Tanka

Students took a quiz over Yasunari Kawabata's "The Jay" and an excerpt from Pin Yathay's Stay Alive, My Son. 

The class read the introductory material on four Japanese tanka poets: Tsurayuki, Komachi, Ise, and Saigyo.  The class read one example of each of these classic tanka poets,  Mr. Stone showed the class an abridged version of The Tales of Genji and shared the first few pages of Machi Tawara's Salad Anniversary, an award-winning, late twentieth century collection of tanka.

Homework:  Read the excerpt from Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book (716-724).