What father could refuse? Rory’s poem is what’s known as a diamante, a seven-line poem in the shape of a diamond that begins with one thing and gradually transitions to end with sort of its opposite.

What is the structure of a Cinquain poem? Cinquains are five lines long. They have 2 syllables in the first line, 4 in the second, 6 in the third, 8 in the fourth line, and just 2 in the last line. Cinquains do not need to rhyme, but you can include rhymes if you want to.

Iris McClellan Tiedt

The word diamante is pronounced DEE – UH – MAHN – TAY; it is an Italian word meaning “diamond.” This type of poem does not contain rhyming words.

Indeed, it is not simply “conventional wisdom” (seemingly unexamined) that tanka do not have titles, as St. Maur says. Rather, titles being superfluous in tanka (in both English and Japanese) is an extension of a deep-rooted aesthetic.

Renga, or “linked verse,” is a form in which two or more poets supplied alternating sections of a poem. The Kin’yōshū (c. 1125) was the first imperial anthology to include renga, at that time simply tanka composed by two poets, one supplying the first three lines and the other the last two.

The basic structure of a tanka poem is 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7. In other words, there are 5 syllables in line 1, 7 syllables in line 2, 5 syllables in line 3, and 7 syllables in lines 4 and 5.

Examples From Famous Tanka Poets

• Takuboku Ishikawa. Takuboku Ishikawa was born in 1882, in the Iwate prefecture of Japan.
• Masaoka Shiki. Masaoka Shiki was born in 1867 in the Ehime Prefecture in Japan.
• Mokichi Saito. Mokichi Saito was born in 1882 in what is now known as Kaminoyama, Yamagata, Japan.
• Tada Chimako.

: a 3-line unrhymed Japanese poem structurally similar to haiku but treating human nature usually in an ironic or satiric vein.