My Dear Friends:
The Tanka Society of America posted its multimedia presentation of 2021 Sanford Goldstein Tanka Contest Awards on its YouTube channel.
First Place
my old home sits
next to unturned soil
string beans
and silver queen corn
long for my father’s hand
Pris Campbell
Second Place
children locked
in steel cages
once upon a time
that happened
only in fairytales
Kathryn Stevens
Third Place
kintsugi ...
the flow
of your gentle words
helps to rebuild
a better version of me
Urszula Funnell
Honorable Mentions
no more
chilli seeds—
my children
measure my words
in scoville units
Lucky Triana
returning
with fresh soup
the waiter
thinks the fly
will be all right
Tom Bierovic
people debate
the ways I should be
allowed to exist—
a rainbow forms outside
the social construct of gender
GRIX
Special Commendation for Embodying Sanford-Style
birdsongs
at morning lightfall
alone
in the thatched hut
of an everyday mind
Chen-ou Liu
FYI: Introducing something new this year, we’ve chosen to honor our contest’s namesake by selecting one tanka we felt best embodied Sanford Goldstein’s singular style... excerpted from Judges' Report where the following two tanka by Sanford Goldstein are analyzed together with mine:
it was roosters
at morning light-fall --
how joyous
even that crack
diagonal
I too
am Bashō,
fleas
and that urine smell
in this mountain hut
and its conclusion:
The two poems reinforce each other by modeling one possible way to cope: we can attempt to attend to sounds and situations surrounding us in a Zen-like state of mu, a concept meaning “nothing,” which manifests itself as “mind-less mind.” In this hut of the centered self, one can awaken to acceptance and the accompanying peace of simply being. Taken together with its philosophical balm, we find this tanka by a poet inspired by a master-inspired-by-a-master . . . inspiring.
You can read this detailed analysis, stylistic and thematic, in the report that begins with the following tanka:
forty years have passed
and still my ear remains
a soft carpet
on which others
dance their blues
Sanford Goldstein
Happy Viewing and Reading
Chen-ou
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