We Interrupt The Regularly Scheduled Haiku Series Of Posts For This Exciting Announcement!

June 15, 2022December 2, 2022 | Danna Smith

My debut YA novel-in-verse, The Complete Book of Aspen, has received an amazing five-star review! The book is written in narrative verse but is also chock-full of poetic forms like shaped poems, haiku, senryu, skinny poems, list poems, found poetry, where I’m from poems, and much more!

The back of the book lists information on the included poetic forms, which makes it a great book for the classroom! I’ve pasted the full review below. You can order the book or learn more about it here:

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Tanka : Haiku’s Big Cousin

June 5, 2021June 7, 2021 | Danna Smith

The word tanka means “short song” and is one of the oldest Japanese forms of poetry originating in the seventeenth century. The tanka is related to it’s shorter cousin, haiku, but isn’t as popular with American poets. Traditional Japanese tanka poems are made up of 31 syllables written in a single, unbroken line. However, the tanka poems in English takes on a five-line form, consisting of a 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count.