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Winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation • The electrifying collected works of “one of the most innovative and prominent avant-garde poets in early twentieth-century Japan” (The New Yorker). Translated by and with an introduction by Sawako Nakayasu An important and daringly experimental voice in Tokyo’s avant-garde poetry scene, Chika Sagawa broke with the gender-bound traditions of Japanese poetry. Growing up in isolated rural Japan, Sagawa moved to Tokyo at seventeen, and begin publishing her work at eighteen.She was immediately recognized as a leading light of the male-dominated Japanese literary scene; her work combines striking, unique imagery with Western influences. T...
Kitasono Katue was a leading avant-garde literary figure, first in Japan and then throughout the world, from the 1920s to the 1970s. In his long career, Kitasono was instrumental in creating Japanese-language work influenced by futurism, dadaism, and surrealism before World War II and in contributing a Japanese voice to the international avant-garde movement after the war. This critical biography of Kitasono examines the life, poetry, and poetics of this controversial and flamboyant figure, including his wartime support of the Japanese state. Using Kitasono as a window on Japanese literature in the twentieth century, John Solt analyzes the relationship of Japanese writers to foreign literary movements and the influence of Japanese writers on world literature.
James Joyce's book of poems titled Chamber Music was released by Elkin Mathews in May 1907. There were originally thirty-four love poems in the anthology, but two more were added before it was published ("All day I hear the noise of waters" and "I hear an army charging upon the land"). Although it is widely believed that the title refers to the sound of urine tinkling in a chamber pot, this is a later Joycean embellishment that gives an earthiness to a title that was initially proposed by his brother Stanislaus and that Joyce (by the time of publication) had come to dislike: "The reason I dislike Chamber Music as a title is that it is too complacent," he admitted to Arthur Symons in 1906. "I would prefer a title that criticized the work while avoiding outright trashing it." Chamber Music's poetry isn't at all racy or evocative of the sound of tinkling urine, in fact. The poems were well-received by critics despite poor sales (less than half of the original print run of 500 had been sold in the first year).
Ann Lauterbach's experimental and compelling choice for the 2003 Verse Prize merges dramatic forms and poetry with dazzling results.
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Music. The nearly supernatural nature of this groundbreaking work can be glimpsed in the book's title: YÍNGĒLÌSHI (Chanted Songs, Beautiful Poetry): SINOPHONIC ENGLISH POETRY AND POETICS. When read aloud, YÍNGĒLÌSHI (pronounced yeen guh lee shr) sounds like an accented pronunciation of the word "English," while the Chinese reader sees the Chinese characters for "chanted songs, beautiful poetry." Stalling coined this term (and "Sinophonic English") to give a positive name to an increasingly widespread variation of English created by combining the two dominant languages of globalization (Mandarin Chinese and English). With over 350 million English ...
LONDON
Poetry. Asian American Studies. Is there a relationship between the population density of Tokyo and the pinkest part of a hamburger? Can one touch the inside of a noun to learn the difference between one bicycle and a field of bicycles? How close is yellow to need? How far are human fears from the fears of insects? Through a sequence of prose investigations, directions, theoretical performances, and character sketches, Sawako Nakayasu's TEXTURE NOTES presses itself against everything. Here is a book of liminal cartography, where textures are percolated by thought and propelled by feeling, where intellectual frottage meets sunlight, moonlight, the pain of seeing something beautiful and an entire town enamored by a simple rock. Once again, Nakayasu's writing explodes with genre-bending fury and fine-tuned improvisation, leaving in its wake a largess of feeling for the things of the world.
The debut collection of raucous, dark, strange, satirical stories from the former Late Show with Stephen Colbert writer and New Yorker contributor, featuring a foreword by Stephen Colbert “Jen Spyra’s stories are shocking, silly, smart, and absurdly funny. Underline both those words, I don’t care how much it costs!”—Tina Fey A bride so desperate to get in shape for her wedding that she enrolls in a new kind of workout program that promises the moon but costs more than she bargained for. A snowman who, on the wish of a child, comes to life in a decidedly less savory way than in the childhood classic. And in the title story, a time-hopping 1940s starlet tries to claw her way to the top in modern-day Hollywood, despite being ridiculously unwoke. In this uproarious, addictive debut, Jen Spyra takes a culture that seems almost beyond parody and holds it up to a funhouse mirror, immersing the reader in a world of prehistoric influencers, woodland creatures plagued by millennial neuroses, and an all-out birthday bash determined to be the most lavish celebration of all time, by any means necessary. Welcome, brave soul, to the world of Jen Spyra.
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Fiction. Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. THE ANTS is a study not of, but through, ants. In a dashing sequence of prose pieces, Sawako Nakayasu takes the human to the level of the ant, and the ant to the level of the human. Prima facie, THE ANTS is a catalogue of insect observations and observations of insects. But the exposé of insect life humbles and disrupts the myopia that is human life, where experience is seen in its most raw and animal form and human "nouveau- ambitious" and "free-thinking" lifestyles become estranged, uncovered, and humbled. Found in the soups of dumplings and remembered in childhood vignettes, these ants trail through what Nayayasu writes as the "industry of survival," exploring interfaces of love, ambition, and strategy. The danger is not in sentiment, but rather, in a gash, a wall, an argument, an intention. Is it more lonely to be crushed into the core of a non- mechanical pencil, to be isolated in the safety of home, or to "find" "it" "all" at the very very last moment? THE ANTS is the distance, the break, the tenuous wilderness between exoskeleton and endoskeleton, and Nakayasu puts her finger on it, and it, and it.