The best books about history are those that are also about the future. W. Todd Kaneko’ s marvelous This is How the Bone Sings is more than a mere song— it is a singing across time and distance. In lyrics both personal and political, Kaneko composes a score that spans four generations, connecting his grandparents, who were prisoners in the unfathomable Minidoka concentration camps, to his young son and this unfathomable era in which he was born. One of the many things I lo...
Exotics and Retrospectives (Lafcadio Hearn Library, v. 5)
by Lafcadio Hearn
Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged) (Miller Williams Poetry Prize)
by Judy Halebsky
Finalist, 2020 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Inspired by Matsuo Basho's writings and teachings on poetics and haiku, the interrelated lyric poems in Sky of Wu investigate work and marriage, the question of becoming a parent while watching a parent age into dementia, and the realities of wrestling with inequality, pollution, and habitat loss while navigating everyday life in Oakland, California. Simultaneously, they converse with Chinese poets from the eighth century and Japanese writers from th...
This volume presents translations of over 200 poems by Shotetsu, who is generally considered to be the last great poet of the uta form. Includes an introduction, a glossary of important names and places and a list of sources of the poems.
Eastern Structures No. 23 (Eastern Structures)
by Emma Lee, Gail Foster, and Mace Hosseini
A reprint of the famous collection of Japanese historical stories, fairy tales, customs, and traditions, compiled by one of the first foreign diplomats in Japan.
The Spring of My Life (Shambhala Pocket Library)
by Sam Hamill and Issa Kobayashi
An autobiographical blend of prose and haiku from one of Japan's greatest poets. Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827), along with Bashō and Buson, is considered one of the three greatest haiku poets of Japan, known for his attention to poignant detail and playful sense of humor. Issa’s most beloved work, The Spring of My Life, is an autobiographical sketch of linked prose and haiku in the tradition of Bashō’s celebrated Narrow Road to the Interior. This edition also includes more than 160 of Issa’s most...
This form of poetry, similar to haiku, is a short classical Japanese verse form that has attracted considerable attention in North America this century. This collection of tanka poems consists of 400 poems by 20 renowned Japanese poets, with biographical sketches of the authors.
