F. Omar Telan: Poet, Savior, Village Idiot: 2016

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Omar's (Un-Produced) Too Much Light Plays: Cut Before Its Time

[As ensemble member announces title when it is *first* pulled, interrupt her/him yelling CURTAIN. It is important to note that this will require the entire ensemble pay attention; if the first reading is not interrupted, it is too late. The play will have had its time. You will have failed. Not you in the plural sense. You in the singular. You who are reading this right now are a failure... an abject failure. You may as well just end the whole show now. Ending the show before the 60 minute mark is the only way to salvage the failure of not ending this play before the time. So the question becomes "Just how dedicated are you? Will you end the show to prove that you are dedicated to the fleeting nature of performance?" I suppose that's more than one question, but I think you get my point. Please end the play properly so we don't have to find out what happens.]

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Friday, November 11, 2016

Tanka Form

Traditional US understanding of the Tanka form is as follows.

a 5-line syllabic poem
syllable pattern: 5-7-5-7-7

Often, I'll see the subject matter dealing with nature. There's also can be a bit of a volta between the 3rd and 4th lines.

As with the Haiku, the syllable count and line breaks are a bit of a mistranslation.

The line breaks in traditional Haiku and Tanka are arbitrary. A web search for either form will result in a number of different configurations. It's possible to even find them written as a single line: a Haiku of 12 characters and a Tanka of 26 characters.

Written Japanese uses a logographic writing system versus alphabetical. A single Kanji character can encompass a whole concept where a single syllable could only be part of a concept. Here's an example:

交 can mean mix, intersect, exchange/communicate, or deliver. That one symbol can have a syllabic equivalent of up to 4 syllables.

For my purposes, I forgo the line breaks; but keep the syllables.

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