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Article: Modern Japanese Tanka: An Anthology.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- World Literature Today
- Article date:
- June 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 University of Oklahoma. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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While the Japanese haiku has become extremely popular as a poetic form in English, the longer tanka is less well known outside Japan. The five-line, thirty-one syllable form has a longer history, having been - when called waka - the dominant poetic form throughout 1,500 years of the Japanese literary tradition. In the twentieth century a number of remarkable poets revitalized the form. Makoto Ueda's anthology, of modern tanka is a wonderful introduction both to the form and to twenty, modern poets who made it their own.
Ueda's introduction provides the historical context and summarizes the literary movements, from the virulent indictment, written in 1894 by Yosano ...