What is the difference between Tanka and Haiku?
Is Haiku difficult? Then why don’t you try Tanka poetry?
Haiku is a Japanese poetry style which is supposed to be composed by 5–7–5 syllables. Here on Medium, I saw many poets writing Haiku poetry. On the other hand, Tanka doesn’t seem to be as popular as Haiku, even though Tanka is also a Japanese poetry style which has a similar composition to Haiku.
From my experience of writing Haiku poetry in English so far, I found that writing Tanka poetry is easier than writing Haiku sometimes. This might not be the case for everybody, but might just be my personal preference.
I’d like to share with you the difference between Tanka and Haiku because it may be helpful for some writers who find it too difficult to write Haiku poetry.
According to the above website, there are two big differences between them. The biggest one is: Haiku poetry is composed of 5–7–5 syllables with three lines, while Tanka is composed of 5–7–5–7–7 with five lines.
Tanka has more words and contents than Haiku. So, if you think Haiku poetry is not long enough to express your inspiration, you can try Tanka poetry which allows you to add 14 extra syllables.
Another big difference is ‘the seasonal word.’ The seasonal word is a word which indicates the season of your poem.
You have to have a seasonal word in Haiku poetry, some poets (including me) occasionally write Haiku without it though. It is not necessary for Tanka poetry.
The number of syllables and the existence of the seasonal word are the two biggest differences between them. Some people also say that there are not many Haiku poems written about love. I think it is because Haiku is too short to describe your strongest emotions and it has more likely to be an unsophisticated poem when you squeeze a subjective feeling into such limited syllables.
Some English poets say that you cannot use simile, metaphor, and personification in Haiku poetry, which I never heard in Japan. I’ve read some articles about this and I had an impression that a Haiku poem with metaphor or personification is more likely turn into a boring one, so it is not recommended especially for beginners. It is not true that metaphor is forbidden in Haiku poetry.
However, if you want to use metaphor or personification, and simile definitely, you might want to try Tanka poetry which will less likely make you sound stupid. This is one of the reasons that Tanka poetry is written not only about nature but also about love, sadness or other emotions. In the history of Japanese poetry, you can find more Tanka poems with an emotional and subjective mode than Haiku.
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