review of EKI MAE, Vol 1 -- by Alan Botsford

EKI MAE, Vol 1
Featured Poet Fumiko Yamanaka (1912-1936)
edited by Yuka Tsukagoshi, Judy Halebsky & Ayumu Akutsu

by Alan Botsford

If Japan’s poetic voices as enunciated by the four (contemporary & modern) poets in the pages of this new poetry journal are to be transformative, then Eki Mae vol. 1 arrives in the form of an annunciation, the miracle which, once spoken, cannot be quieted. What these poets, in both Japanese and English, pour into the individual reader as seminal words may, as with all poetry, take root and blossom, or it may, on the other hand, wither and dry up… Readiness is all: the right poem and the right reader, the right place and the right time. Eki Mae.

Eki Mae Vol. 1

Featured Poet Fumiko Yamanaka (1912-1936)

Yuka Tsukagoshi

Judy Halebsky

Ayumu Akutsu

Contact: ekimae.poems@gmail.com

review of NO/ON Philip Rowland -- by Alan Botsford

NO/ON: journal of the short poem, 7, Spring 2009
edited by Philip Rowland

Philip Rowland, British editor of NO/ON, a journal of English-language short poems published in Tokyo, Japan, has for the seventh issue laid out for readers what one of the poems calls "a fanciful geography." In fact the poem, by Canadian poet/dramatist J.J. Steinfeld (PK 2008), wittily and succinctly brings into focus one of the themes of this issue and is here worth quoting in full:

A FANCIFUL GEOGRAPHY

A location at the intersection

where the world begins and ends

stirs and renounces itself

what a fanciful geography

a writer with a trembling philosophy

devises new routes for escaping

concocts new messages for sending

to geographers of the distracted

devising and concocting

an almost sinister way

of becoming visible

a few words for the beginning of the world

a profusion of images for its end.

NO/ON's 'fanciful geography' is navigated sometimes one-line poem at a time, such as: "peace arrives boots march on without their feet" (Ed Markowski), or "A road crosses a road another road does not." (Mark Terrill). But to call these poems 'short' hardly does justice to the fancifulness and variety the form assumes in the pages of this journal, where can be found a 'shattered sonnet,' an 'anaximandrian,' a meditation, remixes, haiku, neologisms, concrete poems, puzzle poems, and 'mamaist' poems, to name

a few. Endings and beginnings meet and converge and in between "the wars go on & on." NO/ON 7's fanciful aesthetic reminds us, among other things, that fancy does not necessarily end where the real begins: each grows out of the other, forever spawning new geographies, new landscapes, new horizons, underscored by Gloria Frym's contribution 'Please Understand' which begins: "there was no story/ no arc of triumph/ don't be disappointed/ think lyrically"

If NO/ON's 'short-form' poems continue to open horizons for readers, they also refrain from demarcating them. 'CATCH THIS BOY! breathlessly announces the title of Jonathon Greene's poem. Rowland's NO/ON 7, it would seem, calmly offers "new routes for escaping."

-- Alan Botsford

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"NO/ON: journal of the short poem (formerly NOON) usually appears twice a year. However, there will be a hiatus in publication following this issue, and work will not be considered until the next call of submissions is made. To order this issue or check availability of back issues, please contact the editor via email or at the following address: Minami Motomachi 4-49-506, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0012, Japan."

(noonpress@mac.com)

brief review of Mari L'Esperance THE DARKENED TEMPLE -- by Alan Botsford

THE DARKENED TEMPLE by Mari L’Esperance  

THE DARKENED TEMPLE by Mari L’Esperance. University of Nebraska Press, 2008, 100 pp. $16.95 (paper).

(Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)

Born in Kobe, Japan and raised in California, Guam and Japan, Mari L’Esperance (PK 2007) has written a book of poetry entitled The Darkened Temple (Bison Books, 2008). This is a book of poems that does the work, to use L’Esperance’s words, of “shouldering,” “hauling,” “sifting,” ”bracing” and “hunkering down” in the face of loss. In its conception, in its craftsmanship, in its moral bearings, in its production design, in its ambition, and, not least, in its humanity, it is a book that will resonate as only the authentic can.

-- Alan Botsford

review of Shogo Oketani & Leza Lowitz America & Other Poems by Ayukawa Nobuo -- Alan Botsford

AMERICA & OTHER POEMS, by Ayukawa Nobuo. Selected and translated by Shogo Oketani & Leza Lowitz. Kaya Press, 2008, 152 pp., $14.95 (paper).

Brief review by Alan Botsford

For anyone needing an accurate set of coordinates for modern post-war Japanese poetry, Shogo Oketani & Leza Lowitz's deftly written preface to their new translation of Ayukawa Nobuo's 'America & Other Poems' would be a good starting point. With their sure grasp of backstory--biographical, political, social--that informs the poems, the translators do the reader a great service by providing fascinating and comprehensive context (see also Additional Materials & the superb Afterword on translation). But the real pleasures of this book are the poems themselves. Ayukawa, a founding member of the famous Arechi, or Waste Land group, is a poet of immense seriousness and resourcefulness whose Melvillian view of the U.S. is bracing. (Amazingly, he never visited America in his lifetime.) Translation-wise, the idiom these English versions achieve shine with hard-earned integrity and multi-faceted, diamond-like clarity. Many of the poems first appeared in journals in the U.S. and Japan, among them Poetry Kanto. The translations have undergone a metamorphosis, with each successive incarnation-- to this editor's ear and eye-- improving upon the previous one. A case in point is the poem entitled 'Ishmael', first published in Poetry Kanto in 2005 featuring a second stanza as follows:

He, who didn't say at all

from where and why he came,

was the chosen one.

Ishmael, who wandered barefoot

strongly believing in the heritage of the human soul,

he was the chosen one.

In the 2008 version, the stanza is divided in two:

There's something decent about this man

who never said a word

about where he came from

or why.

There's something decent about

this Ishmael

who wandered barefoot,

believing only in the transmission

of the human soul.

The changes speak for themselves. A breakthrough has occurred. And these stanzas are only one of a multitude of luminous examples among the poems. This writer finds the multiple renderings that a good translation undergoes sometimes mesmerizing. William I. Elliott and Kawamura Kazuo—‘godfathers’ of poetry translation in Japan--offer proof when comparing, say, one of their many Tanikawa poems translated years ago with the same poem revised years later. Often the difference can be a real study of honing one's craft. Oketani & Lowitz’s 'America & Other Poems' by Ayukawa Nobuo displays a similar dedication to and excellence in craft.

-- Alan Botsford

review of Jane Jortiz-Nakagawa Aquiline -- by Alan Botsford

AQUILINE by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa. Printed Matter Press, 2007, 65 pp., $12.00 (paper).

Brief review by Alan Botsford

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa is a poet who works, or one should say plays, with (and among) multiple literary and non-literary sources. A long-term resident of Japan, she makes hay with the English language any way she can, and for the many experimental impulses she follows, the results--some dodgy, some very moving—throw interesting light on the relation between poet and language, between (non) comprehensibility and (non) context, between word and flesh.

There’s a fallenness embedded in the life and experience of flesh that she will not shy away from, and which indeed she makes--despite deflections and reflections of all kinds-- into her main subject: The body betrays, is forever a wound, wounding:

My eyes sting, my body

Flat and immobile

I want to crush my head against

The dark sparkly pavement

But hers are takes on much more than the fallen world in all its inglorious Faustian bargains (“stepping over the bodies of the dead” etc.). ‘Sparkly,’ in the above-cited poem for example, offers wit, a word choice-- by eschewing ‘sparkling’-- which has ethical ramifications. Joritz-Nakawaga won’t be seduced by anything less than her own resistances to language (“loss of being price of comedy” indeed—this reviewer is not so sure). The distances traversed, and treasured, between “Her stunned immobile/ Body” and “my stunned immobile body” suggest elusive dramas that move in and out of focus, in and out of view. The unsaid, the unread, the as it were undead all converge in cinematic/real-time actions and axioms (i.e. “our natural language is translation & we cannot get it right”). In sum, these are poems swollen with physicality, half-felt presences, and an intelligence that leaves nothing off its radar. “Who is speaking for us, among the/ colonized clouds…” she asks in her long poem ‘Evil Nature (3)’. Perhaps we can ask instead-- who is speaking for us in (as she writes) “our wounded beauty”? The short answer is, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa does.

-- Alan Botsford

review of JAPAN'S OFFICIAL POETRY BOXING COMPETITION

Japan Reading Boxing Association's Annual Poetry Boxing Competition 
Inno Hall near Toranomon Station in Tokyo 

At the sound of the bell, the bow-tie-clad referee in the ring steps forward, shouts 'Fight-o!', then steps back and lets the 'poetry boxer' into the spotlight to recite her or his poem. Japan Reading Boxing Association's Annual Poetry Boxing Competition at Inno Hall near Toranomon station in Tokyo is underway. Sixteen contestants--champions of varying ages--from teens to 40s, and from various prefectures throughout the country--compete for the title of 2006 Poetry Boxing Champion of Japan. For the next three hours, there's barely a lull in the buzz and energy on stage and in the audience. Pairs of NHK cameramen in the hall are busily filming for a TV program of the event (to be aired on NHK sometime in the near future).The crowd, five hundred strong, listens intently, even actively--some children giggle and let out cries of glee in response to certain poets' performances. The performers' costumes are eye-catching: one young man in top hat, tails, and white gloves; a tall woman in nurse whites; a slim marathon runner in shorts and tank top; a Nepalese beauty in a bright red saree; a girl in a classic high school blue uniform; a short-haired woman clad in swirling, multi-colored robes. Altogether quite a spectacle. And the poetry? The contestants recite in Japanese at a brisk pace, the winners advancing from the first round of sixteen, to the quarterfinals, to the semi-finals, through to the finals. As the final round comes to a close, the two finalists--Nepal's Mahatto Laritto Maya, and Japan's Kimura Yumi--are quickly given four envelopes with four different topics from which to choose. They must perform extemporaneously on stage. The audience is enthralled. The winner? Kimura Yumi. The seven judges--among them manga artist and TV personality Ebisu-san, as well as British-born radio deejay Peter Barakan--file dutifully on stage for final comments and the awards ceremony. For excitement and spectacle, it was well worth the price of admission. Next year's competition will be held in October. 

--Alan Botsford