Carpe Diem's Tan Renga Challenge #2, 'a secret meeting'.

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

What a joy to read that you like this new Tan Renga Challenge and I am happy to see how you all came up with different associations on the first episode of this Challenge with the haiku by Jane Reichhold. Today I share a new episode of this Tan Renga Challenge with you all.
OK ... I will reproduce here the goal again of this Tan Renga Challenge:

In classical Japan they had Renga sessions in which the poets composed a chain of stanza's. You can read more about Renga in our Carpe Diem Lecture 2 , Tan Renga is almost the same, a 'chain' with two links, written by two poets. Poet ONE writes the 5-7-5 stanza and Poet TWO writes the 7-7 stanza to associate on the stanza of Poet ONE. As you know I am not of  'counting' syllables so the used stanza's will not be as I mentioned earlier in this post.

The goal for this Tan Renga Challenge is to write the second stanza of the Tan Renga by associating on a stanza given by one of the classical masters, modern haiku poets or by myself. For this episode I have chosen a haiku written by myself.

In your posts for this Tan Renga feature you need to copy the given stanza. So we can see and read it in one Tan Renga. So copy the given stanza and fill in your second stanza. Well ... we will see how this is gonna work out. I hope you all understand what the goal is of this new feature? Just to write together a Tan Renga.

First stanza (5-7-5):

in the old barn
behind the straw bales
a secret meeting

Second stanza (7-7):

?????????? (your's to write)

Credits: Old barn

I have written the next 2nd stanza to make this haiku a Tan Renga. (Not common by the way, because Tan Renga are usely written with two poets, but sometimes it can be nice to do one on your own.)


two tough cowboys kissing
forbidden lovestory


This one was inspired on the motion picture 'Brokeback Mountain', a movie about two cowboys who are secretly in love with eachother.
As I place the first and second stanza together the Tan Renga becomes:


in the old barn
behind straw bales
a secret meeting

two tough cowboys kissing
forbidden lovestory

Credits: Brokeback Moutain (movie still)

I hope you enjoyed the read and I hope that this new Tan Renga Challenge 'a secret meeting' will inspire you all to write the second stanza to make a wonderful Tan Renga. This second Tan Renga Challenge will stay on 'til June 22th 11.59 AM (CET) and then I will post another Tan Renga Challenge. Have fun, be inspired and share your Tan Renga with us all here on Carpe Diem.