Books received/acquired/read:
[E]=English, [J]=Japanese. Please write me if you are interested or need help in purchasing any of the Japanese books mentioned.

* this page has not been updated in years! apologies...*

...too disorganized to handle updating this...

[E] Guess Can Gallop, by Heidi Lynn Staples (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2004)
-- mad puns!

[E] The Bank Book, by Laura Sims (Answer Tag Home Press, 2004)
-- Limited-edition chapbook of poems written in a bank.

[E] 248mgs., a panic picnic, by Susan Landers (O Books, 2003).
-- This book is very lovely in its entirety and I prefer to read it all at once or not at all.

[J] Iretari Dashitari, by Sakai Junko.

[E] Traverse, Issue 7, ed. Drew Kunz & Stacy Szymaszek
-- Beautifully produced, inside and out, handcrafted cover with bunnies, maybe. Lori Lubeski, Kerri Sonnenberg,  Stefan Hyner, many others. "Based on Rapid Content."

[J] Underground, ed. Haruki Murakami.
-- Murakami edits a book of interview-based non-fiction narrative about the vicitims of the sarin gas attacks in 1995, a la Studs Terkel.

[E] One Less (journal), ed. Nikki Widner & David Gardner
-- Issue one! Theme: "Home." Includes Sarah Rosenthal, Nick Moudry, Ellen Redbird, etc. Next issue: "Collections."

[J] Yakobu no kaidan (Jacob's Ladder) by Himeyo Kamiyama (Bungeisha, 2003)
-- A book of contemporaru haiku, written multidirectionally, in a somewhat scrabble-like style. The title series includes romanized versions of each poem, adding a new twist to the west-meets-haiku conversation.

[J] Ito Fukigen Seisakujyo by Hiromi Ito (Shinchosha, 2000)
-- Straightforward reports from the battlefront, teenage daughters and all...

[E] The Real Subject by Keith Waldrop (Omnidawn, 2004)

[E] The Lichtenberg Figures by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon, 2004)

[E] Isn't it Romantic: 100 love poems by younger American poets edited by Brett Fletcher Lauer & Aimee Kelley (Verse,  2004)

[E] Letters to Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth (Verse Press, 2000).
-- Daily vignettes fetishizing the fast food chain, with dashes of fantasy porn, beds made of biggies, kitschy faux-philosophy. Comes with a CD recording!

[E] Direct Poetics, a new newsletter edited by Drew Kunz. No.1 featuring Nico Vassilakis.

[E] Part of the Design by Laura Wright (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2005)
-- Starts with "Sonata for Throat and Ceiling Fan." That kind of musical design.
"in the cruddy envelope where your 'feelings' reside  japanese girls are dying falling off their shoes"

[E] Something Else the Music Was by Eric Baus (Braincase Press, 2004)
-- The title track is my favorite, another kind of music that poetry can be. "Pieces of snow divide from her laugh. Water explains something else."

[E] What I Should Have Said by Laura Wright (Potato Clock Editions, 2004)
-- The first few poems in this chapbook have a wonderful music. Later, curved intentions, situations, tenderness.
"I'm still mesmerized by the arbitrary promises of snow."

[E] The Napoleon Poems by Laura Wright (Left hand series #2, 2004)

[J] Mite (pronounced 'me-teh', meaning 'look!') January, 2005
-- A tiny monthly mag edited by Arai Takako. Includes poetry by Arai, translations from Turkish by Sinan Oner (translated by Inan Oner), an essay on music and language in the Middle East by Miki Wataru.

[J] Midnight Press #26: Winter, 2004 (this is the name of the journal. The press is called Seiunsha.)
-- Includes a great Park Kyong-Mi interview, with Tanikawa Shuntaro and Shouzu Ben, giving glimpses into her Korean-Japanese upbringing and how it shaped her poetry as well as artistic and cultural life. Park was born in Tokyo to Korean parents, who spoke Korean to each other, but refused to speak to their five children in anything but Japanese. In this interview she also talks about her relationship to Stein, "Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) literature, movies, rebuilding a relationship to Korean culture through music, textiles, dance.

[E] PLAY a journal of Plays #2
-- This is great! Delivers a taste of contemporary US theater to those of us geographically unable to witness it live. Plays with the page as only plays can do. Includes fold-out illustrations, clouds, Mac Wellman adapting Henry Darger, Pig Iron Theater Company, and a fantastic puppetry portfolio guest-edited by Dan Hurlin. Hurlin's own piece, Hiroshima Maiden, I found very striking - as a Japanese-American, I tend to enter most Western treatments of Japan as subject with a fair dose of skepticism, but I found this work to be subtle, beautiful, relevant. A satisfying journal all around.

[E] Trilogy and Hagoromo, two books by Yoko Danno. (2004 Ikuta Press - Kobe, Japan)
Danno has never lived outside of Japan, yet writes poetry exclusively in English. Trilogy, with its condensed explorations of nature, and Hagoromo, with its content based on a mythical Japanese story, both give the sense that one has bypassed some kind of translation process, or that the work results from a shift in the usual order and hierarchy of things - that the translation has occurred before the actual writing of the work. She claims in a Kansai Time Out interview that she began to write poems in English when asked, in class, to translate a favorite Japanese poem. Instead of accepting the fact that any translation loses much of the original when translated, she chose to write directly in English. These two books are new editions of books first published in 1970 and 1984, respectively.

[E] Dead Man by Gary Sullivan (1996 Meow Press - Buffalo, NY)
-- !!

[J] Ekoshi Tsushin (Ekoshi Newsletter) edited by Nakamura Fumiaki (August 2004 - Tokyo, Japan)
-- Mini-feature on Nagasawa Nobuko; #1 in a series of features on contemporary female poets - descendants of the Yosano Akiko lineage. Also includes essays on other postwar female poets.

[E] Dandelion the poetic project: Vol.29, #2, edited by Jill Hartman & Editorial Collective. (2003 - Calgary, Canada)
-- Dandelion disaster: Vol.30, #1, edited by Jill Hartman & Editorial Collective. (2004 - Calgary, Canada)

[E] The Kobe Hotel by Saito Sanki, translated by Saito Masaya (1993 Weatherhill Press - Tokyo & New York)
-- Collection of stories from Saito Sanki, who is typically better known for his haiku. (There is a selection of his haiku at the end of the book as well.) The stories are wonderful descriptions of the odd, turbulent lives lived during the war years in Kobe, much of it apparently based on his own quirky life - a refreshingly different perspective of those times.