at Flying Books in Shibuya, Tokyo (book launch)
December 22, 2008
Flying Books in Shibuya was the venue earlier this week for the book launch reading of A Sleeping Tiger/ Dreams of Manhattan (The Ikuta Press, 2008), the new English verse collaboration between Kobe-based poet & author Yoko Danno and Katmandu/Washington D.C.-based poet James C. Hopkins. At the outset, poets Takako Arai and Kyong-Mi Park, who each read one poem apiece in Japanese, helped draw the audience slowly into the evening's bilingual, bicultural orbit. They were followed by the evening's featured poets whose quieting spirits, melding and harmonizing on stage to give contrapuntal life to a mysterious third voice that enchanted those in attendance, brought new meaning both to the phrase 'a meeting of the minds' and to the experience of 'live' poetry readings. For the contours of their alternately read-aloud-poems seemed to grow before this reviewer's very eyes, and the space in the second floor of Flying Books, already warm and welcoming, seemed to develop and expand into something fuller, as unexpected as it was unassuming.
In addition, Ms. Danno's recently published translation of the Kojiki, entitled Songs and Stories of the Kojiki (Ahadada Books, 2008), is, like her poetry, a boon for anyone who would view and engage the world from the perspective of 'mythic dawn'. This new translation of one of the literary keys to the foundations of Japan's ancient folklore and culture reminds us that, among other things, the myths or archetypes that we 'read' in everyday life, and that 'read' us, are ever-present yet ever-changing, and that just because something is beyond our sight doesn't mean it escapes our notice.
Songs and Stories of the Kojiki
The Blue Door (Word Works, 2006)
-- Alan Botsford
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