old memories
like tangled fish hooks
impossible
to pick up only one
without all the others
First Place, 2008 Tanka Society of America International Contest
an'ya
Commentary: This tanka has layers of suggestion, evoking layers of response.
At the first layer, this is a visual tanka – you can SEE the tangled snarl of fish hooks and, like that old game of fiddle sticks, it would be almost impossible to gently extract one fish hook without disturbing the others. As a simile for memories it works well, you can imagine fishing in the storehouse of your mind to find a particular memory and savor it, only to find a flood of other memories that you can’t stop. I’m sure that everyone has experienced that....
This is where the power of the simile works to enhance the impact of the tanka....
The next layer is going into the particular side effects this shock of memories can yield. Fish hooks are barbed, treacherous objects, designed to trap the unwary. The poet implies that memory, too, is a risky business....
Finally I looked at the particular words in this tanka. It is a deceptively simple tanka -- simple language, many of the words just one syllable. Yet every word plays an important role. The key words to me were “old”, “only” and “all”. Very simple, basic words, not particularly poetic in their own right... excerpted from the Bowerbird Tanka Group Meeting Report, written by Carmel Summers
