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50books_poc2010-01-20 02:41 pm
puritybrown.livejournal.com) wrote in 50books_poc2010-01-20 02:41 pm
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21: On Two Shores by Mutsuo Takahashi
21: On Two Shores by Mutsuo Takahashi (English tr. Mistuko Ohno & Frank Sewell)
This is a bilingual edition of new and selected poems by Takahashi, a distinguished Japanese poet who uses both modern and traditional forms. I was especially interested in this volume because it's published by an Irish publisher, Dedalus, and some of the poems were inspired by the poet's visit to Ireland in 1999, where, according to the introduction (and the poem "Faith"), he rediscovered his faith in poetry and in the future.
As an Irish reader, I found the Ireland-inspired poems in this collection intensely moving -- I'm used to seeing the pictures of Ireland reflected through outsiders' eyes and not recognising it, whether the picture is positive or negative; but Takahashi's Ireland, an Ireland of poets and abandoned railway stations and urban foxes, is familiar to me, and strange at the same time, like a photograph taken from an atypical angle.
There are earlier poems in this collection too, and they show the same insight and the same gift at capturing a moment in an image as the Ireland poems; but they betray a sense of fear, and in particular a fear of time, as in "The Letter":
I am writing a letter
addressed to you.
But
as I write,
you who will read the letter
don't exist yet;
and when you read the letter,
I who wrote it
won't exist anymore.
A letter suspended
between someone who doesn't exist yet
and someone who doesn't exist anymore --
does it really exist?
(I have trouble writing about poetry; I always feel my words are too clumsy for it. I really liked this book.)
This is a bilingual edition of new and selected poems by Takahashi, a distinguished Japanese poet who uses both modern and traditional forms. I was especially interested in this volume because it's published by an Irish publisher, Dedalus, and some of the poems were inspired by the poet's visit to Ireland in 1999, where, according to the introduction (and the poem "Faith"), he rediscovered his faith in poetry and in the future.
As an Irish reader, I found the Ireland-inspired poems in this collection intensely moving -- I'm used to seeing the pictures of Ireland reflected through outsiders' eyes and not recognising it, whether the picture is positive or negative; but Takahashi's Ireland, an Ireland of poets and abandoned railway stations and urban foxes, is familiar to me, and strange at the same time, like a photograph taken from an atypical angle.
There are earlier poems in this collection too, and they show the same insight and the same gift at capturing a moment in an image as the Ireland poems; but they betray a sense of fear, and in particular a fear of time, as in "The Letter":
I am writing a letter
addressed to you.
But
as I write,
you who will read the letter
don't exist yet;
and when you read the letter,
I who wrote it
won't exist anymore.
A letter suspended
between someone who doesn't exist yet
and someone who doesn't exist anymore --
does it really exist?
(I have trouble writing about poetry; I always feel my words are too clumsy for it. I really liked this book.)