Thursday 9 May 2013

The Poetry of Living Japan



A recent purchase in a nearby second hand bookshop - The New Poetry, selected and introduced by A. Alvarez, published by Penguin which I've only just begun to explore, simply divided into two halves, one a selection from American poets, the other from British poets. Among the British is included D. J Enright, who I couldn't help notice that in the 1950's was a visiting professor to Konan University in Kobe. A little further probing uncovered that he along with Takamichi Ninomiya edited and introduced a selection of Japanese poetry entitled The Poetry of Living Japan published back in 1958. It features poems from a wide range of poets including - Tōson Shimazaki, Sakutarō Hagiwara, Tatsuji Miyoshi, Shinkichi Takahashi, Michizō Tachihara, to name but a few here, and also that it's available to read via Archive.org.

Also over at the very excellent publicdomainreview.org an interesting selection of Sketches by Yoshitoshi and also a look at the texts featured in The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald.

The Poetry of Living Japan at Archive.org.



2 comments:

@parridhlantern said...

This sounds interesting on two levels first I like the poetry of Alvarez and obviously like the J-lit connection with check it out.

me. said...

I was drawn to The New Poetry by its cover - Jackson Pollock's painting Convergence.

Unfortunately though Alvarez's own poetry is not included in the collection, would very much like to read his recent Pondlife: A Swimmer's Journal.

Bit of a welcome bonus to discover D. J Enright's selection of Japanese poetry through this one.