When I was in college I studied Communications and I had to take quite a few writing classes. One of the courses that I decided on was a poetry class that lasted the semester. When I look back at my college classes that one really stands out as a very enjoyable course. This was not a class where we read poetry but instead was a class where we wrote poetry. Each week of 3 classes would be dedicated to a different stye of poetry My Professor had studied in Japan for a year and really love both Haiku and Tanka. As I remember we studied each for about 2 weeks. It was very enjoyable for me as it was kind of like making a puzzle. When I began to study Japanese this was always an area that I especially enjoyed and now that I am studying at NACOS I am very happy that part of the program is writing both Haiku and Tanka. I am unfortunately on the level where I first write it in english and then translate to Japanese. I hope that some day I am able to just be able to go directly to Japanese!