhelming. Two tanka about writing, Shona Bridge’s a distant light and Mary Franklin’s suddenly, appeal to me as a writer who knows about the two pages, one blank, the other overflowing with words that pour from some source beyond us. I am intrigued by Kath Abela Wilson’s when what might happen/happens, sympathize with the ones who have experienced recent earthquakes: Barbara Strang, Helen Yong, and Nola Borrell. None of us are immune to natural disasters—floods, tornados, hurricanes, fires, etc., that shatter lives. Other tanka appeal to me: Michele L. Harvey’s painting, Allegria Imperial’s into fog, Lynette Arden’s thanks to my mother, Max Ryan’s woken on the eve. One that I like especially well–that I also wanted to choose–is Edith Bartholomeusz’s tanka about children. Far too many children in all parts of this earth are on the far side/of the river:–/no bridge/from there to here.

After reading through the tanka several times, I eventually chose back home. This tanka followed me around while I was making up the bed and doing laundry. Chhoki has captured the universal experience of cancer and chemotherapy in a wonderfully positive way. We all know the horrors, either through personal experience (I have had breast cancer) or the helpless agony of watching a loved one or a close friend suffer and deteriorate (I have lost a daughter and a sister). Chhoki has hinted at the months of treatment, but chosen to emphasize the joy of recovery.

She leaves the misery, the darkness, colour of the sun I missed, to the end of the poem, after we know the story has a happy ending. When the doctor pronounces the sentence, perhaps avoiding eye contact, the lights go out, the sun hides its face. The world is gray, foggy, dreary. Favorite foods lose their flavor, become repulsive; the morning coffee tastes like metal. The smell of food, bubbling on the stove, baking in the oven, roasting on the grill, is nauseating. Hair falls out, skin becomes ashen. The face in the mirror is ghostly, skeletal. Exhaustion begins the day and ends it. Walking, even a few steps, causes faintness. The mind is clouded. A simple chore, such as balancing a checkbook, the household accounts, is a long arduous task.

The first line, back home, is wonderful. Home is that comfort place we hurry to after a long arduous journey or a hard day’s work. There we can kick off our shoes, put on our old faded jeans, breathe deeply, and relax. There we refresh mind, body, and spirit for a new beginning. In the second line, we learn the long arduous journey has been to the oncology ward, sitting for hours while poisons drip into the vein, poisons that cause such awful nausea, fatigue, depression. All of that is past now, we are home.

Color bursts back into our lives, into our faces, senses reawaken. Once favorite foods again become favorites. We rejoice in the smell of bread baking in the oven. Morning coffee has the aroma, the taste, that we love, that sets us stirring, ready for sunrise, birdsong, a walk among the flowers. Walk, such a wonderful word. What joy, that first hike, actually climbing a hill after many months of incapacity. The mind is whole again. Thoughts, dreams, ideas burst forth as juice bursts from the orange. All of the lights that were extinguished back there in the oncology ward are back on again. We soak up the sun, a giant orange ball rising in the east, in a radiant halo of color, colors we know and colors so rare we do not even know their names.

Joy to all who have traveled through the darkness and come back home to the light.


                                                                        Elizabeth Howard

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David Terelinck
an appraisal by Mariko Kitakubo

only the moon
understands my grief . . .
waxing, waning
sometimes so complete
it cannot be ignored

                  David Terelinck

From my first reading of this tanka, I could feel the silence, beauty and coldness of the moon.
The moon has changing faces . . . new moon, crescent, half moon, full moon . . . and as you know, we are usually unable to see it by day.
And I often feel that the moon is watching over me – like my late parents.

While I can't feel the strength or dazzle of the sun from the moon, the moon has particular nuance, I think.

The poet, David Terelinck, also feels the healing from the moon. He wrote "only the moon understands my grief . . ."

I immediately felt drawn toward the first 2 lines. "my grief" is the writer's own emotion at first, but then we (the readers) can share his emotion as our own.

He expressed this directly by the beginning word, "only". We can understand about the writer's solitude and that no one could understand his grief but the moon.

And he continues to consider the phases of the moon. "waxing, waning"; "...so complete" These also relate to our life, our feelings and passions.

He used the word "sometimes" . . . yes, sometimes our life appears to be "waxing " and "so complete". But also sometimes "waning".
In the depth of my difficulties, I feel this "waning" of myself.

But we are not alone, I think . . .
The Moon is watching me, watching us, like our best friend, like our late parents or late grand parents.
Are they smiling in your hearts?
Yes, they are always smiling in our hearts and watching us, sending their deep love.

In the last line, he wrote, "it cannot be ignored".
Yes, like our beauty of our own life, we can't ignore the beauty of the complete moon.

This tanka expresses our common feeling of life perfectly by the poet’s excellent skill.

David Terelinck, thank you so much for sharing this wonderful tanka.

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Rodney Williams
an appraisal by Sonam Chhoki

While in the creative throes of composing Kubla Khan, Coleridge was famously interrupted by a visitor from Porlock. In my case the visitor from Porlock took the guise of indecision. Which one from the many accomplished tanka should I pick?

Then I had a dream. It was the New Year pilgrimage to the cave temple, high above my ancestral valley. People were prostrating and offering fruits, butter lamps and coins. I held out the Eucalypt Issue 11. The eyes of the Buddha of Compassion opened. But before he could speak I woke up.

The visitor from Porlock was still in the room. I read the poems all over again and this one by Rodney Williams began to take shape in my mind.

in a field
flanked by plum trees
a chimney
its wood-fire stove
burning with rust

The imagery of a field flanked by plum trees immediately opens up a vista. The tanka then turns with an unexpected image of a chimney. The juxtaposition of the field and plum trees on the one hand, and the chimney and the wood-fire stove, on the other, evokes a surreal de Chirico-like effect.

The verb:

flanked

has a military ring to it, suggesting order in the way the plum trees stand, and contrasts with the solitary chimney of the abandoned wood-fire stove.

Williams’ tanka is one of dichotomy of nature and civilisation. The discarded stove represents the latter. The detail:

burning with rust

hints of the colours of autumn while the plum trees are a classic symbol of spring particularly in Japanese poetry. There’s a sense of the triumph of the natural world over that of civilization in that the plum trees and the field are still alive and can renew themselves, whereas the man-made artefact, the wood stove, which used to burn wood, is now defunct.

Williams has imbued a moment of keen observation with a potential for a more universal awareness of the nature of things. The power of this tanka lies in the way it suggests multiple reading of a relatively simple scene.


Other poems too have made a deep impact on this indecisive reviewer and deserve a special mention.

Barbara Strang has an unexpected framing of the mountains in this detail in her tanka:

through metal struts
the flawless mountains


Regret and anguish are captured in these lines of Barbara Taylor's tanka:

... does it really matter
mother never knew?


Louise McIvor's tanka has a similar poignant note:

our rose bush
finally in bloom


Peggy Heinrich's tanka carries the weight of childhood guilt and loneliness.


A poignant sense of being out of sync with the world around them, come across in the tanka of both Amelia Fielden and Joyce S Greene. Fielden's:

a mind too aware
of what comes after dawn

is laden with disquiet and Greene's detail housebound marks a painful rupture from the world outside.


Ken Moore's keen observation of a toddler's silent plea is imbued with a note of compassion.


There is skilful combination of metaphor and physical description in Carole MacRury's tanka:

offstage ...
rinsing the rage
from his painted face

The alliteration in rinsing the rage has an onomatopoeic effect.


Mary Franklin's tanka likewise observes a shift, the green hat denoting a rather positive and creative outcome.


I like the sonority in Kirsten Cliff's

tinker, tinker tinker
of teaspoon against mug

and her motif strikes a chord with many of us who have struggled with editing our poems.

There's an irreverent note in the old woman's laugh drowning the ring of a much coveted and iconic contemporary gadget, the iphone. This makes Alex Ask's tanka a delightful read.


Finally, I would like to conclude with J. Zimmerman's celebration of enduring love:

thirty years later
... the grasp still strong

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Dorothy McLaughlin
an appraisal by David Terelinck

Beverley George’s keen eye for high quality tanka ensures that every poem in issue 12 of Eucalypt is worthy of a Scribble Award or special mention. In doing so, Beverley ensures each person who has to pass the Award to a new recipient has an extremely difficult challenge in front of them. There are many exceptional tanka in Eucalypt issue 12 that are more than worthy of the Award. And these all appeared vividly on each subsequent reading of the journal. However, the one poem that kept drawing me back over and over was Dorothy McLaughlin’s tanka on page 7:

prayers
at their child’s deathbed –
the answer
that left his faith stronger
made her an atheist
                  Dorothy McLaughlin

For someone who is a lover of classical tanka, I felt this poem has it all . . . the classic structure of S/L/S/L/L format, no redundant words or phrases, and is a tanka where each line successively builds on the strength of the one before it to create a tanka that touches the heart, soul and mind. It is a tanka not easily forgotten, and has many subtle layers.

For me this tanka encapsulates three of the themes that classical Japanese tanka poets wrote about; it contains all the elements of love, loss and longing. Who could not be moved by the plight of devoted and loving parents praying at the side of their dying child? The love of parent for child is said to be one of the strongest and most motivational loves within the world.

And this very act of prayer and love at the deathbed gives such a visually strong image of the imminent loss they must prepare for. But beyond this physical loss of young life is also a loss of relationship; for we inherently know that husband and wife must drift apart if the poles of their faith are moving in vastly opposing directions. And then we see a spiritual loss for the wife . . . the death of her child, and a failure of prayer to be answered, “made her an atheist”. This careful selection of phrase suggests this wife was not an atheist before this event, and therefore there is an acute loss of relationship with her faith.

There is a desperate sense of longing evident within this poem. Longing for the prayers to be answered, longing for their child to live, perhaps the one with faith longs for a peaceful passing of their child, or from the other a longing to have a faith that sustains. One can also imagine a longing that many parents may experience in similar situations . . . that roles were reversed with them and their child.

The tanka opens with an expansive view due to the use of a single word of great strength, prayers. Prayers are open to everyone who chooses to use them, and can encompass an unending scope of requests from the insignificant to the profound. This gives every reader an entry point that pulls us immediately into the tanka; we all have the ability to pray. This view then very quickly narrows in line two as we are directed to the reason for the prayers – a dying child. The tanka again opens up in the last two lines to give us so much space that whole worlds now exist between the two parents. And this concept of faith and atheism ensures we are taken back to our starting point of prayers. In this manner the tanka has a sensitive elliptical quality that is highly satisfying to the reader.

On each reading I continue to find something new in this tanka to enjoy. And although this tanka leaves me breathless with its pain and raw emotion, it does so gently, without hubris or intrusion, without preaching or proselytising. This tanka continues to linger at each reading, and will remain a firm favourite with me for many years to come.

Many other tanka within this issue also deserve a special mention. Each of the following has moved me for different reasons. But what they all have in common is a genuine poetic lyricism that never fails to engage me, a sense of relationship within the tanka that I can easily relate to, a gentleness of thought and expression, and a sincerity of emotion of the lived journey.

oversewing
heather with wattle
I tack on
the soft tread of your feet,
your arm linked through mine

                  Kathy Kituai (page 26)


I can see no one
for miles on these wind-roamed moors
yet, these breaths
of incense, secondhand . . .
another’s rite, or refuge

                  Claire Everett (page 28)


blue mussels
bubble through shells
half open . . .
like dying, this wait
for an incoming tide

                  Carole MacRury (page 40)


if you were here
we’d take our tea
up on the roof
and set the world to right –
if only you were here

                  Anne Benjamin (page 41)

Congratulations to everyone in issue #12. It has been a joy to read everyone’s work, and it is a sincere privilege to pass the Award to Dorothy.

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Aubrie Cox
an appraisal by Rodney Williams

news
you’ve been dying
to share –
ice rearranges
in my glass
                  Aubrie Cox

Two people meet, over drinks, to chat. One of them is anxious to pass on news that seems personally devastating at first, only to take on other implications instead. In a further twist, such tidings provoke reactions from the listener which the bearer of bad news might never have anticipated ...

It would seem that the two characters featured in Aubrie Cox’s intriguing tanka enjoy a long-standing bond. Gender is not specified - nor is the exact status of their relationship. Probably friends, and most likely both female, they would appear not to have seen each other recently.

At first instance, the opening of “news” suggests that the poem’s speaker – whether Aubrie herself, or a constructed persona – is hearing grievous tidings, to the effect that the friend has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness: “news/ you’ve been dying”.

Instantly, however, that bleak possibility is given a lighter spin, via a clever and playful use of enjambment spanning into the third line, combined with a colloquial – as against literal – turn of phrase. Rather than being at death’s door, the bearer of news might have gossip about others – or a personal disclosure – which she (or he) is “dying/ to share”.

A genuine strength in so sparse yet rich a piece is the way in which this tanka invites us to hypothesise. One reading could involve this pair sharing a third acquaintance, with the first character desperate to convey sensational tidings – hot off the grapevine – about unfortunate developments in the life of that mutual friend. Such information is grim, prompting – at first reading – a feeling of sadness, as symbolised by “ice”: plainly a sense of coldness imbues the second stage of this tanka. Yet perhaps the deeper scenario being suggested might not be – once again – quite as simple as it initially appeared.

Maybe this chilliness denotes not so much sorrow in itself, as distaste at having been told devastating news in an insensitive way. This iciness of heart could be directed towards “you” – the teller of sad tales – as an embittered response to hurtful gossip. To look at this possibility from a different slant, we could identify a further complexity in this apparently simple poem by appreciating its symbolism, not only on an emotional level, but also on a perceptual one:

ice rearranges
in my glass

Across this tanka’s punctuated break, Aubrie Cox effects an adroit transition: implicit here – in so few words – is a good deal more than the notion that the news conveyed has had a chilling impact, as characterised by a traditional (indeed, oft-used) metaphor of ice.

We know that different types of lenses bend rays of light to varying extents, affecting what and how the human eye can see as a result. In a poem so spare in detail, the writer has opted to be explicit about the presence of not one but two substances that both have translucent, refracting properties: glass as well as ice.

The curved surface of a whisky tumbler is sure to distort beams of light, as will blocks of ice. Aubrie Cox pointedly shows how these ice-blocks shift about in their glass, rather than remaining still. Yet the poet is firm in her refusal to use a passive voice: she does not say that “ice is rearranged”. So frugal in its diction as to feel no need to say “ice rearranges itself”, the writing suggests that frozen blocks have not so much been jiggled around by the drinker’s hand, as they have become active – even reactive – of their own accord.

When ice-cubes move, the rays of light passing through them will be refracted differently. Again, if sorrowful news is conveyed too cheerily, this could likewise prompt an unexpected reaction – indeed, a new angle; a reassessment – in the form of distaste at insensitivity.

In addressing her associate directly as “you”, while referring to herself in the first person, Aubrie Cox confronts her audience, perhaps challenging us to reflect about whether we may have passed on a hot tale ourselves, only to become embarrassed when such gossip left our listeners cold. The poet’s key strategy is to suggest and yet withhold, rather than being explicit about what form the news in question might take, or which reactions it could trigger.

In this light, another interpretation presents itself. Perhaps two young women have agreed to meet for drinks, with one ecstatic at having recently formed a romantic attachment with a man known to them both. The trouble may be that the second woman had herself entertained hopes of finding love in this same quarter, whereas now all she can exhibit is feigned happiness for her friend, while her heart freezes over with a sorrow that must remain hidden.

Traditional in structure, lean in form, inferential in approach, this poem asks questions that it declines to answer – to its credit – exemplifying the simple yet complicated dictum that less is best. Aubrie Cox’s tanka – like all striking work in Japanese short-forms – is deftly crafted and suggestive; minimalist yet thought-provoking. What a pleasure it has been to appraise such poetry – “news” truly is the finest piece that I have discovered lately, in a genre long since dear to my spirit.


Rodney Williams

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John Quinnett
an appraisal by Aubrie Cox

dogs are buried
in the woods behind
our house—
please let's talk no more
about leaving

— John Quinnett     

One of the hardest things about leaving my childhood home was the fact that our family dog was buried in the backyard; it felt like we were leaving both the house and her behind. Aside from the triggering of my own personal memories and sentiments or even the feelings of any pet owner, the success of Quinnett's poem rests in the balance of being open and holding back. This tanka dares to provide what has the potential to be too much information; however its presentation and structure of information and shift from the first to the second half of the poem creates tension, and the unraveling mystery raises as many questions as it answers.

Declarative statements in short poetry can be a dangerous thing when not executed properly, especially in Japanese forms that strive to leave some things to the imagination and open for the reader to enter the moment. The first half of the poem—"dogs are buried / in the woods behind / our house"—leaves little room for argument. It's the line breaks that open the poem for interaction and interpretation. As each line adds new information about the location of the buried dogs and their proximity to the speaker, the end of each line brings the reader to a stopping place to ruminate over each piece of information and consider the possibilities. The poem moves from generic to specific in its telling of the buried dogs, while also moving from a smaller to larger space from the burial site to the woods and the house beyond. Meanwhile, the emotions move from uneasiness to slightly more personal and melancholy. It is not until the second half that it's clearer that the dogs likely belong to the speaker (and even then, it can't be confirmed); nevertheless, the closeness of the dead dogs to the house alone creates a connection between the dogs and speaker. The layout of the land in the first half creates a level of intrigue for the reader; the dash promises both a shift from and potential insight into why the first half matters.

The last two lines of the tanka also build on top of one another and open up room for reader participation. By itself "please let's talk no more" could be understood to mean "let's no longer discuss the dogs buried out back," or a simple plea for a moment of silence. The last line brings the mystery of the first half's importance to a close as it resonates and circles back to feelings of unease; meanwhile, it opens up to a series of new questions: Why would the speaker and his or her significant other/family consider moving? How many times has this conversation (that I imagine happening) occurred? How much of this poem is actually spoken aloud, and how much is silently understood by all parties? The tanka is generous in what it does tell the reader, but equally coy when it comes to these questions. The rich balance tugs at the heartstrings and makes the reader feel the strain the speaker must be experiencing in the thought of the dogs and the possibility of leaving, and on top of it all, the disagreement with whoever else is included in "our house."

The dash visually creates a clear separate between the two halves of the poem. This makes them feel like independent ideas, but they are so dependent upon one another for their significance. Why is the information about the dogs important? Because there is talk of leaving. Why does the speaker not want to leave? The dogs buried in the woods. The image and emotion beautifully shift and circle back, never quite resolving and always bringing the reader back. Eucalypt's pages always contain breathtaking tanka, but this is one that wouldn't leave me alone when I tried to sleep at night. If that is not the sign of a successful poem, I'm not sure what is.


© Aubrie Cox

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Barbara Curnow
an appraisal by Dorothy McLaughlin

saffron robes
shiny shaven head
a boy sits
reciting prayers
not yet, by heart

— Barbara Curnow 

The image is arresting, a young boy who has dedicated himself to the sacred. His old life is gone, his hair shorn, his secular clothes replaced by saffron robes. His youthful frame is adorned in garb that proclaims his vocation.

Barbara Curnow has painted him sitting and still. Then she draws her readers and herself closer to hear the boy pray. She shares what she realizes, that the child does not know these prayers by heart. Like members of all religious communities and of all religions, he must grow into his faith. The boy, I assume, has made a vow, a step that's not the end of life's pilgrimage but one of its milestones. "Not yet, by heart". I wasn't sure about the comma in line five. It made me slow down and pause. Yes, I thought, he must know many of the words already by rote. Time and grace and fellow monks will help him engrave the prayers in his heart, the core of his being. It hasn't happened yet, completely, but it will.

The tanka reminded me of Jesus as a youth in the Temple at Jerusalem, talking with the elders. Also, I thought of boys serving in children's armies, as well as young people at rites of bar and bat mitzvahs and confirmation, their courage as they commit themselves to the unknown.

Joyce S Greene, too wrote about the power of a child, a girl who brought joy and comfort to the person I assume was a grandmother, the first four lines brimming with joy, the last startling, leaving me to ask where is her mother, dead, in jail, a runaway. And Elizabeth Howard's tanka inspired this reader's pity for a boy, cold and supperless, desperately in need of the world's help, compelling those who witness his troubles to aid him and others in like circumstances.

Many readings allowed me to hear the softness of the tanka's language, the "s" sounds in saffron (a gentle word, a glowing color), robes, shiny, shaven, sits, reciting, prayers. By design or chance, there was no sibilation in the last line.

The power of words, the power of a child: Barbara Curnow has given us a memorable and beautiful jewel.


© Dorothy McLaughlin

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Michele L. Harvey
an appraisal by John Quinnett

a mountain peak
softens with age
the stoop
that was your father's
has become your own

— Michele L. Harvey 

An old man, living in the oldest mountains on earth, who looks in the mirror every morning and sees his father looking back, this tanka had me at hello. And yet, dutiful to my task, I read and reread Eucalypt 14 to make certain I hadn't missed a more precious offering. This got me into trouble. The more I read the more I found myself torn in this direction and that. So many deserving poems! Indecision, my old pal, knocked on the door. I let him in and he stayed two weeks. It seemed like the 60s again. I went into a lateral drift. A gentle nudge from Beverley and I woke up to the task once more. I decided to choose the tanka that first stole my heart: Harvey's "a mountain peak."

Resonance seems like an overworked word when used in reference to Japanese short form verse, yet for me personally, this is the poem's most outstanding quality. It's a poem that echoes like a train whistle through the coves and hollows of the Great Smoky Mountains, where I've been hiding out from the world all these years. The poem found me here, and spoke to me in a voice so simple and direct I nearly shuddered with the shock of recognition. My first impulse was to memorize the poem and go about reciting it to myself, my little dog, all my friends when I ran into them, even guys at the bar in town. I did that. That's how much this tanka resonated with me.

The tanka opens with a simple declarative sentence: "a mountain peak/softens with age." These first two lines present an image so arresting and true that I paused right there, at the end of the second line, and sank into reverie. I didn't want to go on. The poet may or may not live in a place like mine, but all I have to do is look up and I see mountain peaks softening with age all around me. In contemplating this image I thought about the geological age of the Smokies and the time it has taken to soften or wear them down. If the reader is looking for "dreaming room," the first part of this poem has it in abundance.

Finally, dropping down to the third and central line I was caught on a ledge and held there, stopped by those two simple words: "the stoop." More perfect hinges, or pivot lines have appeared in tanka before; I just can't think of one. This is the crucial line of the poem. Adding this line to the first half of the tanka and it works with haiku-like effect. But coupling this line with the concluding two lines and you're hit with a more startling image. The poem suddenly explodes with meaning. That stoop says it all: about growing older, about being your father's son, about learning to bend into the wind, about accepting with serenity those things you can't change, about passing time and eternity itself. I like the way this tanka loops you right back to the first part for another reading, and the way the two halves seem to fuse together. The marvel to me is how Harvey is able to accomplish all this in a sixteen word, twenty syllable poem. There is not one word or syllable too many in this tanka. And yet, it left me standing on a mountain peak in the Smokies with my father remembering sixty years ago when I stood with him as a boy on another mountain peak in the High Sierra mountains of California. The Smokies are old mountains; the Sierras young, jagged, and tall.

Thank you, Michele, for this wonderful poem. .


John Quinnett

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Kiyoko Ogawa
an appraisal by Barbara Curnow

all my life
I expect no grand bouquet
yet wish for
someone to greet me
with a single flower

— Kiyoko Ogawa 

I love the way this poem settles me into a feeling of deep peace and contentment, but also arouses my curiosity. The first two lines indicate that the protagonist has never been a person who expects showy demonstrations of appreciation, praise or love. And the words ?all my life? prove that her wish is no passing preference, but a desire so fundamental as to be life-long. But why would someone hold such a wish so strongly? I admire and delight in this tanka because it evokes in me several answers to that question.

A bouquet, especially a grand one, can certainly be stunning. However, its mixture of shapes, colours, sizes and fragrances lacks the quiet beauty, simplicity and understatement of a single flower. Our senses may be overwhelmed by a big bouquet, but are likely to be soothed and pacified by apprehending just one bloom. So Kiyoko?s tanka speaks to me of a yearning for the beauty of simplicity; a sentiment that I?m sure most tanka lovers appreciate.

To be greeted with a single flower, also, in my mind, represents being greeted in a more intimate or personal way. It conveys a longing to be deeply known, understood and accepted by another. The poem does not express a wish to be greeted by a particular person, just ?someone?; the longing to connect deeply with at least one person in this world.

The reference to a single flower also reminds me of the famous story about the Buddha, in which a seeker approached him, offered a flower, bowed, and asked for his teachings. The Buddha sat quietly, then slowly, in a wordless message to the assembled crowd, held up the flower. This gesture referred to the unity of all things; a truth that is beyond words and can only be known through one?s inner experience.

I also admire the structure of this tanka, because it helped me to experience its essence. I love the way the third line stands strongly. It not only emphasises the wish, but ensures that by the end of the poem, the hustle and bustle of bouquets is far behind, and I am left holding a single flower.

So for me, this exquisite tanka by Kiyoko Ogawa speaks of a longing for simplicity and deep connection with others. Such a universal theme, so beautifully rendered, will surely find resonance in the hearts of many readers.


Barbara Curnow

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Neal Whitman
an appraisal by Michele L Harvey

waiting on the dock
a woman holds a placard
with my name on it
I am put in her arms,
my mother, singing to me
            — Neal Whitman

My shortlist gleanings from Eucalypt 15 were eighteen poems which had been already severely pruned. (My gratitude and admiration to all for such a treasure trove to choose from.) This kind of exercise makes one take stock and reaffirms the love of the tanka form. What is it that makes me fall in love again and again? What is it that makes opening Eucalypt like a sumptuous box of chocolates, not knowing what surprises and flavors will meet the tongue? Like a box of chocolates one returns to one’s favorite flavors, but why no matter how often tasted do they remain so? A little investigation reveals the source; a story line exquisitely unfolded as if by a master chocolatier, which tickles the tongue ( or mind) with each progressive line, slowly unveiling nuances never before dreamed of. This may be done with closely cropped verse or in a languid, lyrical song.

Neal Whitman’s poem was such a one, with each line building on the preceding until the crescendo. The picture and its gravity may be guessed at line four, but line five adds the humanity and pathos of a loving mother relinquishing the blood of her blood. There could be no more heart rending moment between two souls, which are also changed forever by it. It is drawn in the simplest of prose but depicts an anguish and tenderness beyond words by the mother singing to her child even while giving him up, in hope for a better life for him. Neal Whitman has presented this picture matter-of-factly without sentiment, but that is precisely what brings out the full-bodied flavor and immensity of the scene, evincing the hand of a master.

Other very fine poems which followed closely and were built masterfully, line upon line were:

flight crew demonstrates
inflatable life jackets
I gasp at the thought
of your coffin
in the cargo hold
            — Lois J Funk

my brother
talks of cremation
casually —
the door half open
one hand on the latch
            — Michael Thorley

I don’t possess
the accomplishments
of a lady…
sewing, decorating
playing second fiddle
            — Keitha Keyes

my river
flows to the sea
soon I will
be finished
with yesterdays
            — Mel Goldberg

Please note, this is not a prerequisite for fine tanka but one of which sets up a cinematic view and spectacular Aha moment. Together they weave an unforgettable whole and a poem which is seared in memory.


Michele L Harvey

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Lois J Funk
an appraisal by Kiyoko Ogawa

flight crew demonstrates
inflatable life jackets
I gasp at the thought
of your coffin
in the cargo hold
            — Lois J Funk

Some of our poets tend to be critical of tanka expressing sentiment that is too subjective. In my opinion, however, this is exactly one of the strengths that tanka possess. Because of the limitation of length and fixed rules, tankaists think hard how to discard any redundant word, thus enabling a work to connect directly with the essential core of our own hearts.

I have appreciated many good tanka in this issue, especially the ones addressing old age, impending death or ominous news. But as I have to choose only one tanka for the Award, I have decided to take the one which sends out the most poignant personal emotion and which imprints an unforgetable impression on the readers' minds.

Ms. Funk's tanka strikes a strong chord with me. Curiously enough, I recently heard a similar tragic story from one of my Australian friends that her relative from Europe suddenly passed away in Brisbane after greatly enjoying his dream trip to the Antipodes. His wife flew home with her husband's coffin in the hold.

In this tanka the expressed contrast between life and death is conspicuous, which invites each reader's empathy perhaps beyond the author's intention. Only those still living deserve being protected by 'life jackets,' while the dead is put in the hold, being uninflatable.

The structure of this tanka is admirably precise; the first two lines of the upper section are replete with sounds, light and even hope; the closing two lines are of the literal underworld; chilly, silent and dark. In between is poised the narrator, who physically belongs to the former, but spiritually to the latter.

Since the ancient times the Japanese have written countless elegies in the genre of waka. I believe an elegy is one form of love poem. Ms. Funk's tanka possesses the decisive universality of human grief.

Lastly as a return poem (henka . .) I quote here an elegy by Yosano Akiko written after losing her husband.

.........................

You departed this life
without knowing
such grief
such tears
such chill of mine.

.........................

[Note: Kiyoko Ogawa followed this elegy with two kanji [unable to be replicated here] meaning ‘Gassho’ (joining my palms), ‘a pose or signal for praying for the deceased. It's a Buddhist gesture when worshipping at temples or funerals.’ ]


Kiyoko Ogawa

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