April 2012
30 posts
10 tags
MIYOSHI Tatsuji 三好達治 "Household"「家庭」  →
三好達治 MIYOSHI Tatsuji (1900-1964) 「家庭」Household Household Because his son was about to start school The father wrote poems every day The poems turned into a cap and backpack Into textbooks and crayons Into a little umbrella and other things The first of April The son was led by his mother Through the town of blooming cherry trees To the entrance ceremony For the first graders in the Citizen’s...
Apr 30th
2 notes
4 tags
Apr 27th
3 notes
4 tags
Apr 26th
2 notes
7 tags
Apr 24th
1 note
9 tags
夏宇 Hsia Yü 「腹語術」 "Ventriloquy" →
夏宇 Hsia Yü (Xia Yu) (1956- ) According to the biography on Poetry International Web, “Hsia Yü studied film and drama at the National Taiwan Academy of the Arts. Besides poetry she writes essays, lyrics and stage plays. After living for many years in France, she now divides her time between Paris and Taipei. Since she published her first poems in the early 1980s, Hsia Yü’s reputation has...
Apr 24th
1 note
7 tags
Apr 22nd
1 note
15 tags
Apr 21st
3 notes
8 tags
田中宏輔 TANAKA Atsusuke 「悲しみ」"Sadness"
TANAKA Atsusuke 田中宏輔 is a Japanese poet, born and raised in the ancient capital of Kyoto, where he still lives and works as a high school mathematics teacher.  Tanaka has published seven volumes of poetry in Japanese, including an ongoing experimental series of postmodern poems called The Wasteless Land, which draws inspiration and quotations from wide array of sources ranging from pop music to...
Apr 20th
6 notes
4 tags
Apr 19th
3 notes
6 tags
Apr 18th
9 tags
TAKAHASHI Mutsuo 高橋睦郎 Excerpt from "Twelve Views... →
The newest issue of Asymptote, one of the very best and innovative online journals of international fiction, includes an excerpt from my translation of TAKAHASHI Mutsuo’s memoirs Twelve Views from the Distance. Takahashi is one of Japan’s most prominent poets, known for his bold explorations of homoeroticism as well as for his philosophical and erudite writing.  Asymptote includes...
Apr 17th
1 note
2 tags
Apr 16th
20 notes
5 tags
Apr 15th
6 notes
6 tags
Apr 14th
5 notes
7 tags
田中庸介 TANAKA Yōsuke「春の駅」"The Station to Spring"
TANAKA Yōsuke (1969- ) is a research scientist specializing in molecular cell biology at the University of Tokyo.  He is also the author of two books of poetry, A Day When the Mountains are Visible 『山が見える日に、』 (1999) and Sweet Ultramarine Dreams 『スウィートな群青の夢』(2008), which display an unique poetic voice, rich in stylistic diversity, humor, and poetic resonance.  YOTSUMOTO Yasuhiro wrote on Poetry...
Apr 13th
1 note
7 tags
KIM Hyesoon 김혜순 金惠順 "All the Garbage of the World,... →
The poetry of KIM Hyesoon 김혜순 (金惠順), according to her translator Don Mee Choi, goes beyond the expectations of established aesthetics and traditional “female poetry” (yŏryusi), which is characterised by its passive, refined language. In her experimental work she explores women’s multiple and simultaneous existence as grandmothers, mothers, and daughters in the context of Korea’s highly...
Apr 12th
4 notes
11 tags
Apr 11th
3 notes
5 tags
Apr 10th
39 notes
5 tags
Apr 9th
8 notes
10 tags
Apr 8th
58 notes
11 tags
Apr 7th
2 notes
6 tags
Apr 6th
7 tags
Apr 5th
18 notes
10 tags
TADA Chimako 多田智満子 "After Half a Century"「半世紀が過ぎて」
TADA Chimako (1930-2003) was one of Japan’s most brilliant and incisive poets of the mid- to late twentieth century, admired for her combination of intelligence and sensitivity.  This posthumously published poem seems to represent her act of protest against the direction that contemporary society had taken in the era of advanced capitalism. I read this poem in New York City at the time of...
Apr 4th
4 notes
6 tags
Apr 3rd
8 tags
Apr 2nd
633 notes
3 tags
“Photographs attract false believes the way flypaper attracts flies. Why my...”
– Errol Morris, Believing is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography), (NY: Penguin, 2011), p. 92.
Apr 1st
1 note
7 tags
Apr 1st
40 notes
8 tags
Apr 1st
6 tags
Apr 1st
14 notes