Poetic Musings: Lightning Tanka by Robert Kusch

lightning
on the horizon

my child

takes a huge

bite from a pear 

The Tanka Anthology, 2003

Robert Kusch

Commentary: Robert Kusch uses a syntactic pivot: two images are simply juxtaposed, or abutted, without transition or even punctuation. No subjective element or stated interpretation appears; we assume only a temporal contiguity between the two images. The immediacy and effect are very haiku-like and defy paraphrase or elaboration. Such force holds the combined images together so that they fuse into a third image that is stunning, magical, wordless, yet utterly mysterious in meaning or significance. The Japanese have a word for it, yugen, meaning sublimity, or mysterious depth...

-- excerpted from "Introduction to The Tanka Anthology" (reprinted by kind permission of NeverEnding Story contributor, Michael McClintock)

FYI: For further discussion on yugen, see Poetic Musings: Ezra Pound’s "Metro Poem" as a Yugen Haiku.