NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

This journal of the Tanka Society of America is a beautifully produced publication on a slightly textured cream paper in a simple brown card cover. It includes a varied selection of tanka, articles about tanka and reviews.

The Tanka Cafe section in this theme contains tanka on the theme of Summer Scenes, with an introduction by Michael McClintock. The tanka chosen show an interesting variety of approaches to the theme. This by Thelma Mariano, for example, meditates on loneliness and the fleeting nature of summer:

	a lover's moon
	hangs low over the river
	as I sit alone
	sorry to see it
	slowly swallowed in cloud.

	Beads of rain
	braid down roses.
	The sun 
	is caught in each drop.
	Solar systems swirl.

There are also a number of interesting articles. WORLD TANKA: UPON THIS PATHWAY, Marjorie Buettner's study of death poems in tanka form covers interesting ground, considering how tanka writers approach the subject of death. She includes a good selection of representative tanka about death, including Hortensia Anderson's beautiful:

	snow falling...
	my spirit rises
	from whence it came; 
	soon, the hydrangeas will bloom 
	as beautifully without me.

	I pull up the blind
	just in time to see the star
	plummet and blink out
	in the cold dawn light —
	I'll never forget you.

	IV:  Andy Warhol, Flowers, silkscreen poster, 1970: 

	Warhol's flowers
	in museum gift shops
	everywhere
	buy one and you buy Andy
	fifteen more minutes of fame.

Ribbons, the journal of the Tanka Society of America, seems to me to be in spirit the print equivalent of Denis M Garrison's Tanka Central — a comprehensive, multi-faceted platform for the advancement of tanka knowledge and practice, as well as the friendly face of a growing community. The journal is clean, well-presented and substantial. As well as ongoing features — the Tanka Café, Featured Poet, News and Notes — this issue includes several dense, readable articles and myriad new tanka.

Of the articles, two stand out particularly. The first, Sanford Goldstein's reflections on TANKA STRINGS AND TANKA SEQUENCES, illuminates the philosophical differences between the looser associative structure of a tanka string, in which a single theme is elaborated through transitionally connected poems, and a true tanka sequence, having dramatic movement through distinct almost novel-like stages to a new awareness at its conclusion. This potentially abstract material is handled deftly, and concludes in the best manner with an engaging demonstration of the form.

The second article, part one of two, is Eisuke Shiiki's GLOBALIZATION OF TANKA. This too treats potentially difficult, even academic subject matter with a light touch. The author's analysis of competing schools of thought on syllabic patterns in English tanka provides an invaluable one-stop shop on this knotty issue (or at least a part-one stop shop). It is rare to find informed and accurate discussions of prosody which are well-written and a pleasure to read.

Ribbons also contains more than two hundred original tanka, as well as the results of the Tanka Splendor 2006 competition. There are a number of highlights, including punchy and kinetic poems by M Kei and Beverley George:

	shaking the bats
	out of the mainsail
	a cloud of night
	made homeless
	by my hands

		although you won't
		be at this grand affair
		I will feel your hand
		push the small of my back
		as I speak our mingled words

	eyes like a fish
	swimming upstream
	that man
	walking back through the carriage
	as the train goes forward

		hey you, hat
		flying up in the wind —
		tell the young girl
		I was long ago that
		I'm waiting here for her

For me it all comes down to spirit, how the poem makes me feel when I read it. If I experience it in the marrow of my bones the poem is good.

The Tanka Society of America Journal RIBBONS is a very pleasantly presented, US Letter size, saddle-stitched booklet. It's also a well organised publication, clearly setting out the different sections of interest of both club and general reader. There is a welcoming sense of being invited to join this world-wide club of tanka.

In this issue there is a full page article A QUICK START GUIDE TO WRITING TANKA by Jeanne Emrich. She says

Like haiku, its shorter cousin, tanka is well-grounded in concrete images but also is infused with a lyric intensity and intimacy that comes from the direct expression of emotions, as well as from implication, suggestion, and nuance.

THE FEATURED POET Lenard D Moore, talks us through a journey he took to Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island in Florida, and presents a tanka that came from the inspiration of that visit.

	winter sunset
	the scratching sound of feet
	around the ruins
	of the slave quarters
	in Palmetto shade 

	autumn storm
	crashing thunder and lightening
	primitive
	sensations up my spine
	remind me where I've come from

	Melissa Dixon

		painting
		with a blue jay's feather
		I wonder where it is now
		the bird
		that offered this gift

		Carolyn Thomas

	my suitcase
	never quite unpacked
	since this new job
	my life a perpetual
	Monday morning

	Aurora Antonovic

		until now
		I never kissed your scalp
		emerging
		vulnerable and white
		after your first chemo

		Kathy Kituai

While English-language tanka poets are in the habit of making selections from their tanka diaries and publishing only what they regard as the best,or those most likely to have a broad appeal or interest, in Japan the practice among poets is just the opposite — pretty much everything goes in!

brings to bear all of her considerable powers as translator, and her sensitivity to the Japanese of the original.

	bright afternoon
	from the workshop windows
	creativity
	rising and dipping
	with silver-winged gulls

	Amelia Fielden

		on the line
		my sheets thrash and billow
		wildly in the wind
		like women done
		with lying down, with giving in

		Annette Mineo