Talk:Tanka in English

MET Press as a source
It seems that a lot of the information in this article comes from material that is self-published on Lulu. I have tagged these citations as dubious for this reason. While I don't doubt that tanka in English exists and merits its own article, there must be less dubious sources out there. MET Press has a history of putting out some rather questionable material (see User:Elvenscout742/Jeffrey Woodward critique). elvenscout742 (talk) 02:16, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

13 October 2012 AFD recommendation
See Articles for deletion/Tanka prose, where it was recommeded by the closing administrator that  be merged into Tanka in English. The redirect has been proposed for deletion as not needing to be merged at Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_13, so the amount to be merged, according to user:elvenscout742 may be small to none. -- 70.24.247.66 (talk) 04:56, 15 October 2012 (UTC)


 * User Elvenscout742’s POV regarding “the amount to be merged” carries no particular weight. His opinion, as cited by the IP above, is not supported by the AFD recommendation nor does it accurately reflect the results of the RFD discussion.Tristan noir (talk) 03:15, 1 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Material on English Wikipedia must be (1) true, and (2) verifiable. The rules for notability regarding inclusion of material within a larger article are different from those regarding stand-alone articles, but my past arguments still stand. It is not my "POV" that Jeffrey Woodward unilaterally invented the concept of "tanka prose" in 2008 (possibly 2007), or that you are trying to promote Jeffrey Woodward's works on Wikipedia, or that so-called "tanka prose" has never seen coverage except in minor, non-notable publications. Please refrain from adding misleading or offensive material to Wikipedia. Also, please stop making personal attacks against me on talk pages. elvenscout742 (talk) 02:29, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

"Self-published" journals - an oxymoron
In this edit user Elvenscut742 has removed mention of four periodicals from the 'History' section with the summary: Removing reference to non-notable, self-published (via Lulu) "journals". This user has repeatedly asserted that certain periodicals are "self-published" and has been challenged on more than one occasion to explain the difference between a 'self-published' periodical and any other one, but has on every occasion failed to do so. It has also been repeatedly explained to this editor that all periodicals are in effect 'self-published' but he seems entirely unable to grasp this simple fact. Which printer a publisher selects to print their publication is of absolutely zero relevance. The editor, in addition to repeatedly displaying the depths of his ignorance of publishing, has now shown that he has no knowledge at all of the Japanese and Australian journals, reference to which he has removed from the article. The edit summary clearly indicates that the edit was based on ignorance rather than fact and should be reverted. --gråb whåt you cån (talk) 13:59, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. User Elvenscout742 has unilaterally removed similar references to periodicals from the body of various articles and removed ELs to various articles based upon the same flawed (or tendentious) arguments about "self-published" and/or "non-notable" sources. I would cite, apart from the current article, his recent removals of similar materials at Renku, Haiga, Index of literary terms and Haibun. In each instance, he has demonstrated his broad miscomprehension of modern publishing and his apparent ignorance of the contents of the specific journals that he has removed. His campaign, across a number of articles, has become disruptive and counter-productive.Tristan noir (talk) 18:17, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Materials published via Lulu Press are self-published. As far as the publisher, Lulu, is concerned, "Modern English Tanka Press" is the name of an author who self-publishes through Lulu. The fact that this author does not pay the publisher is irrelevant, because the publisher is not contractually obliged to actually print the materials unless an order is placed. If you are going to include reference to such self-published works and claim they are "noteworthy", you need to be able to back up their noteworthiness with reference to reliable secondary sources. In fact, use of the peacock word "noteworthy" is not favoured on Wikipedia: if they have won awards or have high sales figures, cite those specifically. Tristan noir, why do you persist in making personal attacks against me? The above list of other pages I have edited, in accordance with consensus, is ridiculous. I removed ONE external link from the Haiga article, and provided a valid reason for it to which you have yet to respond directly. I did not remove ANY external links or references to "noteworthy publications" from the Index of literary terms (which, if consensus stands, will sooner or later be moved to Glossary of literary terms). In the latter I merely made a tiny logical removal in favour of a guideline that Bagworm, and much later you, attempted to unilaterally overrule, as well as broadly-established consensus that the page should not be an indiscriminate list of words. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM MAKING PERSONAL ATTACKS. My "campaign", as you call it, makes up a small part of my editing activities on Wikipedia. I am not trying to be "disruptive" or "counter-productive" -- I am merely trying to enforce Wikipedia policies and guidelines, which you have consistently flouted. elvenscout742 (talk) 01:00, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Why do you persist, Elvenscout, in interpreting every criticism of your position as a personal attack (and to do so, habitually, in BOLD UPPERCASE)? I made some observations which I believe are justified. Your understanding of publishing is hopelessly flawed, as your remarks above indicate, and it is your innocence of the same subject (I will assume good faith) that leads you repeatedly to issue patently absurd statements about who or what is a publisher, an editor, an author and what is or is not self-published. The same innocence has led you to offer the various objectionable edits mentioned above and to seek to justify them with some imagined consensus.Tristan noir (talk) 01:44, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Your above comment is almost entirely void of content, other than general criticisms of my "behaviour" and "tone". Throughout all of our disputes, you have continued to rely on ad hominem arguments and generally failed to specifically cite Wikipedia policies, guidelines and reliable sources. This, in Wikipedia terms, is a personal attack. There is a reason I have to keep using the word "irrelevant" in reference to your comments. elvenscout742 (talk) 03:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * For the record, for me the distinction between "self-published" periodicals and any other ones, is thus: Materials that have gone through a reliable publishing process, been peer-reviewed or reviewed by an editor, and been published in the sense that hard copies actually exist and can be found, or at some point in the past have existed, in libraries and bookshops, are not self-published. Materials that Lulu prints on demand for a cut of revenue, and therefore do not actually exist until a customer offers to buy a copy, are considered self-published. The fact that Lulu's slogan on their website is "Self Publishing, Book Printing, and Publishing Online" (I can't link directly because the self-publishing resource Lulu is blacklisted on Wikipedia) is proof enough that this process is "self-publishing". elvenscout742 (talk) 01:23, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

For the record, you are entitled to your own opinion, Elvenscout, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Publication can be hard copy or digital (this is the 21st century). Lulu’s slogan (or that of any other POD contractor) is irrelevant and proves nothing, though it is consistent that you would fix upon that part of their slogan that speaks of “Self Publishing” while ignoring the “Book Printing” that immediately follows. Your remark about the POD supplier Lulu getting a “cut of revenue” is likewise of no import. Whether a book or periodical publisher contracts with a POD like Lulu or with a standard book manufacturer/printer, there are still costs incurred; not all is profit. A book manufacturer also receives his cut. The economy is the same, whether the publication is The New Yorker or The Tanka Journal.Tristan noir (talk) 02:00, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Lulu is a self-publishing resource. A book not physically existing until someone pays for it, and then the book getting printed and sent to them, is not the same as "digital publishing". What costs are incurred??? Why would Lulu continue to exist if it was a loss-making venture??? The "costs" of printing are incurred after the revenues are received. A book manufacturer has to make an investment before they make any revenues, so they have an incentive to check materials before printing them. That is the difference. elvenscout742 (talk) 03:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * A book publisher has to make an investment before they make any revenues and therefore a publisher has an incentive to check materials; a book manufacturer, on the other hand, is a job-printer and is paid either up-front or in installments for the physical manufacture of the book. That is the difference. A POD, as over-and-against a job printer, makes his profit based upon a percentage of the per item sale; he receives nothing up-front.Tristan noir (talk) 03:56, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry, your wording above implied that by "book manufacturer" you meant a mainstream publisher (as opposed to Lulu). I understand that PODs do not make profits until the books sell. My point was that they also don't incur costs, and so it is in their interests to "publish" as much material as possible so that some material will be ordered, they can print the material, and make a profit as a percentage of that revenue. This is all completely irrelevant, though, since you and Bagworm have yet to cite any reliable secondary sources that state that the publications in question are "noteworthy". If, however, they are "not mentioned elsewhere", as the sentence I removed also stated, this might be difficult to verify. elvenscout742 (talk) 11:23, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * And, again, the definition of "self-publishing", as well as TN's regular personal attacks, are completely irrelevant to this discussion. Let's say I never used the phrase "self-published": the statement still would have no place in an encyclopedia article, unless it is verifiable in reliable secondary sources. The word "noteworthy" is somewhere between a weasel word and a peacock word, and unless a reliable source can be found to verify the statement, arguments over self-publishing and the like are completely unimportant. elvenscout742 (talk) 03:18, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You write, Let's say I never used the phrase "self-published." The fact, however, is that you have used the expression – not once, not twice but repeatedly – and you have deliberately inserted it (despite your denial above of its relevance) into the discussions of many talk pages, into edit summaries, into AfDs and RfDs. Your intent in doing so has been clear throughout: to discredit whatever source, be it an author or publication, that you sought to apply the term to. The inaccuracy of your use of the term has been pointed out to you frequently and not by this editor alone. As for your railing above about the word noteworthy, I’m non-plussed. I’ve searched this talk page and cannot find an instance where I’ve used it.Tristan noir (talk) 03:43, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * STOP MAKING PERSONAL ATTACKS AND FOCUS ON THE ISSUE AT HAND. You are the SPA with the agenda here, and you do not have any Wikipedia policy or guideline to stand on, so you persist in trying to change the subject in order to attack my wording and speculate about my motivations, rather than my core point. My years of editing Wikipedia testify to my being WP:HERE to help build an encyclopedia, and it just so happens that my main research interest is Japanese literature. That is why I have consistently tried to remove inaccurate, misleading information from Wikipedia articles on these topics, as well as removing WP:OVERLINK, etc. As for the word "noteworthy", you have been arguing throughout that the statement "Noteworthy [my emphasis] journals not mentioned elsewhere include Modern English Tanka, Eucalypt, The Tanka Journal, Atlas Poetica, and more." should be reinstated in this article. The fact is that the phrase noteworthy journals not mentioned elsewhere seems to be far more oxymoronic than my use of the term "self-published", and it needs a source in order to comply with WP:NOR along with several other Wikipedia policies. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:10, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * For the record, from now on when I am merely re-stating a point that was previously ignored, or responding to a ridiculous ad hominem attack, I will mark the edit as "minor", since I am not actually adding anything significant to the discussion. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:13, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Also, this discussion page is meant to be about article content, not about how I word my edit summaries. The fact is that about 90% of the "History" section of this article needs to be deleted because it is essentially just an indiscriminate list of publications. The ones that should be the first to go are the ones that are not discussed in reliable secondary sources. This article is not about the publishing industry, so whether or not I am ignorant of said industry does not disqualify me from making edits. The fact is that self-publishers themselves who wish to promote their writings via Wikipedia probably know much more about the industry than I do, but their edits are not welcome on Wikipedia. elvenscout742 (talk) 10:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

The road ahead for this article
Two other users (Drmies and LadyofShalott) have expressed an interest in improving this article. I must apologize for my obnoxious overkilling of citation needed tags. My reasoning was that the statements in the article are probably all either OR or spam, and much of it appears to be inaccurate or deliberately obscure (nowhere in the article is the phrase "Imperial Poetry Contest" explained, for example). I contend that most of the material in the article will probably still need to be cut as irrelevant or unverifiable, but at least now there are impartial editors examining the article to help determine that.

I also need to defend my use of the word "advertising" elsewhere. I don't think this article is meant to "advertise" the old, obscure, out-of-print works it mentions. I think it arbitrarily lists those off in order to imply that "tanka in English" has a longer, richer history than it actually does (much of the material appears to have actually been written in Japanese, anyway). That material probably needs to be deleted as irrelevant, to begin with; and what's left (METPress publications, M.Kei, etc.) is here for advertising purposes. Likely none of it is encyclopedic or verifiable. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:24, 29 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I think I'm getting on board with Drmies' removal of the statement that "this article focuses on" original English compositions, and LadyofShalott's addition of the waka category. Ordinarily I would oppose the word "waka" (和歌) being applied to English poems, but it actually seems like a very interesting idea to expand this article to discuss the more notable/verifiable phenomenon of translation of waka/tanka into English, so it seems appropriate. Kudos! elvenscout742 (talk) 05:56, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

A note on Dickins' translation of the Hyakunin Isshu
Of course I haven't actually read the original translation, which apparently went through a revised edition as well, but Keene's foreword to the most recent published translation as of 2012 specifically cites the Hyakunin Isshu as the first Japanese literary work to be translated into English. The relevant page is available in Google Books' free preview of the book here. I have included this citation in the article, but I have two concerns with the formatting of the reference: (i) the author of the piece I am citing is Keene, but a "Keene, IN McMillan"-style reference seems inappropriate since the book itself is McMillan's, and it is not a collection of essays by different authors -- it just so happens the relevant part is a foreword written by someone else; (ii) the reference, being in the foreword, cites a Roman numeral page number ix. Most of the other references for this article give page numbers in the format "p. 1024", which wouldn't be a problem, but the first Keene reference has "p98", and some others don't give "p" at all. Any ideas which direction we should go with this? elvenscout742 (talk) 04:35, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

"with tanka often being mistaken for haiku"
Is this statement backed up in the Goldstein source cited at the end of the sentence? I briefly considered tagging it, but then I noticed that the following clause mentions a specific author. I don't doubt that this actually happens, but it still seems bizarre, and so we probably need a source for it. elvenscout742 (talk) 08:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Nothing bizarre about it: this is the standard way, to place the citation at the end of the cited sentence. Where else would you put it? The entire sentence derives from that review article. Drmies (talk) 14:58, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, by "bizarre" I didn't mean the citation style; that was just a little unclear. Re-reading the sentence now, I guess it's not a significant problem, but I wasn't sure if Goldstein merely contrasted the nature of haiku and tanka, or if he was also the source for the statement that "tanka are often mistaken for haiku". I thought that the idea that tanka could be mistaken for haiku was in itself bizarre. Sorry again for the lack of clarity. :P elvenscout742 (talk) 15:55, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Here's the text in the review: "Western readers, at least those I've encountered in the States, seem to lump all short Japanese poems under the heading of haiku, and I've found it annoying when someone, a friend say, tells me he enjoyed my "haiku." Such has been the sad state of affairs for the few remaining tankaists in the West. This kind of mistake is intolerable - after all, haiku usually deal with nature, usually require a season word, and usually find the poet behind the poem rather than physically present in any of the seventeen syllables." This is presented very anecdotally, and I'm a bit doubtful as to whether Goldstein's "Western readers... seem to lump" can be taken to adequately support the assertion of "tanka often being mistaken for haiku" as we currently now read. In this recent edit I removed the word often (being of the opinion that it was unsupported), but was quickly reverted with the edit summary "not always. that's what the source says". Removing often does not make the sentence mean always! Goldstein statement asserts only that some American readers whom he has encountered seem to lump all Japanese poetry together. In reality, the fact that some readers will mistake one type of poetry for another is quite unremarkable and non-notable. Furthermore, Goldstein was writing some 23 years ago, and what he describes may or may not remain valid. I advocate dropping everything in the sentence after "The popularity of tanka compared to that of haiku has remained minor" while retaining the reference to Goldstein. --gråb whåt you cån (talk) 16:22, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Ida Henrietta Bean
I can find nothing reliable on this supposed first tanka in English collection, besides a publisher and a date. If this M. Kei person, who is all over the internet with tanka documents, would have published their stuff in reliable sources (such as academic journals) we could take some major steps to improve the article. As it is, we can't, and Bean's book seems to have come and gone completely unnoticed by the press and the academic profession. If anyone has anything reliable, I'd love to see it. Drmies (talk) 15:26, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Worldcat confirms the publisher & date, but you knew that much already. It only shows 2 libraries owning it. Lady  of  Shalott  17:05, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Publisher, date and title can be established, but the questions remain as to whether the poems in the book are actually tanka, whether they were original English compositions, whether the book is an "anthology", and whether it was "the first". I found the source for the statement in the article here (p 5), which reads: Ida Henrietta Bean and published in London, UK, in 1899 by F. T. Neely, a well-known literary publisher of the day. Bean’s work is never cited by scholars and efforts to track down further information about the book and poet failed. No further tanka was published in the UK until 1965.
 * The publisher of this article, MET Press, is a bit dodgy, and has been noted for publishing ridiculous fringe nonsense relating to "tanka", and the Wikipedian who wrote the first version of this article appears to be M. Kei, the writer of the piece. This is why my first posting on this page questioned the reliability of the source, and I'm still not sure if we should include a statement in the article that appears to be based solely on one fringe author's conjecture (the wording of the above quote implies that he has not actually read or even seen a copy of the book himself).
 * elvenscout742 (talk) 15:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * FINALLY found out what the book actually is. Contrary to what M Kei has claimed several times now, it appears to be "a novel with mystical overtones, set partly in Germany and partly in America". Where it's title comes from, I can't tell, unless I'm willing to fork out 75$ Canadian, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with Japanese poetry. elvenscout742 (talk) 06:39, 18 December 2012 (UTC)