masks and snow -
warm colored lights
in our hearts
Human bonds—
defrosting the chasm of
quarantine
walls crumble
when pure love beckons
none too strong or tall
These are the first three entries to 
Renga, meaning "linked poem," began over seven hundred years ago in Japan to encourage the collaborative composition of poems. Poets worked in pairs or small groups, taking turns composing the alternating three-line and two-line stanzas. Linked together, renga were often hundreds of lines long, though the favored length was a 36-line form called a kasen. Several centuries after its inception, the opening stanza of renga gave rise to the much shorter haiku.
Thematic elements of renga are perhaps most crucial to the poem’s success. The language is often pastoral, incorporating words and images associated with seasons, nature, and love. In order for the poem to achieve its trajectory, each poet writes a new stanza that leaps from only the stanza preceding it. This leap advances both the thematic movement as well as maintaining the linking component.
Please come join in the fun! Add your stanza to ours! Please read
All images are my own unless otherwise stated
text divider by 
