The 4th Selected Works
TITLE
Reading Modern Japanese Poetry 101
(Gendaishi no kansho 101)
(Gendaishi no kansho 101)
AUTHOR
Translator
ENGLISH / Paul McCarthy 
FRENCH / Yves-Marie Allioux & Dominique Palmé
RUSSIAN / Alexander Belyaev & Elena Tutatchikova
Originally Published by:
Shin shokan (1998)
KEY POINTS
- 101 Japanese poems of 55 poets, which were carefully selected from the works of postwar period.
- An excellent anthology which gives readers an introduction to the poems and the chance to appreciate them.
- 101 poems that are nourishing and full of artistic felicities, which will stimulate the poetry in the soul of readers.
SYNOPSIS
"Why are flowers always/ In the shape of answers/ Why is it just questions/ That pour down from the heaven" (Naze Hana wa itsumo (Why are flowers always) by Eriko Kishida). "Over there where I can hear the sound of the wave under the blue sky/ Something unimaginably explainable that is lost/ I seem to have dropped it over there/ At a transparent station in the past/ When I was standing before the lost property office/ I found myself being even sadder" (Kanashimi (Sorrow) by Shuntaro Tanikawa).The above quotations are both from the book edited by Makoto Ooka who is a literary critic and poet himself. This book is a remarkable anthology of Japanese postwar poems introducing 101 poems by 55 poets including Nobuo Ayukawa, Taro Kitamura, Ryuichi Tamura, Hiroshi Yoshino, Noriko Ibaragi, Gozo Yoshimasu, and Yoji Arakawa. What is modern poetry? There are people who feel as if their hearts are truly grasped by the words expressed by a piece of art, even if it is a piece of art without any words. "This is a phenomenon that always occurs in one's heart, and it is the encounter with a 'poem' ", says the editor. A poet is not a person who writes poems, but any person just because the person can find the reflection board for words in himself or herself. The 101 poems in this book will refresh and sustain the reader's heart.
