I posted this article on Tanka Tuesday today. Willow used a name I’d not heard before: rensaku. She said, “The Japanese use the word rensaku for any combination of two or more tanka that are somehow related.” Well, you know, I had to look this up.
What is Rensaku?
My research led me to some new discoveries.
The term rensaku was invented by (Masaoka Shiki) Shiki Masaoka, “a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry,[3] credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during his short life.[4] He also wrote on reform of tanka poetry.[5] (from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaoka_Shiki).
A tanka in Japanese is considered to have two ‘phrases’ (5-7-5 and 7-7). In Japanese, the writing is commonly presented as a single vertical line, so these phrases are known as the kaminoku (‘upper ku’) and shimonoku (‘lower ku’).
The splitting up of the upper ku and the lower ku, led us to the renga or renku form where one person wrote the first three lines (haiku) and another person wrote the last two lines, seven syllables each line. This has come to be known as linked poetry.
But… this is where the tanka comes in. The tanka is a separate form from the renku. Shiki urged a reform of the tanka form.
“While Shiki criticised renga and haikai as ‘non-literature’, he did not reject the practice of linked verse in itself. Rather, he proposed a new rensaku approach, in which a sole poet would compose a sequence of poems united in theme and viewpoint. Shiki saw this approach, centred on the principles of authorial and thematic unity, as a key technique for elevating Japanese poetry into a ‘modern literature’.”
This is how the tanka was born! I’m simplifying the concept, but you get where I’m going with this. The article above gives an in depth discussion of haikai (haiku, renku, and tanka). It’s really an interesting read.
Here’s another link to this poet’s discussion of rensaku:
https://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2018/01/to-lighthouse-rensaku-sequential.html
In closing, I came to the realization that rensaku is used for or any combination of two or more haiku (or tanka) that are somehow related in a series.
From neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com, is Shiki’s 10-poem rensaku about the wisteria (Burton Watson, Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems by Shiki Masaoka, pp. 105-110) See below:
Sprays of wisteria
arranged in a vase
are so short
they don’t reach
to the tatami
Sprays of wisteria
arranged in a vase —
on cluster
dangles down
on the piled-up books
When I look
at wisteria blossoms
I think with longing of far-off times,
the Nara emperors,
the emperors of Kyoto
When I look
at wisteria blossoms
I want to get out
my purple paints
and paint them
If I were to paint
the purple
of wisteria blossoms,
I ought to paint it
a deep purple
Sprays of wisteria
arranged in a vase —
the blossoms hang down,
and by my sickbed
spring is coming to an end
Last year in spring
I saw the wisterias
in Kameido —
seeing this wisteria now,
I recall it
Before the
red blossoms
of the peonies,
the wisteria’s purple
comes into blossom
These wisterias
have blossomed early —
the Kameido wisterias
won’t be out for
ten days or more
If you stick the stems
in strong sake
the wilted flowers
of the wisteria
will bloom again like new
This rensaku tanka series is written in the first person. Notice the repetition of words (anaphora) that connect the reader to the wisteria blossoms. This rensaku series reads like a story. By the end, we’ve learned all there is to know about wisteria. Shiki uses no titles in his tanka poetry, just like we do today. This is how the modern tanka evolved! What a perfect example!
So, a tanka or haiku series is also called a rensaku!
Many thanks to Willow for teaching me a new term for a haiku or tanka series.
Have you written your tanka/tanka prose/experimental tanka? Start Writing!
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Last night, someone challenged me to write a ghazal. I think that's about all the formal poetry I can handle right now!