Monday, April 14, 2025

Joy and Sadness Tanka

The Great Gatsby
turning 100 sparks joy
and sadness ...
my bookworm friend laments,
this desire for more, more, more



FYI: The Great Gatsby, which turned a hundred last week, is a novel about excess: about the glitzy, rowdy parties of the Jazz Age and the beautiful people that attended them; about vanity and class; and about the insatiable American desire for more ...( The New Yorker, April 9: "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Life in Drinks") 

And the following tanka could be read as an example of this insatiable American desire for more articulated in The Great Gatsby:

alone 
by the penthouse window
my friend repeats 
this is America
why settle for pretty good?