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Tanka prose

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Article discusses an obscure neologism without citing any reliable sources. It was apparently created to promote said neologism. Does not meet WP:N. Describes an obscure modern poetry form/movement, and all the sources cited are primary sources, written by members of the small, apparently non-notable movement in question. Article itself fails to establish the notability of its subject-matter, and since it only cites primary sources is apparently original research. Appears to have been substantially edited by only one user. Said user, when repeatedly prompted, refused to cite reliable, secondary sources, but has admitted elsewhere that it is unlikely any such sources exist. I have tried extensively to discuss this issue on the article talk page with said user, but have only met with than personal attacks. The minor literary movement described in the article clearly does not meet Misplaced Pages standards of notability, and even the primary sources it cites are poorly-researched and make ridiculous claims that the movement has existed since eighth-century Japan. elvenscout742 (talk) 12:54, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

• Comment -- While only peripherally related to the above AfD nomination, I need to point out that I put a proposed deletion tag on the page yesterday, and the user responsible for the page deleted it. Said user then posted a comment on the talk page, not addressing the core issue of the lack of sources, but instead attacking me personally. Said user mentioned a dispute over content, but this dispute is already over and is entirely irrelevant to the proposed deletion. It concerned this user's repeated attempts to include ridiculous theories about ancient Japanese literature in the page. Since the page is original research, and discusses a topic for which no reliable sources exist, the former dispute about content is irrelevant. elvenscout742 (talk) 13:04, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Comment - It is difficult for non-specialists to form a proper judgement on a literary issue such as this. Firstly it is clear that Tanka is a recognised form with plenty of reliable sources. Secondly, the references already in the article, and the existence of journals like Haibun Today make it clear that Tanka prose also exists to the extent that many learned articles can be written about it, and many pieces of it exist. Thirdly it is at once clear that both the Tanka prose article, and Tanka in English, are in need of considerable editing and wikifying. Fourthly, it is plain that there has been a dispute; please could everyone remember to remain civil. In this situation, without a great deal of study, the most I can say is that there is a prima facie case for an article on the subject; that many of the references seem to be appropriate; and that notability is at least close to being established. I would tend therefore to believe the article should be kept, though I'm happy to listen to further evidence, presented plainly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:43, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Comment - My concern is that the sources are non-academic, and do not adequately explain why "tanka prose" is appropriate terminology. They discuss the term almost exclusively in relation to ancient Japanese literature, and I am a specialist in that. It does not appear in any specialist literature on the subject, and I have already demonstrated how the sources cited are not reliable when it comes to Japanese literature. It appears etymologically closest to the term uta monogatari, which is why I initially moved that page there, but the user in question has insisted that it is closer to nikki bungaku. I think more evidence needs to be provided in order to justify this article's existence, and despite over three weeks of trying to locate or elicit reliable sources I have thus far been unsuccessful. It's most important, of course, to insure that no false information is put on Misplaced Pages, and the article in question was clearly created for that purpose . elvenscout742 (talk) 01:25, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment - The following observations are relevant to the proposed deletion of Tanka prose.

1) The article existed from 2008 until the present without significant alteration and without substantial objections being lodged toward its content or notability by anyone until done so by User Elvenscout742.

2) The article discusses a contemporary English-language literary form that is partly inspired by early Japanese literature but is independent of it; the writers of this form, by and large, are also practitioners of Tanka in English just as writers of Haibun, by and large, are also practitioners of Haiku in English.

3) Such articles as Haiku in English, Tanka in English and Haibun also discuss contemporary English-language literary forms partly inspired by Japanese literature but ultimately independent of it. Said articles cite as their sources, as does Tanka prose, items drawn predominately, if not exclusively, from the literary small press (whether print or online) and, in fact, they discuss some of the same authors as are discussed in Tanka prose. The user who has submitted this request for deletion has worked likewise on at least two of these same articles (Tanka in English and Haibun) without lodging any objection on their Talk Pages or elsewhere as to the notability of said subjects and without asserting that they represent original research; this latter circumstance suggests the application of a separate standard, by User Elvenscout742, for the article Tanka prose.

4) User Elvenscout742’s claim that the article “appears to have been substantially edited by only one user,” were it true, would be irrelevant to the issue at hand but this same user’s active editing role on the article, over the past few weeks, contradicts his own representation. To reconstruct the history of these edits, however, one would have to review the edit summaries of not only Tanka prose but of Uta monogatari as well. User Elvenscout742 redirected the original Tanka prose page to Uta monogatari on or about Sept 12 and the history of the edits for the original Tanka prose article, 2008 to present, are archived therein.

5) The judgments offered by User Elvenscout742, as regards the literary form and/or movement of Tanka prose in his proposal for deletion above, are apparently offered with bias, their goal being to discredit the article by painting the associated form/movement as “obscure,” “small,” “non-notable” and “minor.” User Elvenscout742 does not offer any insight into how he arrived at these conclusions and, indeed, elsewhere has not disguised his antipathy for the subject or for its participants. That no writer of tanka prose appears on the New York Times Bestseller List is conceded but the same might be said of English-language writers of haiku, of tanka, of haibun, of gogyoshi and, indeed, of writers of many other contemporary literary forms that have Misplaced Pages articles.

6) User Elvenscout742’s characterization of the term “tanka prose” as an “obscure neologism,” like his claims about the literary phenomenon it describes, reflects his personal opinion and nothing more. The term is clearly defined in the sources that the article cites and in the article in question. Critics and artists often coin new terms to discuss new literary phenomena; that a term is a “neologism” should not alone disqualify it from Misplaced Pages, particularly when the nomenclature, as in this case, has acceptance within the English-language tanka community. This term, which User Elvenscout742 elsewhere has described as “inherently oxymoronic,” parallels various well-known literary terms in construction, e.g., “prose poem,” “sanbunshi,” “haiku prose” or “haiku story” (see the writings of the Welsh poet Ken Jones), or “waka-prose complex” (see Jin’ichi Konishi, A History of Japanese Literature, Volume 2, p. 258). User Elvenscout742 redirected the original Tanka prose to his rewrite of the page as Uta monogatari; the same user translates “uta monogatari,” accurately enough, as “poem-tale”—an oxymoron whose construction mirrors that of “tanka prose.”

7) User Elvenscout742’s assertion that “when repeatedly prompted” this user “refused to cite reliable, secondary sources” is patently false. His request for sources touched upon that portion of the original article and of the rewrite that discussed the Japanese literary background. In the revised article here, citations from scholarly sources were provided for every summary offered of the Japanese background. However, User Elvenscout742, who admits that he has yet to consult any of these sources, promptly deleted the material in question and did so merely upon his imputing bad faith here to this user.

8) As evidence of User Elvenscout742’s idea of what it means to “request sources” from a fellow editor, I offer his entry here where he offers a laborious list of scholary and literary sources and concludes somewhat triumphantly: I have cited better-known and more widely available books written (or translated with introduction and notes) by both Konishi and McCullough, and no one has demonstrated that either of these authors have ever used the phrase "tanka prose" in their writings. Any more questions?

I offer two observations on the above. First, neither the article under discussion here nor the sources it cites claim that the term “tanka prose” was ever employed by ancient Japanese poets or by modern scholars of Japanese literature; the term refers to the contemporary English phenomena and so User Elvenscout742’s supposed debunking proves nothing, unless it can be said to demonstrate his inability or unwillingness to read with comprehension and without prejudice the subject article and its cited sources. Furthermore, while “tanka prose” may be fairly characterized as anachronistic when speaking of ancient and medieval Japanese literature, so too may such modern Japanese scholarly nomenclature as nikki bungaku or zuihitsu, concepts unknown to the early poets. Second, I wish to highlight the sneering rhetorical flourish of User Elvenscout742’s conclusion, “Any more questions?,” which is inconsistent with the civility due a fellow editor but rather carries the tone of a patrician addressing his menial. I draw attention to this because User Elvenscout742 alludes in his proposal above to the personal attacks that he believes he has been subject to.

9) User Elvenscout742, as late as Sept 26, was offering this user a compromise which would retain the current page that he now seeks to delete. In doing so, he did not raise the questions of notability or of original research that he now raises. It is fair to infer therefore, despite User Elvenscout742’s denials in his Comment above, that the fundamental problem is one regarding a dispute over content. This user on two occasions asked for time to review User Elvenscout742’s proposed compromise but, in each instance, before he could do so, User Elvenscout742 posted further demands and personal attacks.

10) The body of the article, as originally posted, numbered less than 700 words. I’ve been compelled, by User Elvenscout742’s innumerable postings on the Talk Pages of Uta monogatari and Tanka prose and by his countless edits, to devote several thousand words to this article’s defense in the past few weeks. His criticisms and objections are frequently shifting. This dialogue, if it may be so called, has been largely uninstructive and has become a hindrance to participation here nor do I believe that it represents the spirit of cooperation that is supposed to be a standard at Misplaced Pages.Tristan noir (talk) 03:07, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment - 1) That the article existed since 2008 is irrelevant, since your version of it from that time up until last month claimed to be about classical Japanese literature, and thus eluded deletion as a non-notable poetic movement for a long time. Your personal attack against me is irrelevant -- I removed your false claims to "tanka prose" existing in ancient Japan from the article, and you have tried to reinstate them several times in order to justify this article's existence.

2) Your views on what "tanka prose" means are irrelevant to this discussion, as you have thus far failed to add any reliable sources to justify the existence of the article. I have already pointed out that, unlike haibun, "tanka prose" has no Japanese equivalent and is inaccurate/oxymoronic as a term. The content of the haibun article may or may not be inappropriate, but references that justify the article's inclusion in Misplaced Pages do exist; such an argument has no place here, though.

3) Please see Misplaced Pages:Other stuff exists for a discussion of why your above argument is invalid. The article at Tanka in English was started recently by me, mainly to keep material on modern English "tanka" from overrunning an article on Japanese literature, which it has almost nothing to do with. Haiku in English, whether or not reliable sources are already cited, has been discussed extensively in reliable, academic sources (one that happens to come to mind would be the chapter on haiku in Gideon Toury's 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond). That Haibun is comparable to your "tanka prose" is ridiculous -- the former term has existed in Japanese academic circles for centuries, and there is no reasonable argument for the article's deletion.

4) The article, two days after you started it (during which time the only other edit was by a bot to remove a link you had inserted), was 4 paragraphs long . The article immediately before I removed contentious information and moved the page was 5 paragraphs long . The latter paragraph was a copyedit by one user . Every other edit by a user other than you was, in terms of overall article content, minor.

5) Please refrain from making personal attacks and ad hominem arguments here. The sources you have cited are non-notable, and most of them contain ridiculous claims about ancient Japanese origin.

6) The term is a neologism. It has never appeared outside of the obscure sources you cite. You have demonstrated elsewhere that you do not understand Japanese -- the term uta monogatari is the closest Japanese equivalent to your "tanka prose", as uta is synonymous with tanka and monogatari is the most prominent classical Japanese word for a prose narrative. The fact that uta monogatari do not exclusively feature "tanka", per se, is irrelevant, as both your article and your sources include the Kojiki and the Man'yōshū under this blanket term, which is inaccurate given the content of those works (tanka is one of the numerous genres of poetry appearing in both).

7) The sources you cited were taken out of context. They do not use the phrase "tanka prose" once. I asked you several times ( ) to cite reliable sources that justify the use of the phrase "tanka prose" in relation to classical Japanese literature, or refrain from discussing classical Japanese literature out-of-context. You ignored me each time, instead making repeated personal attacks, and continuing to cite irrelevant sources.

8) You used weasel words in your article, so as to very strongly imply that these reliable sources used the phrase "tanka prose" in reference to classical Japanese literature. You did this in clear violation of our previous compromise. I also need to point out here that I proposed a compromise with you so that I could clear Misplaced Pages of ridiculous claims about my area of expertise, and you and I could go on editing without interrupting each other. I did not, however, admit at any time that "tanka prose" merited a Misplaced Pages article. I just didn't want to get involved in a dispute. Your use of the word "sneering" in reference to my comment is an uncivil personal attack, and your comment is entirely irrelevant to this deletion debate. You have made similar irrelevant comments throughout our previous disputes. My criticizing your edits to an article, and pointing out specific inaccuracies in the sources you cite, are not personal attacks. Neither is my citing of valid, reliable, academic sources. Your consistently ignoring the substance of my comments to make ad hominem attacks, however, is in direct violation of Misplaced Pages policy, and is irrelevant to the current discussion. Even if you consider my wording to be aggressive or uncivil (I have been restrained in my critiques, though, unlike you), at least I have consistently focused on article-content. Also, nikki bungaku and zuihitsu, regardless of their specific etymologies, are established terms used in hundreds or reliable sources on classical Japanese literature.

9) This is another irrelevant personal attack. As stated above, at the time I offered you the compromise, I was not actually doing so because I believe your article has a place on Misplaced Pages. I was deliberately ignoring Misplaced Pages policy on notability and original research, so as to avoid a dispute. Your article on "tanka prose" does not belong on Misplaced Pages, but I wouldn't really care, if it didn't make ridiculous, bizarre claims about Japanese literature.

10) Your ad hominem remark is duly noted. The overwhelmingly majority of your "thousands of words" have been irrelevant to the topic at hand, and have been based largely on ad hominem arguments and your opinion that I am uncivil. Last time you made any kind of substantial argument related to content was here, and that comment was riddled with mistakes and misrepresentations. Comments about how much personal effort one has put into an article or a debate are irrelevant, but I think it's safe to say that I have a better case than you do here, as well. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:22, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

• Weak Delete. AfD's in the end are simple, you just need two independent reliable sources that discuss the topic in a non-trivial manner. I went through all the sources and found the following:

• Preminger, Alex and Brogan, T.V.F. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 981. I went to Amazon and did a "Look Inside" search and it came back with 0 hits for "Tanka prose". Am I missing something?
• Woodward, Jeffrey, Ed. The Tanka Prose Anthology. Baltimore, MD: Modern English Tanka Press, 2008, pp. 13-14 - this is self-published on LuLu (can't link direct due to LuLu blacklist) and thus it fails WP:RS. The journal Modern English Tanka is also self-published.
• "Tarlton, Charles" - published in Haibun Today which is a journal published by.. "Woodward, Jeffrey" (self-published), not a RS.
• The article by "Everett, Claire" in Atlas Poetica is an interview with "Woodward, Jeffrey", who wrote the self-published material above.
• "Lucky, Bob" in Atlas Poetica - Independent author, independent source (I believe). Discusses tanka prose and community in depth.
• These two sources in the ref section: Santa Fe, Simply Haiku - they are both "Woodward, Jeffrey" articles. Simply Haiku is another interview with Woodward; Santa Fe is an edition with Woodward as guest editor.
• Source by "Goldstein, Sanford" and "Smyth, Florida Watts". These books were published before the term Tanka prose existed or was in common use (I believe). It appears to be cites to poems the article is considering as Tanka prose, appears to be possible Original Research.
• Sources by "Reichhold, Jane", "Kimmel, Larry" and "Ward, Linda Jeannette". These appear to be links to some poets but unclear if these sources use the term "Tanka prose" or more importantly establish the notability of the term with significant discussion of the term.

• Based on the above, the "Lucky, Bob" Atlas Poetica article seems to be the strongest for AfD purposes. I'm concerned by the vast number of sources that come back to "Woodward, Jeffrey" in one way or another, who is a self-publisher, and the lack of academic sourcing. It has the appearance of an insular genre. That is OK but is it notable? If we discard all the Woodward-connected sources as being 1. self-published or 2. interviews (self-created content) or 3. guest editor (self-published), what is left is the "Lucky, Bob" article, which is not enough for a Keep. If however we keep some of the Woodward articles, such as the two interviews and the guest editor, it might be enough for a Weak Keep. My leaning is to Weak Delete because if you discard the Woodward-connected sources, there isn't much left, which is a sign of lack of notability beyond the publications of a single person. I did a cross-database search of over 50 commercial databases (JSTOR, newspaper archives, GALE records, etc..) and came up with 0 hits on Tanka prose. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 08:32, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Claire Everett is the "Tanka Prose Editor" of Woodward's Haibun Today, if that means anything. Also, the publication that ran the interview in question was Atlas Poetica, which is self-published by M. Kei. elvenscout742 (talk) 14:14, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Self-published? – I want to address User Green Cardamom’s comments about the article’s sources and, in particular, his/her determination that certain of the sources were “self-published.” I was surprised by this statement and so I reviewed WP:SPS to determine if “self-published,” within Misplaced Pages, had a meaning other than that of common acceptance. I did not find that it did, for the guideline there states: “Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media ... are largely not acceptable.” The OED defines a self-published author as one who has “published their work independently and at their own expense.” If I turn to Self-publishing, I read that it “is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work....” It would seem that WP:SPS, the OED and Self-publishing agree; all place emphasis upon an author paying to have his work published or upon an author, without intervention of a second party, printing his own work.

Green Cardamom wrote: “Woodward, Jeffrey, Ed. The Tanka Prose Anthology. Baltimore, MD: Modern English Tanka Press, 2008, pp. 13-14 - this is self-published on LuLu ...and thus it fails WP:RS. The journal Modern English Tanka is also self-published.” He/she (I’ll presume “he” for ease of future reference) is calling into question three items here: the two cited articles by Woodward and the anthology edited by the same author. He remarks that these works are “self-published on Lulu.” I’m not certain how this conclusion was arrived at but perhaps I can offer some clarifications. Lulu is a print on demand supplier, like Lightning Source, CreateSpace, Replica Books and various others. From Print on demand: (POD) “is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book (or other document) are not printed until an order has been received.... Many traditional small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contract their printing out to POD service providers. Many academic publishers, including university presses, use POD services to maintain a large backlist…. Larger publishers may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that are out of print or for performing test marketing.” The point to be made here, however, is that use of a POD supplier cannot invariably be equated with self-publishing. Many literary, university and commercial houses now employ POD.

The Tanka Prose Anthology was published by MET Press of Baltimore. This is a small literary press owned and operated by Denis Garrison, a well-known educator and writer of haiku and tanka. The publisher is not a vanity press; his backlist includes titles by such widely-read poets as Michael McClintock, Alexis Rotella and James Tipton as well as works by professional translators of Japanese poetry (Sanford Goldstein and Amelia Fielden), and even a book by Japanese literary scholar Michael F. Marra. His list also includes various anthologies, The Tanka Prose Anthology among them. Denis Garrison was also editor and publisher of the quarterly journal Modern English Tanka (2006-2009). That journal, while printed via Lulu, was distributed, like MET books, via many channels and not solely through Lulu distribution.

The relevant point, however, is this. An author who successfully submits an essay or poem to a literary journal that is edited by a second party is not self-published unless such a journal were to stipulate that acceptance of that author’s work required payment of a fee (vanity publishing). The same can be said for a book mss. that is submitted to a small literary press; Author X, upon acceptance of his mss. by Publisher B, cannot be reasonably described as self-published unless, again, a fee is involved. Therefore, a proposal to discard, upon the grounds of self-publication, the two Woodward essays published in Modern English Tanka or the Tanka Prose Anthology as published by MET Press has no proper foundation. On the same grounds, designating the Tarlton essay or the Everett interview as self-published is objectionable; contributors to Haibun Today, Atlas Poetica or the other journals mentioned by Green Cardamom do not pay to have their works published; they submit them to a second party (editor) who is free to accept or reject the same.

I apologize for having to go on at such length about this matter. Some final minor points of clarification for Green Cardamom: 1) the citation from Preminger & Brogan is for the entry in the New Princeton to “prosimetrum,” i.e., any composition that combines prose and verse; 2) citations to Goldstein, Smyth, Reichhold, Kimmel and Ward were merely historical citations to direct the reader to earlier published examples of tanka prose; I felt it necessary to offer the references lest anyone accuse me of making up said poets and/or their writings.Tristan noir (talk) 00:36, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 20:07, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 20:07, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Poetry-related deletion discussions. gråb whåt you cån (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

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