Loosening Up

Greetings, everyone! Grace here. Thank you for being patient with my quietude last month. It was a treat to read your tanka, and this month, I'm pleased to bring you what might be my most ambitious challenge ever. But I'll need your help, every single one of you, to bring it to fruition.

I realize I told you to contact the person who posted before you if you planned to participate this month, but in the interim, I had a marvelous idea. The challenge for this month is a collaborative poem, and I had planned to pair you up in groups of four. Then I wondered, what would happen for the participants who came along for this challenge, but not the last one?

Luckily, our system lends itself beautifully to my improved idea!

This month, we're going to band together, everyone that comes by, and make an enormous renga. The renga is a long Japanese poem, a series of very short verses in an alternating pattern, built by the group. There are links and references scattered within the greater poem, and each verse is related without being repetitive.

There are rules on when and for how many verses flowers can be referenced, or the moon, among many other things, but we're going to start more simply.

Three or four people are the smallest group usually accepted for an ichiza, or renga group. The poem begins with a hokku, a verse of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. This might sound familiar--the last time we discussed it, we called it a haiku, its modern name. The second verse is two lines of 7 syllables each, turning the hokku into what looks like the tanka we covered last time. The third verse is another 5-7-5, the fourth another 7-7. This pattern continues until the planned length is reached. So, the beginning of the renga will end up looking like this:

1st person.
*****
*******
*****

2nd person.
*******
*******

3rd person.
*****
*******
*****

4th person.
*******
*******

And so on! Each verse also has certain rules. The hokku follows the same rules as the haiku we covered before; kigo, kireji, and syllable count. The hokku also generally references the season in which the renga is created.

The second verse is known as the waki, and generally, the person who helps to organize the gathering is asked to create it! I'm not going to enforce that in this case; I think we can save it for a more organized piece.

The last verse is known as the ageku, and particular care is taken to wrap up the themes and references for the entire poem.

Now, there are many more rules for each stanza, and most renga fall into formats or previously arranged lengths. Ordinarily I am, as you know, ALL FOR FORMAT. But this time, in honor of the spirit of atarashimi, or the "feeling of newness," I'm loosing the reins. Bashō described it as "refraining from stepping back," and in a renga, one is supposed to accept the change and enjoy the sometimes surprising verse choices that come from others. All I ask is that you are careful to follow the pattern, and let's find out where our renga takes us!

So this is what we are going to do: I will post the first stanza. The second person to link up will do the second, and so on, until the participants run out of steam. Then we will have a Real Toads renga for the ages! I hope that once we try this, we continue to make more and better renga. I also hope this inspires you to have fun, even with short verses.

Don't forget to leave a comment after linking so that the next person in line knows what number they are!

I'm so excited for this. I've been looking forward to it all month. Thank you for sharing in the creation of this unique piece of our community.