What is a Haiku? What is a Tanka? Please help me out :)?

Question

What is a Haiku? What is a Tanka? I have to do it tonight for my homework, but my teacher didn't explain it very good. So could you reading this, explain what they are? And also when I write it out, does it have to have a certain amount of lines spacing in between? Like three spaces, then two, then four, or something like that? Please help me out ^,^

Answer 1

Kristen is confused-count her syllables.

Haiku: 5-7-5

The first line has 5 syllables
Second Line has 7 syllables
Third line has 5 syllables

For example:
I go to the beach.
The waves are crashing loudly.
I can hear the gulls.

Dont know the other type of poem, sorry.

Answer 2

I hope you found a site that easily answered your questions. Both haiku & tanka are very short poems but have a lot of history and academic papers published.

Tanka dates back over twelve centuries, and its name means 'short song'.

Don't worry about a syllablic count because even Japanese tanka poets will write in their own way, sometimes making their tanka shorter than their haiku, and vice versa!

The form of both poems is more the craft and discipline of writing than cold counting of syllables.

May I suggest that a visit to With Words could help for a very simple overview of English-language haiku?

Then if you check out Area 17 there are many quality weblinks for haiku and I have included two tanka links which have their own links.

Just start with a haiku site or two, and select one or the other tanka site to start with. Otherwise you will get bowled over with differing views, and contradictions.

Once you have a basic idea of haiku & tanka, and have tried your hand writing a few of each, then take a look at other sites. But one thing at a time, learn a little, to start a foundation, then learn a little more. Bit by bit you'll soon be getting published in quality magazines!

Answer 3

G'day,

Thank you for your question.

Haiku is a typeof Japanese poetry which has been adopted to English. Haiku usually combines three different phrases, with a distinct grammatical break, called kireji, usually placed at the end of either the first five or second seven or last five morae or words. In Japanese, there are actual kireji words. In English, kireji is often repaced with commas, hyphens, elipses, or implied breaks in the haiku. Japanese haiku are usually written as a single line, while English language haiku are traditionally separated into three lines.

Tanka is also a form of Japanese poetry. According to Wikipedia, " Tanka consists of five units (often treated as separate lines when Romanized or translated) usually with the following mora pattern:

5-7-5 / 7-7.
The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase"), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase").

Tanka is a much older form of Japanese poetry than haiku. In ancient times poems of this form were called hanka ("reverse poem"), since the 5-7-5-7-7 form derived from the conclusion (envoi) of a choka. Sometimes a choka had two envois."

I have attached sources for your reference.

Regards

Answer 4

A Haiku is a 17 sylable simple Japanese poem with 1st line is 3 sylables 2nd line is 7 syllables and 3rd line is 6 sylables
eg. The moon is very bright
I wish it lasts day and night
Everything turns out right

I don't know what a tanka is

Answer 5

a haiku is three lines of text with alternating syllables in a 5 syllable/7 syllable/5 syllable pattern. for example:

the sky is darker (5 syllables)
now is the time for mourning (7 syllables)
innocence has died (5 syllables)

a tanka has 31 syllables, broken into 5-7-5-7-7 in every line. for example:

i hear them rustle (5 syllables)
as they brush their cheeks groundward (7 syllables)
they blush gracefully (5 syllables)
in colors pleasing to eyes (7 syllables)
these breathtaking leaves of fall (7 syllables)

hope this helps!

Answer 6

They're both Japanese poetry forms and have many technical rules concerning number of syllables and metrical units. Check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku
http://www.americantanka.com/about.html

Answer 7

these websites would help:




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waka_%28poetry%29#Tanka