simple adding and subtracting

January 28, 2010 at 6:22 pm | Posted in australian poetry, poetry, sheer selfindulgence, writing | 12 Comments
Tags: writing for fun

last year i took away a word ‘gravity’
.I’m not so sure that was a good idea
now. I think I will add a few like ‘eucalypt’.
It looks like an anagram which as a tanka began,

(I like the way in this version ‘.I’m’ sits directly above ‘now.’ which makes a small poem inside the larger poem. A tanka officially has a structure. The number of syllabubbles in each line is supposed to be, 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. Although it should be noted that the difference in the basic structure of Japanese and English raises the question of whether these syllable restrictions have much meaning. There are some who suggest the idea or the mood of forms like tanka and haiku are more important than syllable counting. Anyway, that is a long discussion, it has been going on for as long as I have been around. Here is the original poem, changed a little to fit a formal tanka structure. It is interesting to me that the central line is like a version of the tiny poem contained in the first version.)

Last year took away
a word ‘gravity’ not so
sure that was a good

idea now i think i

will add a few like eu ca
lypt looks like an anagram
which as a tanka began

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