A Favorite Tanka

The long history of tanka shows us that it is a poetry of human feeling. One of the most important if not essential aspects of tanka is that of archetypal transference, the capability of a poem to effortlessly move its feeling from writer to reader-who are effectively interchangeable. One tanka that illustrates this is Cherie Hunter Day's

far more often
than in previous years
we argue--
I stack blue mussel shells
one inside the other

This poem shows the feeling that follows an argument between two people in a relationship, a relationship that is perhaps moving towards its end-stage as arguments become more frequent. What I find most striking about Day's poem is the sense of resignation that pervades the first three lines and the sense of defeat and dissociation that brings the poem to a close in the final two lines. The narrative of the poem moves from the tenuous human connection of an argument to the aimlessness of stacking mussel shells in isolation as the focus changes from "we" to "I." The poem's immediacy brings me back to arguments that I have had with partners that have ended with similar feelings--a sense of giving  up on a relationship. Arguments between partners are often witnessed by children, and I'm reminded of my parents arguing when I was a child. I remember my mother being similarly lost in some aimless task after an argument with my father, a loss that I felt too. All of this may seem somewhat melancholy, but is paradoxically comforting. I believe that when we meet the feelings of a tanka in this way, we can do so without the personal baggage of the preceding narrative and arrive at the climax from a position of relative neutrality. We can experience the feelings with a detachment that enables one person's argument to become another's sense of connection.

~ Brian Tasker

Cherie Hunter Day's tanka, "far more often," first appeared in Lynx No. 3, 1998.

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