Available from www.Lulu.com/modernenglishtanka and from major booksellers;
or order from the publisher by mail: Modern English Tanka Press Order Form.
Price: $28.95 USD.
ISBN: 978-0-6151-8005-2
Trade paperback. 336 pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior paper,
full-color exterior ink.
This book is a tanka treasure chest, filled with nearly five hundred poems by the acknowledged master of the genre, Sanford Goldstein.
Not only has Goldstein, with his translating partners, made the classics of modern Japanese poetry available in English, he has written
some of the best tanka ever rendered first in English. Six published collections of the tanka of Sanford Goldstein are compiled in this
single, historic, volume by “the father of tanka in English.” For anyone who wants to understand tanka, who wants a genuine tanka experience,
this book is a must-read. Sanford Goldstein’s Four Decades on My Tanka Road is where you start your own journey with the world’s oldest
continually-anthologized poetic genre.
Praise for the book:
In Sanford Goldstein’s postscript to his collection, This Tanka World, he writes that it was “Takuboku who taught me that tanka is a diary of
the emotional changes in a man’s life.” In this collection we read a lifetime of emotional changes, as Sanford maps out his four decades on the tanka
road. When we piece the tanka together and trace the roadmap of his journey, we experience the ultimate tanka sequence where the “I” of the poet
disappears leaving us with the universal human story of life, love, loss, displacement, leaving home, and finding a home in the slender words of
tanka. Sanford surrenders himself to the tanka way “as if life/will settle/it all/I drink my coffee/write my poem”. Thank goodness Sanford has been
quiet and patient enough throughout his journey to savor and share these moments of emotional change worth keeping.
—Dr. Randy Brooks, Millikin University
Sanford Goldstein is the grand old man of tanka. Translator, poet, editor, judge, he is one of those rare individuals: an academically trained scholar
and poet who has not lost touch with ordinary life. For more than forty years, Goldstein and his translating partners have made available the modern
classics of the Japanese language, and during the same period, Goldstein has penned some of the best tanka in the English language. Thoroughly
knowledgeable about Japan but devoid of japonisme, Goldstein lives up to the notion that tanka are “poems to eat.” Focusing on the details of
daily life, he presents them with an honesty and insight that makes his tanka some of the most eloquent, spare, and truthful documents in English
literature.
—M. Kei, editor of Atlas Poetica
Sanford Goldstein’s tanka are rich in humanity and personal chronicle. With his Muse on his shoulder—a constant if at times also a chary and demanding
companion—Goldstein has traveled far, seen much, thought intently, and felt the vicissitudes of ordinary life. Is there any wonder his poetry
moves us? His struggles and triumphs are Every Man’s. No man could want a better friend, a more loving brother, being that one who will tell us what
we may not always want to hear but, for our own sake, must come to know and understand.
—Michael McClintock, Contributing Editor, Modern English Tanka
What a treasure! In this single volume are collected some four hundred seventy-seven tanka written and published by the acknowledged master of the form,
Sanford Goldstein, during his fascinating forty year journey along the tanka road.
Goldstein’s poetic voice, and some of his techniques, have inevitably changed and evolved in response to life events experienced over those long years
of commitment to tanka. But always his poetry emanates from his own modest persona, radiating out to illuminate a broad spectrum of topics which
include nature and human nature, Goldstein’s second country, Japan, his personal histories, religion, theatre, art, literature, and his own
tanka-writing practices.
Though he is a consummate poet, Goldstein’s language is characterized by simplicity, clarity, warmth, and often a gentle humor, which invite the reader
into his life at every stage of its journey.
This invitation by Goldstein, to share a lifetime’s memories and interaction with his present, celebrated in tanka, is one to be accepted gratefully
and wholeheartedly.
—Amelia Fielden, translator and poet, Australia
