A tanka is a Japanese poem with a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern. Give us a noun, adjectives and a verb and we will count the syllables for you.
A tanka is a Japanese poem of five lines with the syllable pattern 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7. It predates the haiku by centuries: the tanka was the standard short form of Japanese poetry long before the opening three lines of a tanka were cut loose and became a poem in their own right. Where a haiku is a single observation, a tanka typically has two parts — often an image followed by a personal response to it — and that second half is called the sestet half or ageku, the concluding lines.
The pivot matters. Very often line three acts as a hinge: the first two lines describe something, and the last two lines turn inward to the poet's feeling, with line three doing double duty. The tanka's seven extra syllables compared with a haiku are exactly enough room for an emotion.
An example written to the 5-7-5-7-7 pattern this page generates:
Cold rain on the roof,
the last of the light going,
and I do not move.
Somewhere a door closes twice,
and the house learns to be still.
Count it: cold rain on the roof (5), the last of the light go-ing (7), and I do not move (5), some-where a door clos-es twice (7), and the house learns to be still (7). The first two lines are the picture; line three is the pivot where the observing self appears; the final two lines are the response. That movement from outside to inside is what distinguishes a tanka from a haiku in practice.
This page composes five lines and fits them to 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7 syllables using the site's own syllable counter. Your noun, two adjectives, two aspect words and verb are placed first, and the engine adds words from its built-in lists until every line reaches its target count; the count is checked before the poem is shown.
This is a template and word-list engine, not an AI model. The word lists, the rhyme table and the templates are all part of the page, and every calculation happens in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us, stored on a server, or used to train anything — we never receive it at all. There is no account, no sign-up and no cookie set by the generator itself. The full description is in our Terms of Use.
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