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Title: Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami by Akiko Yosano ISBN: 0-911198-26-1 Publisher: Purdue University Studies Pub. Date: 1971 Format: Hardcover |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Originally published in 1901, and here superbly translated
Comment: Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka From Midaregami is a selection of Akiko Yosano's rather impressive Japanese poetry, which was originally published in 1901, and is here superbly translated by the combined efforts of Sanford Goldstein (Professor Emeritus, Purdue University and Keiwa College, Japan) and Seishi Shinoda (Niigata University, Japan) into English for a new generation of readers. The "tanka" is the most popular form of Japanese poetry, representing 1,200 years of literary history and tradition. These translations are sensitive to context and subtle word meaning, are presented with extensive notes concerning the poems themselves, and include facets relating to the author's life. 95: Through these pines/The breeze equally/On her cheeks and mine,/Yet how like strangers/Our thoughts.
Rating: 4
Summary: A great introduction to Japanese poetry
Comment: "To punish-- Men for their endless sins,-- God gave me-- This fair skin,-- This long black hair!"
Imagine writing that in turn of the century Japan, at a time when women were considered to be barely human and feminism was unheard of! Yosano Akiko's beautiful poems broke with tradition and spoke of love, the emancipation of woman, and the pleasures of the flesh. Attacking conventional morals, she glorified the female body and defended sexuality, but there is more to her poems even, than that. The title, Midare Gami means "tangled hair" and is a typically oblique Japanese expression that, despite its indirectness, is utterly fraught with nuance and meaning. Tangled hair refers not to hair that is messy or untidy, but to hair tousled by love making and is a constant theme in her poems. Yosano Akiko brought new meanings to the term, and used it to connote female emancipation and sexual freedom.
Although Yosano Akiko is important in Japanese literary circles because she wrote about things that no one had ever dared to write about before, her poems are more than just historical curiosities. They are hauntingly beautiful, and her choices of images are incredibly vivid.
She says so much in so few words, that one can spend days thinking about a simple three or four line poem no matter how many times one reads her work, one can always find new things that one had not seen before. It is fascinating to read the thoughts of a woman who truly lived her life for love and art, and who was constantly struggling to come to grips with the conflict between one's ideas about the way that life ought to be and the way it really is. Her poems about being betrayed by men who go off to have affairs, or the sad verses about women waiting for men to come home, or the lamentations on the emphemerality of beauty and youth are unforgettable. As Pico Iyer discusses in his book The Lady and the Monk some of her best poems have to do with the conflict that the monk faces when he is torn between his love for a woman and his quest to escape from the longings and desires of the material world.
Yosano Akiko's poems are very difficult to understand, as the many of the cultural references and symbols she uses are not familiar to westerners, but fortunately there is an excellent appendix which provides explanations for all the poems.
Rating: 5
Summary: Small birds
Comment: The tanka collected in this volume are simple and elegant. I would say perfect, but I suppose that's a dangerous word. Heck, I like danger; they're perfect. Not one extra word or unessesary image in the whole book. Now, in my fast food culture "without excess" is a rare,beautiful,almost inconcievable thing. I suppose that's one reason I cherish this particular book. Using quiet traditional images from nature; moonlight,cherry blossoms, morning dew, the high cries of the cranes the author cuts deep into the collective human experience. It quiets my soul. I'm amazed. In the words of Josef Albers "Less" in this case certainly "is more".
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Title: Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Rebirth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry by Janine Beichman ISBN: 0824823478 Publisher: University of Hawaii Press Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: A String of Flowers, Untied... Love Poems from The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikubu, Jane Reichhold, Hatsue Kawamura ISBN: 1880656620 Publisher: Stone Bridge Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: River of Stars : Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko by Sam Hamill ISBN: 1570621462 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 18 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Ink Dark Moon : Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan by Jane Hirshfield ISBN: 0679729585 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 03 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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