THE INFLUENCE OF JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES

The Illusion of Death

A traditional 31-syllable tanka plus an educational discussion about the art form and how it differs from haiku

The Tanka

Exit-date illusion souls do not dissipate still leaving all-too-real for somnambulists yet waking won’t salve grieving hearts

While the reader may have expected a tanka formatted as five lines with the 5/7/5/7/7 counts, the most traditional form of tanka contains 31 syllables in an unbroken line. See, Brett Christensen’s informative story:

… unlike haiku, tanka allows metaphors, similes, and personification. Traditionally, Tanka poems were written as one continuous line. But modern versions written in English are usually formatted over five lines. …Traditionally, tanka poems do not use punctuation….

I write tanka in each style. I write in the traditional, unbroken-line-style when I want to evoke the concept of connection. For example:

Everything Everything there is and Everything past All that never came to be and Everything that will last.

Mr. Christensen says this about this difference between haiku and tanka:

So, a tanka poem is like a haiku with two extra lines added. Sometimes, this extra length can offer a little more scope to tell your story. …Tanka poems typically have a turn or pivot in the third line. An article about Tanka on poets.org notes:

Like the sonnet, the tanka employs a turn, known as a pivotal image, which marks the transition from the examination of an image to the examination of the personal response. This turn is located within the third line, connecting the kami-no-ku, or upper poem, with the shimo-no-ku, or lower poem.

My tanka today follows up this tanka I penned yesterday:

Deaths’ facts differ still Will drives lives’ paths to deaths’ dates Love burns — searing pain Deepest loss most room for gain Endless pain, Light fills the drain

I have never studied nor read anything about tanka beyond the rules of construction. I just happened to find Mr. Christensen’s story today when I Googled for a quote and source about the single-line format.

The first two lines of yesterday’s poem represent my belief in the predestination of the date of death, but that our paths to death, how we lead our lives, we do very much determine through the exercise of free will. The third line evokes the excruciating pain felt by the soulmate left behind. I almost ended there with that haiku. Yet, I did not want the poem to leave the reader with the dark feeling of hopelessness. So, I added a turn to Light — the last two lines paint a silver lining. While nary a day shall pass that I will not mourn the sudden and tragic loss of my 36.5-year-old lover, my infinitely large pain pockets will never empty, meaning as they drain, they contain space for an infinite amount of Light to shine.

So, whence does this intuitive ability to write as described by Mr. Christensen stem? Archetypes. As serendipitously written about today by a kindred soul here on Medium, Rebecca Romanelli:

Anyone studying psychology will run across the word archetype and often associate it with psychologist Carl Jung’s work. He suggested they were forms of innate human knowledge passed down through our ancestors.

He believed our human psyche was divided into three major components: the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Archetypes stemmed from the collective or universal unconscious. His work even led to a new definition of an archetype:

An inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of C.G. Jung that is derived from the experience of [one’s forebearers] and is present in the unconscious of the individual — Merriam Webster Dictionary

I recommend poets in particular edit the default SEO description.

As described in the setting: “The SEO Description is used in place of your Subtitle on search engine results pages. Good SEO descriptions utilize keywords, summarize the story and are between 140–156 characters long.” The description defaults to the first approximate 195 characters of a story, which does nothing for a poem. For a poem, revising the SEO description can double as the decoder ring.

Tanka conveys that death, not life, is an illusion, but from a relativistic standpoint is very real in the eyes of unawakened souls in this life cycle

Thus, a Google hit will provide my interpretation of my poem.

In Rama I create,

Marcus

I would also like to note the brilliant story also synchronously published today by 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊. that inspired me to write another tanka on death and mourning: