To the Lighthouse: Leaping Tanka

Leaping tanka is a subgenre of leaping poetry as defined by Robert Bly as “a long floating leap from the conscious to the unconscious and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown part and back to the known.” 

For example, 

I fill the void

of my heart in exile

with word after word

from a jar of pickles ...

the absence breaks in me

My tanka takes a leap from the conscious -- fill[in] the void/of [the speaker's] heart in exile/with word after word -- to  the unconscious -- the taste/image of a jar of pickles associated with writing, which is unexplained/unexplored in the tanka. 

And yet the absence breaks in the speaker who feels empty and unfulfilled in life. Therefore, a leap from the unconscious back to the conscious again.

FYI: Robert Bly seeks the use of quick, free association of the known and the unknown-the innate animal and rational cognition-which, he maintains, have been kept apart in the development of Western religious, intellectual, and literary thought... Review of Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations by Robert Bly,  University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008