Asking myself, answering myself
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Asking myself, answering myself
(A New Directions paperbook, 556)
New Directions, c1984
- : pbk
Available at 10 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Born in 1903, Shimpei Kusano has long been among Japan's best-loved poets. Asking Myself/ Answering Myself introduces him to a wide American audience, with selections from over half a century of his work, in translation by Cid Corman. There is scarcely a child (or an adult) in Japan unfamiliar with Kusano's frogs. Their trills, transcribed and fancifully translated by the poet into frog soliloquies, dirges ("Lululu's Funeral" to be accompanied by Chopin's "Funeral March"), and celebrations are, says Corman, "figures of nature--in its largest sense--and of absolute innocence ... . They mock our pretentions but share them too--gently." Witty, lyrical, vigorous, Kusano is a poet of praise--for the savor of snake-liver sake or crunchy raw potatoes, the hissing night sea, a changing sky: "O half a sun now./ mightiest member of the universe./blind my two upstanding eyes with a whack of light." Kusano has traveled widely, and Cantonese as well as the English he studied during his years in China still find their way into his poems. In 1935, he and friends founded Rekitei ("Historical Process"), a monthly magazine out of which grew a poetry group with over a thousand members--now the largest in Japan. Head and heart of the Rekitei group, Shimpei Kusano is still writing, giving readings, and promoting other poets as well as haunting Gaku ("School"), his famous little bar in downtown Tokyo.
by "Nielsen BookData"