ABOUT MET PRESS (Modern English Tanka Press)
We are a small independent publisher in Baltimore, Maryland. Go to the MET 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.themetpress.com/MET/.
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.themetpress.com/atlaspoetica/.
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.themetpress.com/modernhaiga/.
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: $10.00 Ribbons, the Tanka Society of America's highly regarded poetry journal, is now available in its summer edition. Filled with some of the finest tanka being written today, Ribbons also offers scholarly articles, book reviews, contest results, and up-to-date news and announcements from the world of English language tanka. The summer edition of Ribbons is a perfect place to find out why this unique, five line poetry is becoming so popular among readers and writers alike.
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Print: $14.95 Download: $4.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Summer 2009, Volume 3 Number 4, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of sixty-seven poets from around the world plus several book reviews. You don’t want to miss anything in this issue. Read MET for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $11.95 Download: $4.95 The eagerly-awaited second issue of PRUNE JUICE is here. “Senryu is a way of connecting with the human race. Senryu can be gossip—a way of sharing information with and about each other. Or it may just be a way of reporting about the condition of the human race and the drama we encounter or witness everyday. Humor is cleansing; it’s necessary. . . . Perhaps writing senryu is a way to improve our haiku —it clears the channels, cuts away dead wood, removes the dross. More of you seem to be developing your sense of senryu; it’s a form that is finally catching on. Without senryu to balance haiku, it would be a dry world.”—Alexis Rotella, Editor.
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Print: $11.95 “The haiku in Hidden River have that special touch—as soon as they’re read, they disappear. This collection can best be summed up in the introductory poem: ‘poems / written in dust / a windy day.’ They seem to be carried along on a breeze, like blossom scent, yet at the same time tether us to the simple pleasure of ‘coffee at dawn / tastes best / in this old tin cup.’ Garrison is a master at his craft; we can all learn from him.” —Alexis Rotella, Editor, Prune Juice; Past President of the Haiku Society of America and Editor of Frogpond.
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Print: $12.95 “Contained in Sailor in the Rain are some of the best poems of an American original, Denis M. Garrison. ... Garrison’s respect for language is thorough, and includes its smallest parts and mechanics. This point of view is reflected in each line and phrase of his poetry, and in the way he goes about the poet’s craft—which is seldom merely a joyous affair of letting inspiration blossom, then signing one’s name to it. Actual work is involved, mental and emotional stress, a share of tears, and the gnashing of teeth.” — from the Preface by Michael McClintock
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Print: $10.95 “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, Editor, Prune Juice; Past President of the Haiku Society of America and Editor of Frogpond.
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Print: $13.95 Download: $4.95 Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, with this inaugural issue, establishes itself as the first and only periodical devoted exclusively to these two mixed prose-and-verse genres. Haibun and tanka prose belong to the ancient and venerable tradition of Japanese poetry and belles-lettres. Their practice has waned in modern Japan but, with the continuing popularity of their respective parent-forms, haiku and tanka, in the West, haibun and tanka prose are experiencing unprecedented growth and diverse experimentation from New York to London, from Berlin to Brisbane, and in small towns and open countryside around the globe. Haibun and tanka prose are busily revising the general literary map and, in doing so, quietly reforming haiku and tanka also. Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, a biannual journal, faithfully represents the full range of styles and themes adopted by contemporary practitioners and intends to play a vanguard role in charting the rapid evolution of these genres.
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Print: $25.95 Michael F. Marra’s “A Poetic Guide to an Ancient Capital: Aizu Yaichi and the City of Nara” includes the English translation of all the poetry that the poet, aesthetician and art historian Aizu Yaichi (1881-1956) wrote on the city of Nara and the Nara Basin during his many trips to the ancient capital from 1908 to 1956. Together with the philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō’s (1889-1960) best-seller “Pilgrimage to Ancient Temples” (1919), Aizu’s poetry is undoubtedly the most influential writing on the city of Nara in the twentieth century. His efforts to preserve the monuments of the ancient city were powerful contributors to the establishment of Nara as a cultural icon in the modern age. It is not unusual today to see one of Aizu’s poems inscribed on a stone monument in front of major temples. Today, over more than half a century after his death, he is still remembered fondly by natives of Nara who proudly display in their houses scrolls of Aizu’s poetry.
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Print: $9.95 “Alexis Rotella, with an expected mastery of insight and craft, opens a window into a young girl’s heart in these 28 kinetic portraits of revisited longing, desire and dream inspired by the Pied Piper of an era gone, yet permanently etched on the American mind-scape. Skeptical of celebrity inspired literature, all I can say is: I read it. I loved it. Elvis in Black Leather—nothing like it before in tanka. You’ll be surprised. Trust me.” —Larry Kimmel, Editor of Winfred Press
“In these poetic encounters Alexis Rotella brings legend and reason together, showing us the emotional logic from which ‘gods’ are made. These poems are not elegies. They are deliciously alive.” —Grace Cavalieri, Producer/host “The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress”
“This is the most enjoyable collection of tanka I’ve read in a long time. . . . Alexis Rotella is pushing the boundaries of the genre . . . ” —Charles Christian, editor Ink, Sweat & Tears
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Print: $12.95 Jean LeBlanc is one of the truly select who knows two landscapes—the one of heart and mind, and the other of suburban and rural New Jersey. In these tanka and sijo, both geographies are fused with remarkable clarity. She has adapted the tanka of Japan and the sijo of classical Korean literature seamlessly to the American idiom. For LeBlanc, these short form models become a means for storytelling that is full of grace, narrative energy, and vivid discovery. Take this book on a picnic with someone you love. That’s what I did with it. As in her first book of poetry, Just Passing Through (The Paulinskill Poetry Project, 2007), there’s enough here to feed two souls. —Michael McClintock, Editor, American Tanka
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Print: $11.95 Download: $4.95 In this Issue 3 of Ambrosia: Journal of Fine Haiku, we are pleased to present another 100 fine haiku from twenty-nine outstanding poets. All these poets, while writing in English, respect the formal values of traditional Japanese haiku. When you read through this issue, please take time to notice, besides what these haiku are, also, what they are not. They are not faux-Japanese. They are not formulaic. They are not humorlessly philosophical. They are not all about the classically lovely natural subjects. The “first person” is not totally absent. They are not all grammatically fragmentary— some read as sentences. None of them are senryu although people figure largely in several. These haiku demonstrate the very broad range possible in English poems that respect traditional haiku values while not fearing to innovate, fully using the riches of English. As haiku should be in any language, these haiku are resonant far out of proportion to their brevity.
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Print: $24.95 A companion anthology to Landfall: Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka (Modern English Tanka Press, 2007), Streetlights goes beyond the customary polemics of “urban hell” literature to convey the human dimensions of life in the city, town, and suburban “forest”—the tones, moods, attitudes and emotional velocities of the present day . . . The poems found here weave into their lyrics the places and things of modern city life—its harmonies and dissonance, its quiet sanctuaries and noisy intersections, its headlines, politics, popular culture, and enduring issues about who we are and where we might be going . . . Fully exhibiting the power and range of the tanka as a short poem in English, here are song and image that may stand beside the great urban poetry of Whitman and Hart Crane, Carl Sandburg and Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance and the Beat Generation. —Michael McClintock
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Print: $16.95 Tanka, the ancient Japanese poetic form, has been an important source for modernists for more than 100 years, but never relegated itself to the position of dusty relic. It is alive and vital and producing some of the most eloquent and insightful poetry published in English today. Many thousands of tanka poems are published every year—but which ones are the most rewarding for the readers? The editorial team of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka set out to read the entire field of tanka publication for a single year, regardless of source, without any dogma regarding definition, form or content. Over the course of 14 months, they read over 14,000 poems. Famous names and unknown poets from around the world appear side by side in 321 single poems and several tanka sequences and tanka prose pieces. A List of Venues consulted and complete publishing credits are included, along with an introduction that covers the history of tanka and the project itself.
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Print: $12.95 “All the Horses of Heaven is a rare combination of mostly erotic tanka that are filled with a longing for the sanctuary of the Feminine. At the same time these story-poems celebrate the sounds, colors and rhythms of a poet’s life in Mexico. Those who remember Jim Tipton from the earlier days of haiku will be delighted to welcome him back as a fellow traveler with whom we explore the side streets and bazaars of Tankaland.” —Alex Rotella, Editor, Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu and Kyoka, etc.
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Print: $14.95 Download: $4.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Spring 2009, Volume 3 Number 3, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 65 poets from around the world plus several features and book reviews. You don’t want to miss anything in this very full issue. Read MET for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $10.00 The Tanka Society of America presents its Spring issue of Ribbons, a quarterly publication devoted to this unique poetic genre in English. Filled with articles, book reviews, news and announcements of upcoming tanka competitions and events, Ribbons most of all contains some of the finest English language tanka being written today. A journal by and for tanka writers and tanka lovers, the Spring issue of Ribbons is also an excellent introduction to this increasingly popular poetry. If you'd like to know what tanka excitement is all about, this issue of Ribbons is a good place to find out.
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Print: $12.95 In Blue Night & the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses, Larry Kimmel brings his unique blend of east-west aesthetics into full fruition. Kimmel has always displayed a wide range of subject matter in his highly imagistic style, but here we find, for the first time, a lightly suggested metaphysics, somewhat reminiscent of Cid Corman. While Blue Night is a wonderfully woven tapestry of variety, complexity and unity, the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses is a collage of cherita, a recent assimilation of the haiku and tanka techniques brought into an English-language short verse form. Kimmel has made the cherita his own, using it both as a nano-narrative and lyrical vehicle. Added to this collection is The Temperature of Love, a free verse sequence hinting at a disquieted mind that finds an uneasy, sometimes resolution. This second edition of Blue Night & the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses is a fascinating journey into the mind-scape of a poet, one who is acquainted with the night in all its cosmic ramifications.
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Hardcover Print: $25.95 In Blue Night & the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses, Larry Kimmel brings his unique blend of east-west aesthetics into full fruition. Kimmel has always displayed a wide range of subject matter in his highly imagistic style, but here we find, for the first time, a lightly suggested metaphysics, somewhat reminiscent of Cid Corman. While Blue Night is a wonderfully woven tapestry of variety, complexity and unity, the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses is a collage of cherita, a recent assimilation of the haiku and tanka techniques brought into an English-language short verse form. Kimmel has made the cherita his own, using it both as a nano-narrative and lyrical vehicle. Added to this collection is The Temperature of Love, a free verse sequence hinting at a disquieted mind that finds an uneasy, sometimes resolution. This second edition of Blue Night & the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses is a fascinating journey into the mind-scape of a poet, one who is acquainted with the night in all its cosmic ramifications.
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Print: $11.95 TANKA FROM THE EDGE is a collection of over 100 tanka representing a decade’s worth of poetic journeys. Some come from literal travels to places ranging from the Sonoran and Mohave deserts to Alaska’s inner passage. Sagan has been a writer in residence at two national
parks—Everglades and Petrified Forest. These very different eco-systems have both given rise to tanka. So has a year’s intermittent residency at THE LAND/An Art Site, which is dedicated to low impact sculpture in Mountainair, NM. Sometimes these tanka just stay home, observing Sagan’s unfashionable westside neighborhood in Santa Fe, where small changes can be vivid. The poems also reflect a renewed interest in Buddhism after many years’ absence. Miriam Sagan is the author of twenty books, including the recent poetry collection MAP OF THE LOST. She founded and directs the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College. Her website is “Santa Fe Poetry Broadside” (sfpoetry.org).
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Print: $12.95 Download: $4.95 The poets of Atlas Poetica call things by their real names. They write about real places, real events, real issues, real people. The poetic imagination is unleashed by the challenge of telling the unnoticed truth. Stereotypes and conventions, knee jerk reactions and travel guide advertisements do not do justice to the complexity of our lives or the places in which we live. By grappling with reality poets are forced to dig deep into themselves. They must bear witness to all that they have seen—for good or ill. The ‘controlled ambiguity’ that is a hallmark of tanka includes moral ambiguity. They reach deep into the human soul and pull out something of lasting value, something that inhabits the mysterious wilderness deep inside our hearts. The poets of Atlas Poetica have set aside comfort in the quest for truth, and what they have discovered is wondrous, frightening, and inspiring. – M. Kei, Editor
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Print: $11.95 Download: $4.95 This Issue 2 of Ambrosia: Journal of Fine Haiku includes another 100 top drawer haiku from thirty-one fine poets. All these poets, while writing in English, respect the formal values of traditional Japanese haiku. Ambrosia holds that a haiku in English, to be fine, must have the traditional shape and duration of haiku, its metre and music, and exhibit aspects of traditional Japanese poetic aesthetics. We prefer haiku written in a natural, modern, English idiom with great care for the sound of the verse when spoken. Ambrosia’s haiku touch the reader powerfully.
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Print: $34.95 Modern Haiga is an annual journal—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. Many writers and artists around the world have generously shared their work in Modern Haiga. Included in this premiere issue are one hundred and one outstanding works of graphic poetry.
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Hardcover Print: $49.95 Modern Haiga is an annual journal—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. Many writers and artists around the world have generously shared their work in Modern Haiga. Included in this premiere issue are one hundred and one outstanding works of graphic poetry.
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Print: $16.95 Renowned poet and translator Sanford Goldstein describes Robert Wilson’s Jack Fruit Moon as “... the creation of a remarkable world unlike anything seen in tanka and haiku all these centuries. The book is filled with unusual images that make us feel we are experiencing a surrealist world. ... What seems to have happened in this amazing book filled with images never seen on sea or land is that the rationalism of the world is turned upside down or is sent whirling as on an endless merry-go-round.” Ikuyo Yoshimura, poet, author, speaker, and Associate Professor of English at Asahi University, says, “Robert Wilson has written an epoch-making work of vivid tanka-haiku...” Amelia Fielden, Australian poet and translator, says, “As exotic as its title, Jack Fruit Moon is an intriguing document, a lyrical stream of consciousness in the shape of alternating haiku and tanka style poems. It is rich with fantastical language and mysterious images. ... An excitingly different poetic world to read and absorb.”
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Print: $11.95 Download: $4.95 This is the premier issue of Prune Juice, dedicated solely to the humanity-centered poetic forms, senryu and kyoka, haiku’s and tanka’s snarky cousins. Gathered here are well-known and not so well-known writers sharing their funny and not so funny moments. R.H. Blyth wrote in 1949 in Senryu that “Senryu brings us back to here and now; haiku is that ‘something evermore about to be.’” Perhaps it’s time for us all to come out of hiding, to report what we really see and feel. Every emotion in Prune Juice is welcome and I hope this issue inspires you to step up, to come and mingle with the rest of us—to make a toast with a glass of prune juice in honor of the plum blossoms who, without that delicious metaphorical elixir that gets things moving, would not exist. Your most inner feelings and poems are welcome here; they are our honored guests.
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Print: $10.00 With its Winter 2008 edition, The Tanka Society of America completes 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: $14.95 Download: $4.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Winter 2008, Volume 3 Number 2, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 86 poets from around the world plus several book notes and reviews. You don’t want to miss anything in this cram-packed issue. Read MET 10 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $11.95 “Those who knew Michael McClintock as the foremost poet of ‘liberated haiku’ decades ago will discover here a more deeply liberated tanka poet. In Meals at Midnight we find the utter simplicity of a man who has found the world new, through love, and with that, a language free of artifice or struggles for effect. These are deeply, purely, the poems of a liberated heart, innocent and playful against the tapestry of the universe— It has been worth the wait.” —William J. Higginson, author, The Haiku Handbook, etc..
“Michael McClintock has given us an exquisite collection where every poem, in its tight and masterfully-crafted lines, is rich with unexpected imagery and layers of narrative. Every poem vibrates with the eternal resonance of myth and seasons within its immediate story; every one gives us something far beyond the moment. . . .” —Laura Maffei, Editor and Founder, American Tanka
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Hardcover Print: $24.95 “Those who knew Michael McClintock as the foremost poet of ‘liberated haiku’ decades ago will discover here a more deeply liberated tanka poet. In Meals at Midnight we find the utter simplicity of a man who has found the world new, through love, and with that, a language free of artifice or struggles for effect. These are deeply, purely, the poems of a liberated heart, innocent and playful against the tapestry of the universe— It has been worth the wait.” —William J. Higginson, author, The Haiku Handbook, etc..
“Michael McClintock has given us an exquisite collection where every poem, in its tight and masterfully-crafted lines, is rich with unexpected imagery and layers of narrative. Every poem vibrates with the eternal resonance of myth and seasons within its immediate story; every one gives us something far beyond the moment. . . .” —Laura Maffei, Editor and Founder, American Tanka
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Print: $8.95 Lilacs After Winter is a chapbook of haibun—haiku with prose—by Key West poet, Francis Masat. Journeys to the edge of life and death may not be pleasing, but the truth, insight, and outcomes at the heart of this collection show that the journey is worth the costs. Rich with experience, the poet uses natural images to show the interventions of fate. All of us have probably noticed little things in Nature like birds and raindrops, snowflakes and field mice, or stars and blossoms. But when they encompass a human story of love, loss, and redemption, they become more than one might imagine. A deeply moving collection.
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Print: $11.95 Download: $4.95 This premiere issue of Ambrosia: Journal of Fine Haiku includes 100 top drawer haiku from twenty-eight leading poets from around the world. All these poets, while writing in English, respect the formal values of traditional Japanese haiku. Ambrosia holds that a haiku in English, to be fine, must have the traditional shape and duration of haiku, its metre and music, and exhibit aspects of traditional Japanese poetic aesthetics. We prefer haiku written in a natural, modern, English idiom with great care for the sound of the verse when spoken. Ambrosia’s haiku touch the reader powerfully.
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Print: $9.95 In James Tipton’s Proposing to the Woman in the Rear View Mirror we discover not only a haiku poet, but a man who is not afraid to be himself, and damn the cult of political correctness. These haiku tell the moments of his life and the truths of his mind without flinching or apology. His days and nights, from difficult to serene, whether lonely or companionable, mirror many of our own. If you love straight talk and have an ear for words carefully chosen and placed, you have found a book to savor and return to again and again. —William J. Higginson, author, The Haiku Handbook, etc.
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Download: $9.95 Abacus is a tremendous collection of the exquisite prose poems, haibun and short poems of Gary LeBel, accompanied by his own artwork, reproduced in full color. The perfect introduction to this renowned Georgia poet and artist.
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Print: $11.95 “With just a few words, Alexis Rotella catches life’s revealing moments with an insight and depth that the movies—if they were able—would take millions of dollars and the talents of hundreds to capture. Some of her poems throw off stars like a wand in a Disney cartoon, drawing pictures of the Cinderellas of this world as they try to balance their romantic dreams with reality. Others lay bare, as in a Capra comedy, the foibles of all kinds of people, .... She can create darker moods, too, reaching out a hand to open the curtain on psychological dramas of silence and repression like those found in Bergman. Or she may direct a love scene with such a bittersweet mixture of emotion and humor it rivals one of Chaplin’s. She opens our eyes to nature, too, with the kind of love of rain and sunlight that stains with beauty the films of a Kurosawa. You may even find a few Hitchcockian mysteries!” — Cor van den Heuvel, Editor, The Haiku Anthology (Simon and Schuster)
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Print: $14.95 Reviving the neglected sedoka form, James Roderick Burns’ second collection explores the interplay of love and work in turn-of-the-century Coney Island: a Scottish spirit merchant, marooned at the end of the season by an affair gone sour, writes to his son in order to understand himself; the madam of a boardwalk whorehouse sounds out seven of her customers; a carnival barker revolts against the crude methods he must use to pull in the crowds. Greetings from Luna Park, with its vision of duty and vanished pleasure, creates a place where for a moment we find and lose everything.
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Print: $12.95 The Tanka Prose Anthology is vital evidence of the first flowering in English of an ancient Japanese genre—tanka prose, the wedding of prose and tanka in one unified composition. The great diversity in subject and style of the individual writings in this volume testifies to the versatility of this new medium in the hands of skilled practitioners. Whether the setting is urban or pastoral, an elegant interior or a rustic retreat, whether the time is contemporary and presently unfolding or archaic and retrospective, the revival of the ancient medium of tanka prose has proven equal to the immediate task. This first-of-its-kind collection draws upon the work of nineteen poets from eight different countries. The introduction offers a detailed survey of the genre’s history and of its evolving forms while an annotated bibliography directs the reader to related literature. Why is tanka prose so novel? Because it is so old. The present anthology announces that it is here to stay. —Jeffrey Woodward
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Print: $12.95 We believe that tanka’s accessibility is directly related to the conversational way in which it was classically used, and that now more than ever, human beings need to speak to one another—not with the rants and shrills that are the usual public discourse, but with eloquence and grace. By speaking about their experiences of place, the poets of Atlas Poetica have touched on many deeper issues: the value of the natural environment, the importance of our communities, the travails of the modern world, and the everlasting love of beauty that may be the only true definition of civilization. The appreciation of beauty is not a luxury and not a fascination with superficial features, but the ability to peer into the details of existence and find joy. Nowhere is this more important than when burdened with the devastations that humans wreak on each other and the environment. -- M. Kei, Editor
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Print: $15.00 “In Two Minds is a conversation in two distinct voices. In a spirit of shared writing, this finely honed tanka collection covers a variety of topics with poetic intensity and skill. The reader will delight in the surprise endings, the interconnections and small epiphanies which inform each individual tanka and the sequences as a whole. Tanka enthusiasts and collectors of good poetry alike will welcome this new venture from two accomplished practitioners of the craft.” —Margaret Bradstock, Co-Editor, Five Bells
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Print: $11.95 An Unknown Road, the debut collection of haiku by Adelaide B. Shaw, offers readers “a different treat for every moment” says an’ya, editor of Moonset Literary Newspaper. Ray Rasmussen, managing editor of Contemporary Haibun Online, says, “A welcome aspect of reading a collection of haiku by a single writer is that it's like being taken on a walk in the writer's neighborhood. Adelaide Shaw's collection takes us on the best kind of walk — small things become visible and remind us of our own meanders.” An outstanding first collection of haiku—don’t miss it!
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Print: $16.95 “Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack” by M. Kei is a break-through collection of waterman poetry from the Chesapeake Bay by a poet who actually knows what he is talking about. M. Kei crews on the title boat, the Skipjack Martha Lewis. Kirsty Karkow, prize-winning poet and author of “water poems” and “shorelines,” says: “A Skipjack is a historic vessel where form follows function with a rough beauty. These characteristics are apparent in the sensitive, poetic voyages of an aging boat and the men who work her sails. This history and trip log is sure to delight any sailor or lover of the Chesapeake Bay . . . and of poetry.”
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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: $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: $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: $19.95 Selected for the "Best Books for Summer Reading, 2008" by The Montserrat Review.
“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 Selected for the "Best Books for Summer Reading, 2008" by The Montserrat Review.
“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 Selected for the "Best Books for Summer Reading, 2008" by The Montserrat Review.
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 Selected for the "Best Books for Summer Reading, 2008" by The Montserrat Review.
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: FREE 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: $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: $14.95 Download: $4.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Autumn 2008, Volume 3 Number 1, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 66 poets from around the world, book notes, reviews, and a fine article on tanka prose. You don’t want to miss anything in this great issue. Read MET 9 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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Print: $12.95 MODERN ENGLISH TANKA — Summer 2008, Volume 2 Number 4, Print Edition. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor. This eighth issue of Modern English Tanka includes the poetry of 73 poets from around the world, book notes, reviews, and a fine article on tanka prose. You don’t want to miss anything in this huge issue. Read MET 8 for the best modern English tanka available anywhere.
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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: $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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Print: $10.00 The five line tanka is slowly becoming an important literary movement in English and is attracting poets and readers from around the world. Eminently open and accessible, each well-wrought tanka presents a porthole through which the reader is invited to peek. What is seen is nothing less than a unique universe, co-created by the writer and reader with the mutual tools of imagination. The autumn issue of Ribbons offers some of the finest examples of this powerfully expressive poetry, as well as book reviews, articles, and news regarding the latest events and contests in the English tanka world. If you’ve never heard of tanka, this is a perfect place to discover it; if you already love to read and savor it, you’ll find a rich vein here; and if you are one of the many poets who have taken up this fine art, you’ll be inspired by the poems in this issue.
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Print: $10.00 Once again, The Tanka Society of America presents some of the finest contemporary English language tanka being written. This five line verse form, based on the oldest and most enduring literary genre in Japan, is becoming increasingly popular and important in English language poetry. The June edition of Ribbons contains over a hundred poems, as well as book reviews, articles, and the results of the TSA's 2008 International Tanka Poetry Competition. If you're already a reader or a writer of this fascinating and provocative poetry, or if you are just curious about it, Ribbons is the perfect place for an introduction to the form, for the continued enjoyment of it, and to keep up with some of its best examples.
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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: $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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