On the Scented Breeze: Yosano Akiko

"Modest Proposal Chapbook" #21 is just out. It is a selection of the work of Japanese poet Yosano Akiko, entitled On the Scented Breeze, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. For those unfamiliar with this marvelous poet, here is info from Dennis:

Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) is admired as the greatest woman poet and tanka poet of modern Japan. Akiko infused her poems with an erotic and imaginative passion at a time when traditional poetry had grown lifeless and conventional.

In addition to Midaregami or Tangled Hair, from which this selection of poems is taken, Akiko published over 75 books including over 20 of original poetry, as well as novels, essays, fairy tales, children’s stories, an autobiography, and translations. She was a leader and strong supporter of the women’s rights movement in Japan.

Yosano Akiko transformed tanka poetry, instilling life in what had become a relatively stilted, tired form. Many well known translators have rendered her work, including Kenneth Rexroth, Sanford Goldstein, and Sam Hamill. On the Scented Breeze is a modest selection of 29 of some of her most moving, powerful tanka, translated in a clear precise lyrical manner that heightens this power. Here is a selection of 5 poems from this excellent collection:




Did we part
yesterday
or a thousand years ago?
Even now I feel
Your hand on my shoulder.

Goodbye my love
For a night at Fuzan spring
I was your wife.
Now until the end of the world
I demand that you forget me.

Spring so short,
In what can we
Find immortality?
I let his hands fondle
My vigorous breasts.

Poet, sing of this night
Alive with lights and
The wine served.
Our beauty pales
next to the peony.

God of fate, echo of my life.
This last world of mine
Please listen to
The notes of my koto
Played with an ax.

As with all "Modest Proposal Chapbooks," On a Scented Breeze is a $3.00, including shipping. If you'd like a copy, details to send along payment may be found here.


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This week's Lilliput archive poems, a pair, come from issue #141, January 2005, and are seemingly two sides of that same old coin:

bright red tulips
almost touch his name
spring rain

Joyce Austin Gilbert

May morning ...
sunlight fitting itself
around each blade of grass

Dorothy McLaughlin

blades of grass--
swallows start arriving
so pretty

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don