ABOUT Modern English Tanka Press
We are a small independent press, an equity publisher in Baltimore, Maryland. Go to the Modern English Tanka Press main website for additional information and to contact the publisher.
In addition to collections, anthologies, compilations, and other fine books, we publish:
JOURNALS
Modern English Tanka is a quarterly journal, dedicated to publishing and promoting fine tanka in English. We are interested in both traditional and innovative verse of high quality and in all serious attempts to assimilate the best of the Japanese waka/tanka genres into a continuously developing English short verse tradition. In addition to verse, we publish articles, essays, reviews, interviews, etc., related to tanka. Buy MET here. See MET online at www.modernenglishtanka.com.
Atlas Poetica is a biannual journal, specializing in poetry of place in tanka, both in English and in other languages. See the journal's website at www.atlaspoetica.com.
Modern Haiga is an annual—both print and digital—dedicated to publishing and promoting fine modern graphic poetry, especially but not limited to, haiku, senryu, tanka, cinquain, cinqku, crystallines, cherita, and sijo. We are interested in combined art and verse of high quality. See Modern Haiga online at www.modernhaiga.com.
Ribbons is the quarterly journal of the Tanka Society of America. Please see the Ribbons page at the TSA website at
www.tankasocietyofamerica.com.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Spring 2008, Volume 2 Number 3, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This seventh issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 63 poets from around the world, book notes, reviews, and articles. You don’t want to miss anything in this jam-packed issue. Read MET 7 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $10.00 With its Spring 2008 edition, The Tanka Society of America launches the fourth volume of its journal Ribbons, containing some of the finest examples today of English language tanka. Essays, articles, book reviews, news and announcements round out this rich poetic experience. All those interested in the reading or writing of contemporary short form poetry in English will not want to miss this edition of Ribbons.
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Print: $29.95 Ash Moon Anthology explores and celebrates the later years of life: the “golden years,” to some, and far from it, to others. Senior men and women have a perspective on life that cannot be achieved except by enduring the passage of several decades. Just as youth and the fullness of maturity are celebrated for their special characteristics, so should be our later years. Ash Moon Anthology includes poems about all aspects of aging, both the ups and downs, the joys and the sorrows; poems that embody the humor, insight, and wisdom of our elders and the ways in which we age with grace and even elegance. This is a tremendous collection of nearly nine hundred poems on aging from 97 poets on five continents. It is our sincere goal and hope that it will bring its readers enjoyment, pleasure, an occasional laugh, and perhaps a few tears. If it sheds even the faintest new light on the experience of aging, it will be a great success to us.
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Hardcover Print: $44.95 Ash Moon Anthology explores and celebrates the later years of life: the “golden years,” to some, and far from it, to others. Senior men and women have a perspective on life that cannot be achieved except by enduring the passage of several decades. Just as youth and the fullness of maturity are celebrated for their special characteristics, so should be our later years. Ash Moon Anthology includes poems about all aspects of aging, both the ups and downs, the joys and the sorrows; poems that embody the humor, insight, and wisdom of our elders and the ways in which we age with grace and even elegance. This is a tremendous collection of nearly nine hundred poems on aging from 97 poets on five continents. It is our sincere goal and hope that it will bring its readers enjoyment, pleasure, an occasional laugh, and perhaps a few tears. If it sheds even the faintest new light on the experience of aging, it will be a great success to us.
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Print: $16.95 With a rusty shovel in hand, Andrew Riutta digs deep in his first full-length poetry collection and exposes the bones of the Upper Midwest—which turn out to be his very own. From diabetes and broken teeth to silent prayers and the scent of wood smoke, Cigarette Butts and Lilacs is an account of a domesticity touched by this world’s sharpest corners, as well as its softest petals and snowflakes.
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Print: $19.95 Light a candle while you read FIRE BLOSSOMS: The Birth of Haiku Noir; it is a courageous piece of writing, one that is not for the faint of heart. Carl Jung cautioned how important it is to embrace the dark side of life. Garrison has walked into the shadows of war and chaos with eyes open wide, not afraid to confront the ghosts and the cadavers that most of us sweep under the carpet. — Alexis Rotella, award-winning poet and author of Ouch : Senryu that Bite
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Print: $12.95 The premiere edition of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka includes over 500 poems from 42 poets representing more than 20 countries and 12 languages. New from Modern English Tanka Press, the Atlas brings a new level of innovation, artistry, and appreciation to poetry of place in the tanka form and its variants. With the launching of the Atlas Poetica, we invite all readers to see the places of the world through the eyes of poets, and to find in poetry the maps that will lead them to explore the multitude of meanings manifest in their own special places. —M. Kei, Editor
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Print: $19.95 “Contained in Sailor in the Rain are some of the best poems of an American original, Denis M. Garrison. They are gleaned from previous collections large and small, and are presented in a carefully ordered narrative structure having a beginning, middle, and an end. The epitaph that appears at the book’s close, “Sailor in the Rain”—from which the title of the whole has been taken and by which rudder the whole has been steered carefully into port...—is the only resting place you are likely to find.” — from the Preface by Michael McClintock
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Hardcover Print: $37.95 “Contained in Sailor in the Rain are some of the best poems of an American original, Denis M. Garrison. They are gleaned from previous collections large and small, and are presented in a carefully ordered narrative structure having a beginning, middle, and an end. The epitaph that appears at the book’s close, “Sailor in the Rain”—from which the title of the whole has been taken and by which rudder the whole has been steered carefully into port...—is the only resting place you are likely to find.” — from the Preface by Michael McClintock
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Print: $17.95 Here are 177 tanka culled from the past decade of Larry Kimmel’s work in this genre. Referred to as one of the seminal east-west fusionists, Kimmel covers a wide range of subject matter including a love of land, urban nights, eroticism and philosophical speculation. He uses all five senses, and while his method is imagistic, a certain heightened use of language is the hallmark of his craft.
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Print: $28.95 This book is a tanka treasure chest, filled with nearly five hundred poems by the acknowledged master of the genre, Sanford Goldstein. Not only has Goldstein, with his translating partners, made the classics of modern Japanese poetry available in English, he has written some of the best tanka ever rendered first in English. Six published collections of the tanka of Sanford Goldstein are compiled in this single, historic, volume by “the father of tanka in English.” For anyone who wants to understand tanka, who wants a genuine tanka experience, this book is a must-read. Sanford Goldstein’s Four Decades on My Tanka Road is where you start your own journey with the world’s oldest continually-anthologized poetic genre.
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Print: $18.95 Jun Fujita (1888-1963) is perhaps the first master of tanka poetry in English. He certainly was a master of the rhetoric of omission or, as he put it, “that fine and illusive mood, big enough to illuminate the infinity of the universe,” which is a defining characteristic of tanka, specifically, and of Japanese poetry, in general. His work is an important and foundational aspect of the English tanka heritage. Modern English Tanka Press takes great pleasure is making this fine poet’s work once again accessible to the reading public. Edited by Denis M. Garrison. Includes an Introduction by M. Kei.
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Print: $21.95 Looking for a meaty book of tanka that will feed your soul? LIP PRINTS is it. Poet-scholar Michael McClintock writes: “Sophisticated and witty, classical and contemporary, Lip Prints is a subtle and scintillating collection. ... Alexis Rotella is a poet of resilient and unblinking intelligence.” These poems will take your breath away and inspire you to write some of your own.
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Hardcover Print: $35.95 Looking for a meaty book of tanka that will feed your soul? LIP PRINTS is it. Poet-scholar Michael McClintock writes: “Sophisticated and witty, classical and contemporary, Lip Prints is a subtle and scintillating collection. ... Alexis Rotella is a poet of resilient and unblinking intelligence.” These poems will take your breath away and inspire you to write some of your own.
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Print: $24.95 OUCH: Senryu That Bite - Alexis Rotella has been writing haiku, senryu and tanka since her late 20’s. She is one of the most accomplished American writers and is able to write seemingly effortlessly in all three genres. She discovered haiku while working on an undergraduate thesis on zen at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Rotella is probably most well known for her senryu or psychological (serious) haiku. Her book LOOKING FOR A PRINCE (1991) took the haiku world by storm. Cor van den Heuvel calls Rotella “the witty, tender, funny, sad, sometimes MERCILESS younger sister of haiku . . . the . . . often-times absurd creature somersaulting through the universe somewhere between the angels and Donald Duck!” When asked where she gets her talent for senryu, she remarks, “From my father. He was a born psychologist who didn’t mince words. He saw right through people. No one could pretend around him.”
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Hardcover Print: $37.95 OUCH: Senryu That Bite - Alexis Rotella has been writing haiku, senryu and tanka since her late 20’s. She is one of the most accomplished American writers and is able to write seemingly effortlessly in all three genres. She discovered haiku while working on an undergraduate thesis on zen at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Rotella is probably most well known for her senryu or psychological (serious) haiku. Her book LOOKING FOR A PRINCE (1991) took the haiku world by storm. Cor van den Heuvel calls Rotella “the witty, tender, funny, sad, sometimes MERCILESS younger sister of haiku . . . the . . . often-times absurd creature somersaulting through the universe somewhere between the angels and Donald Duck!” When asked where she gets her talent for senryu, she remarks, “From my father. He was a born psychologist who didn’t mince words. He saw right through people. No one could pretend around him.”
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Print: $18.95 Eavesdropping is a book of well-crafted, quiet haiku that honor all the seasons. Written by a virtuoso of haiku, senryu and tanka, these poems are sure to not only delight but teach beginners and well-seasoned poets how jewel-like and celebratory haiku can be. This book by Alexis Rotella is a must-have for all poets and spiritual seekers. Kazuo Sato has called Rotella one of the best haiku poets in America today.
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Print: $27.95 Landfall: Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka is about the lands we live in, the highlands and the lowlands, prairies and forests, deserts and wetlands, farmlands and wilderness, the vast continental interiors and the lands bordering the seas, and the waters of the earth. As such, it is inevitably a book about ourselves. Every generation makes anew its own landfall, discovering for itself its special, abiding relationship to the natural world. With these fine tanka, pastoral poems of a new kind for a new day, the greatly prized moment of making landfall becomes, also, an irrevocable moment of personal epiphany. Poets included are from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Thailand, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
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Hardcover Print: $29.95 Landfall: Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka is about the lands we live in, the highlands and the lowlands, prairies and forests, deserts and wetlands, farmlands and wilderness, the vast continental interiors and the lands bordering the seas, and the waters of the earth. As such, it is inevitably a book about ourselves. Every generation makes anew its own landfall, discovering for itself its special, abiding relationship to the natural world. With these fine tanka, pastoral poems of a new kind for a new day, the greatly prized moment of making landfall becomes, also, an irrevocable moment of personal epiphany. Poets included are from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Thailand, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
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Print: $13.95 Working within the discipline of tanka, one of the world’s oldest continuously-written forms, this striking debut collection by James Roderick Burns identifies the absurdities and deflations of the human condition, from farm boys thinking of flying saucers to a workaday vision of the end of the world. Intelligent, witty, sometimes melancholic in their beauty, the poems constitute a collection to be relished.
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Print: $18.95 This book is a compilation of all four issues of the landmark journal of tanka poetry in English FIVE LINES DOWN published 1994-1996 and edited by Kenneth Tanemura and Sanford Goldstein. Modern English Tanka Press is pleased to make this seminal journal once again available to tanka aficionados and scholars around the world. The complete issues are included along with an Introduction by Michael McClintock.
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Print: $13.95 THE FIVE-HOLE FLUTE affords the reader an impressively compact and rich overview of modern tanka, cinquain, and haiku, and of the changing shape and power of these forms when arranged in sets and sequences.
The works in this exemplary collection offer a glimpse into the extraordinary diversity and sometimes startling richness of the modern short poem in English, and disclose a fascinating but hitherto concealed dimension of literary creativity: the integration of autonomous short poems into new, coherent, interactive patterns that break free of the conventional stanzaic forms of longer narrative, epic, and lyrical verse. Several techniques are illustrated, demonstrating the manifold possibilities for grouping tanka, cinquain, and haiku in compositions that convey an expanded poetic experience, a compound literature having broad scope and unlimited potential for dealing with the many layers and complexities of human experience, thought, and emotion.
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Print: $17.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA PRESS is pleased to present readers with The Dreaming Room, the follow-up companion volume to The Five-Hole Flute (published in 2006), for further examples and explorations into the literature of tanka collage and montage sets—a compound literature having broad scope and unlimited potential for dealing with the many layers and complexities of human experience, thought, and emotion. As “Queen” of short form poetry in English, the contemporary tanka is seen again to lend its shape and rhythms meaningfully to diverse viewpoints, philosophies, and the human drama.
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Print: $10.95 Download: $2.00 TANKA TEACHERS GUIDE contains primary materials and resources about tanka poetry which educators and students may copy without seeking permission. Modern English Tanka Press is dedicated to tanka education and we welcome innovative uses of our print and online resources. We want to facilitate the use of our publications to the maximum extent feasible by educators at every level of school and university studies. Educators, without individually seeking permission from the publisher, may use our publications, online digital editions and print editions, as primary or ancillary teaching resources.
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Print: $29.95 HAIKU HARVEST : 2000–2006 is a compilation of the eleven issues of Haiku Harvest : Journal of Haiku in English, plus two issues of Haiku Noir and one issue of Ku Nouveau. This immense collection of poetry is from poets in thirty countries around the world. It includes the full range of haiku in English (and several related forms, like tanka) from classic to avant-garde styles. Haiku Harvest was dedicated to publishing and promoting haiku, both in the western tradition of classical haiku and in all related forms, including tanka. It gave generous space to poets so they can demonstrate the range of their haiku and it promoted innovation by providing a showcase for poetry in new forms that are serious attempts to assimilate the haiku and tanka traditions in forms within the English poetic tradition. Edited by Denis M. Garrison.
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Print: $15.95 One wonders when they read the name of a man or even if they see his picture, what is he truly like? In my opinion, the best way to know a man is to study in depth what he puts down on paper. Denis Garrison would easily be recognized for the outdoorsman that he is by his haiku. Words and phrases such as: “hidden river, plowed field, leafing orchards, hunger moon, old tin cup, rabbit spoor, river stones, bridle paths, spring-fed creek, woodpecker’s vibrato, fragrant hay bales, sparrow tracks in fresh snow, field of ripe pumpkins, scorched dirt, cowpies, frog song and fireflies, woodcutter’s cabin” and so forth, appear throughout his book. Denis skillfully gives readers a strong but pleasant taste of nature in this fine presentation via the many outstanding haiku found around every bend of his “Hidden River.”
—an’ya, Editor of TSA Ribbons and moonset journal.
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Print: $12.95 These exquisite poems by Denis M. Garrison prove once again that the best things come in small packages. From awesome beauty to stark terror; from the heights of joy to the depths of despair; all in gem-like tiny poems! Treat yourself to these traditional haiku, fascinating haiku noirs, and lovely crystallines. Also included are four articles on haiku and the prosody of crystallines. Denis M. Garrison, the longtime editor of Haiku Harvest, Haiku Noir, and Haiku Cycles, and co-editor of Ku Nouveau, is the creator of the crystalline form, a western haiku in a seventeen-syllable couplet.
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Print: $15.00 SIXTY SUNFLOWERS: Tanka Society of America Members’ Anthology for 2006-2007, edited by Sanford Goldstein. Other titles in this series published by the Tanka Society of America
(tankasocietyofamerica.com): something like a sigh (2005), Jeanne Emrich, Guest Editor,
Cathy Drinkwater Better, Editor-in-Chief; To Find the Moon (2004), Cathy Drinkwater Better, Editor; Searching for Echoes (2003), Karina Young, Editor; and Castles in the Sand (2002), Michael Dylan Welch, Editor.
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Print: $10.00 The Tanka Society of America has brought out its December 2007 issue of Ribbons, and it’s filled with book reviews, articles, announcements, and over 200 poems that represent some of the finest tanka being written today. “. . . if the poet writes poetry to be read, there is a great creative freedom in knowing that the reader does not ask for a poem to be a strict rendition of factual truth; the reader asks only that the poem speak truth that is timeless; for only such truth can be called beauty, and it’s for beauty that we read poetry.”
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Print: $10.00 We are entering a period that might be described as the flowering of English language tanka. Ribbons, the official journal of the Tanka Society of America, each year publishes hundreds of tanka that have been selected for their craftsmanship, originality and value as examples of this unique form of poetry in English. Ribbons also publishes contemporary articles on tanka by leading poets and scholars, book reviews that are thoughtful and incisive, and translations of poems written by important contemporary Japanese tanka poets. Ribbons is an ideal place to discover the power, beauty, and unlimited expressiveness of this increasingly popular poetry.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Winter 2007, Volume 2 Number 2, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This sixth issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 67 poets from around the world, book notes, reviews, and articles. You don’t want to miss anything in this blockbuster issue. Read MET 6 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Autumn 2007, Volume 2 Number 1, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This fifth issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 49 poets from around the world, book notes, reviews, and articles. You don’t want to miss the editorial, “Preface to Lip Prints” by Michael McClintock. Read MET 5 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Summer 2007, Volume 1 Number 4, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This fourth issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 64 poets from around the world, book notes, reviews, and articles. You don’t want to miss the editorial, “Tanka in Collage and Montage Sets: Multivalence, Duende, and Beyond” by Michael McClintock. Read MET 4 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Spring 2007, Volume 1 Number 3, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This third issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of sixty-six poets from around the world, fourteen book notes and reviews, and the “Tanka Year in Review: 2006” feature. You don’t want to miss the editorial, “Dreaming Room.” Read MET 3 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Winter 2006, Volume 1 Number 2, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This second issue of Modern English Tanka includes plenty of fine tanka in familiar styles but also some that are unusual, provocative, challenging to the reader. We could not be more pleased with this outpouring of cutting edge tanka. Our windows are wide open and different air is flowing through—a fresh and invigorating breeze on which float exotic fragrances and novel melodies. Read MET 2 for the best in modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Autumn 2006, Volume 1 Number 1, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. Modern English Tanka is dedicated to publishing and promoting fine English tanka---both traditional and innovative verse of high quality and all serious attempts to assimilate the best of the Japanese waka/tanka genres into a continuously developing English short verse tradition. In addition to verse, we publish articles, essays, reviews, interviews, etc., related to tanka. In this amazing premiere issue, 50 poets from around the world are included.
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