linda reinfeld's game exploring japanese poetic form- jim andrews

another game i have enjoyed is made by linda reinfeld from new york. she is a poet and has a serious interest in the japanese language and in japanese culture. she made a translation of a traditional japanese literary game called the hundred poems. i have played this with an old friend after dinner. he has an interest in poetry. each poem is a couplet of lines, erm, tankas, i think. there are all sorts of ways to play the game, but we do it like this: you see the first line of 20 tankas on the left on 20 cards spread out so you can read them all (one line per card); you see the second
and final line of each of the 20 tankas on the right (one line per card). when it is your turn, you select a pair of cards, one from the left and one from the right, that you think go together to form a tanka. you can tell when two cards are from the same tanka by the reverse side of the cards: the two cards can go together to form one photographic image. if you're right that the two cards form one tanka, you keep the two cards. the game is over when all 40 cards have been removed from the table. the person with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

it's fun to play this with someone else who has an interest in poetry. it's civilized. my friend made it. we don't care who wins. the pleasure is in coming to some understanding of the coherance of the traditional tanka form, how two lines go together. and he and i are evenly matched, an old pair of lines. tanka you. o no, tanka *you*. we talk about our choices and about the
form and particular content of the poetry as we discover it. it is a gracious and poetical game, an uplifting experience both because of the learning about poetry that takes place with friends and the contemplation of the poems. there is a competitive aspect to it but the competitive aspect is overshadowed by learning about japanese poetry together and talking about it together. it is one of the few games i know of that is an uplifting experience where you feel you have learned something worth learning, and experienced something together of art worth experiencing together. i have thought of making a shockwave version of this game, but i think the social aspect of it, playing with other people, is a crucial ingredient. playing it
alone on the net would be a pale shadow of the more social activity, and playing it with strangers over the net would be kind of contrary to the experience. linda has put together a nice package, also. the materials are artistically realized and practical and easy to use. i've played a couple of other art card games, one from eno i think, and stephen scobie, maybe bp
Nichol also. but linda's is memorable and uplifting whereas the others seemed arbitrary.