A bilingual Japanese-English presentation of Shuri Kido’s
poetry, co-translated by Pulitzer prize-winner Forrest Gander
Shuri Kido, known as the “far north poet,” is one of the
most influential contemporary poets in Japan. Names and Rivers brings the poems
of Shuri Kido to readers in North America for the first time, thanks to star
translator team Tomoyuki Endo and Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander. Drawing
influence from Japanese culture and geography, Buddhist teachings, and
modernist poets, Kido presents a mesmerizing view of the world and our human
position in it. This is a world “that isn’t ours”—where the trees are sirens
while the people are silent, where snow lingers while language crumbles. Names
and Rivers is made of crossings, questionings, and mysteries as unanswered and
open as the sky. Bilingual Japanese-English production.
"A collection of poems by Shuri Kido, translated by Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander"--
“[T]his
reverential work effectively humanizes and explains Esoteric Buddhist doctrines
and practices. Readers interested in nontraditional Buddhism will enjoy this
trenchant biography.” —Publishers Weekly
Reviews
of Forrest Gander’s poetry translations:
“[Spectacle & Pigsty] is a superb anthology of
Kiwao Nomura and it is the best possible translation one could hope for. There
has never been poetry in Japanese that exhibited such affinities in the English
language. This is a proof that his poetry is open to the wide world.”—Judge’s
citation, Best Translated Book Award
“From the very first lines of Alfonso D’Aquino’s fungus
skull eye wing, Forrest Gander’s translation feels utterly exacting in its
choices.”—American Poetry Review
“Alice
Iris Red Horse convinced me that multiple-translator anthologies can be
done better. It even convinced me that it could be a new model for poetry
publication.” —Hyperallergic
“The poet’s
process, the end notes that place each poem in context, the photos of his
handwritten manuscript pages, this peek behind the curtain of his daily life,
are all of the utmost interest and significance to scholar and general reader
alike.” —Eclectica
“Alfonso D’Aquino is one such poet of sensation and science.
Fungus skull eye wing, his first collection available in English, is
dense with the tropical life of Cuernavaca: root systems, veins of mineral,
tangles of foliage….Forrest Gander’s translation is another marvel.”—The
Paris Review
“Forrest Gander has redefined our sense of contemporary
Mexican poetry with his wide-ranging selection from Coral Bracho’s compelling
body of work. At once ferocious and veracious, sensual and surreal, immersed in
nature and conscious of imposing a pastoral artifice, Bracho’s writing plays
out a string of discontinuous images knotted with neologisms. Gander shrewdly
adopts a modernist approach, all clarity and explicitness, mimicking her
mannerisms yet inscribing his own suggestive nuances. His versions admit us
into her fantastic world by evoking a succession of U.S. poetries—Whitman,
Black Mountain, the New York School—and thereby casting them in a new light
that is strangely beautiful.”— PEN Translation Award Citation (finalist)
