Continuation of a previous post (read: rant) about Haiku requests and Tanaga

Some Copyright guidelines
for students who use this site for their school projects:

There are Filipino tanagas here published in the previous months, all copyrights of which are retained by their respective authors. Mere publishing on this site from their end is an approval to the editor and expressly, an approval to the public that their work may be exhibited for the sake of the saving a dying art form. However, this means that while they may be copied for educational purposes, full credit due must be provided to them. This must not be forgotten.
A link back to this site (and the exact work cited) is also needed should you quote the same on your term papers.

Perhaps I should add a search button on or a list of poems on the archive. Allow me to rant though. I understand the difficulty in writing tanagas, however, it is NOT right to demand this writer for your freaking homeworks. I suggest make your ur own tanagas rather than copying for your homeworls. It's not that difficult. Please contribute to goal of keeping the art alive, rather than merely distributing the mere handful of surviving tanagas that we have.

Some details that need to be said:

1. This is tanaga site not a haiku site.

While I do not despite other artforms, please understand that this site is devoted to the tanaga and not the haiku. There are already too many haiku sites in the internet, I need not add another one. This is why I could not entertain reader requests for haikus.

However, I can provide information on how similar the tanaga and the haiku are from the perspective of the writer: Both are short poetic forms and therefore demand what I call the two primary Cs = Comprehensiveness in Concise delivery. In fact there is a third C which is clarity, something which most poets still struggle with owing to the difficulty of jargon and culture.

The art in both is in contained not just in the work itself, but in the writing process. The choice of words is difficult task, which not easily done by the uninterested. Hence, the tanaga, like the haiku, is a fourth C = a Craft. What seperates the tanaga from the haiku is auditory -the possibilities for rhyme, the power of the tone in the meter, and recently through modernizing of the form, all of which can have profound effects which add to the flexibility of the poem when invoking OR violating these rules.

A sestina always comes from a a basic set of words, but a set of words do not always end up as a sestina. In the same way, should your attempts on a tanaga fail, the open form maybe a good route to take.

I got an email from reader and poet Kevyn Bello which worth sharing.
We have to make more people, especially our own people see the art in ourselves.
Allow me to post the whole text and the tanagas in various languages that follows:

First and politely, I thank you for having and keeping the Tanaga site. I myself am a 17 year old Filipino who has only an understanding but no speaking ability of Tagalog, and it seems that the Filipino youths of the West are losing some of their indigenous culture. Ever since Foreign forces have come, we have confused ourselves as Pacific Islander/Asians, English as a national language instead of some one or several of the diverse languages (I think Chavacano should be in there), and our own Baybayin.

But the Tanaga I have assurance can live on as long as others employ the form as a living symbol of the past. The 7-syllable count makes the form even more difficult for us poets who employ even-counted syllables.

Anyways, here are some tanaga that I myself have wrote. I love the art form, and it is easy to create one in minutes. Of course, I hope it is not too crappy, but it's a poem!

In French:

Si les anges prendraient mon coeur,
Il se réveillait au Ciel,
Comme l'encens de la douceur
À ce trône de l'Éternel.

Poetic translation:

If the angels take my heart,
It should rise above the sky
As sweet incense taking part
To the throne of Him, Most High.

In Spanish:

Jesucristo es mi Señor,
Rey de reyes en honor.
De su sangre, es su amor
Como un bello salvador.

Poetic Translation:

Jesus Christ is but my Lord,
King of kings in honour best.
From his blood, reveals his love
As a Saviour comely blest.


In English:

Yahweh God, I ask of Thee
That Thou would'st take care of me.
May the world be peaceful, still,
So all may receive Thy Will.

The shadows fill within me
And consummates me wholly.
Blissful death, I wait for you
When my sacred blood is due.

In Esperanto:

Levantiĝas sola stel'
Tra l' ĉielo kiel hel'.
Estas venus' sub la lun'
Ĝis la veno de la sun'.

Poetic translation:

One small star is risen high
As a brightness through the sky.
It is venus 'neath the moon
Till the coming of the sun.

- Kevyn Bello

Editor's Note: Some translations may not be in the exact 7-7-7-7 form, due to the difficulty of words lost in translation. Interestingly, with the 8-syllable form it becomes the "Dalit", another indigenous form popularized by the Spanish Friars in their evangelical publications.