Japanese for "
short poem." These are generally
mood pieces, generally about
love,
life's
briefness,
seasons, or
sadness. A properly written tanka use strong
images and lots of poetic devices that
haiku avoid, like
metaphor,
personification,
alliteration, etc.
The line, in English (because of the syllable differences), should be measured on accented ones, in this order: 2-3-2-3-3 or a sylables per line as - 5-7-5-7-7, totaling 31. As Juuichiketajin pointed out, this causes the alternate name "miso-hito-moji".
There are variations, of course, some of them going back almost 1200 years. Early tanka presented the image or thought in the first couple of lines, and a related idea in the next couple. Ex. :
thoughts of her
unendurable, I go there . . .
the winter night's
river-wind is chill
and plovers are crying
--Ki no Tsurayuki (approx 900 A.D.).
These, like haiku are ruined often by a lot of gooey sentiment.
back to Forms of Poetry