The title of this well-produced selection of tanka by the venerable poet Fumi Saito is taken from the first tanka in the book's first section, which contains work from "Gyo ka" (Songs of a Fish), her first collection, published in 1940. The other five sections cover work reaching to 1993, when she published "Shuten Ruri" (Emerald Autumn Skies) and was inducted into The Japan Art Academy, a singular distinction. The book is printed with one tanka per page, in the original Japanese, English and romaji, which is very useful for those who have difficulty reading the kanji.
In the last 50 years or so, there have been very many translations of haiku and tanka into a great variety of languages. Unfortunately, those in English are rarely satisfying, either as translations or as poems in their own right. Tanka, in particular, is a wonderful poetic form, and the translator should ideally be a good poet.
Most of these translations are made by amateur poets, and so lack the rhythm, musicality and muscular form that only a true poet can produce. Therefore both haiku and tanka have been misunderstood abroad, particularly in the United States, where their apparent simplicity has led thousands of would-be poets to produce works that are complete fakes. Naturally, the general public has shown very little interest in such trivial work, and the true nature of haiku and tanka has been lost.
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