Names and Rivers
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world
Description
A bilingual Japanese-English presentation of Shuri Kido'spoetry, co-translated by Pulitzer prize-winner Forrest GanderShuri 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.
Product Details
Price
$17.00
$15.81
Publisher
Copper Canyon Press
Publish Date
September 20, 2022
Pages
128
Dimensions
6.0 X 8.9 X 0.4 inches | 0.4 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781556596612
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
About the Author
Shuri Kido, known as the "far north poet," is one of the most important poets in Japan. He has translated many English poems into Japanese and has introduced works by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot to Japan. Kido has been a critic and columnist for various magazines and newspapers and has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture.
Tomoyuki Endo is an assistant professor at Wako University in Tokyo. He has collaborated with Forrest Gander on the translation of poems from Shiraishi's My Floating Mother, City (New Directions), and was the supervisor of English subtitles for Gozo Yoshimasu's movies Thousands of Islands and The Reality behind What We See.
Forrest Gander is a translator, cross-genre writer, and former professor at Brown University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, and United States Artists Foundations.
Reviews
Praise for Names and Rivers"Shuri Kido is well-known in his native Japan, and his work at last comes to the United States in this lovely bilingual selection, translated by Tomoyuki Endo and Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander. Kido's poems are frequently spiritual dramas set in a dreamlike landscape of symbols, in which a central, isolated figure encounters mysterious phenomena while making ambiguous progress toward an inscrutable goal. 'Elusive water, ' he writes in 'Some Thoughts on Kozukata.' 'You draw it up, / pour it over yourself. / Today courses by like yesterday, / today floats like a cork on tomorrow. / And that's why you draw water.'"--Troy Joillimore, Washington Post "The Five Best Poetry Collections of 2022""The expansive, philosophical poems in Names and Rivers: Selected Poems by Shuri Kido consider themes of solitude, time, and 'naming' through close attention--fueled by both scientific knowledge and awe--to geological forms and rivers. According to co-translator and scholar Tomoyuki Endo's substantial introduction, Kido, an eminent writer known as Japan's 'far north poet, ' draws on his 'geographical imagination' to engage with 'time as an encompassing palimpsest.'"--Heather Green, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation
"Kido's first foray--and a rewarding one--into English translation."--Metropolis
"Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander dizzyingly transpose Shuri Kido's exploration of synchronous time and realization through an array of carefully selected and presented poems. Beginning with a delightful essay on Kido's conception of time as 'an encompassing palimpsest' by Tomoyuki Endo, Names and Rivers urges the reader to detach from a linear view of time and to open their eyes to the smudged writing in the margins. . . . Names and Rivers is an intense, looming permutation of Shuri Kido's poetry. It is a hand drawn halfway from the river as two currents crash back into one. It is a call to see everything as everything, to 'take to our feet, to get going, ' and to continue crossing the river."--Action Books Micro-Reviews
"The collection spans 18 of Kido's works, from his 1985 debut anthology Shokan (Summoning) to 2010's Maboroshi no haha (
"Kido's first foray--and a rewarding one--into English translation."--Metropolis
"Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander dizzyingly transpose Shuri Kido's exploration of synchronous time and realization through an array of carefully selected and presented poems. Beginning with a delightful essay on Kido's conception of time as 'an encompassing palimpsest' by Tomoyuki Endo, Names and Rivers urges the reader to detach from a linear view of time and to open their eyes to the smudged writing in the margins. . . . Names and Rivers is an intense, looming permutation of Shuri Kido's poetry. It is a hand drawn halfway from the river as two currents crash back into one. It is a call to see everything as everything, to 'take to our feet, to get going, ' and to continue crossing the river."--Action Books Micro-Reviews
"The collection spans 18 of Kido's works, from his 1985 debut anthology Shokan (Summoning) to 2010's Maboroshi no haha (
