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Bathhouse and other tanka / Tatsuhiko Ishii ; translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato.

by Ishii, Tatsuhiko, 1952- author.

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New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2023.

9780811231343 (paperback) :

0811231348 (paperback) :

viii, 145 pages ; 22 cm

"Bathhouse and other tanka is the first collection of the Japanese poet Tatsuhiko Ishii's work to appear in English. For many decades now, Ishii has transformed the classical Japanese tanka into its own an innovative, contemporary literary form. Rather than following the traditional five-line 5-7-5-7-7-syllable structure, Ishii composes each tanka in one line, and constructs his poems out of sequential one-line tankas. With an astonishing mix of philosophical lyricism, multilayered history, and homoerotic exuberance, Ishii's poems include moving elegies to Yukio Mishima and Genji (the Shining Prince), as well as tributes to Federico García Lorca and the volcanoes Popocatépetl and Mount Fuji. "The ocean plane shines in the sun,' he writes in the aftermath of 9/11. "From now on every place will be a battlefield, sure." Ishii pens songs of momentary love and flames of lust, of humankind's self-destruction and of clipping pubic hair and washing a horse. Hiroaki Sato, the eminent author of On Haiku, has been translating Ishii for over thirty years and captures the rhythmic pulse and turn of his resplendent verse."--Provided by publisher.

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