River of Stars: Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko

Akiko (1878-1942) was so respected among Japanese poets that the period in which she wrote is nicknamed the Age of Akiko. Famous for her cornerstone translation into modern Japanese of The Tale of Genjii, she also single-handedly redeemed the well-worn tanka, a traditional form employing five lines with a standard syllable count (5-7-5-7-7). Many of the tankas are frankly erotic: ""Testing, tempting me/ forever, those youthful lips/ barely touching the/ frosty cold drops of dew/ on a white lotus blossom."" With her imagistic use of the form, she employed a fresh, personal perspective not unlike that found in the free verse of her modernist counterparts in the West. Though Akiko wrote a stunning 17,000 tankas during her lifetime, 91 have been selected and seamlessly translated by Hamill and Gibson for this volume. Unfortunately, Akiko's longer poems, free-verse efforts here dubbed ""modern-style poems,"" are didactic. Poems like ""Women Are Plunder,"" which chastises women who shop too much in department stores, show Akiko making socialist and feminist pronouncements. They are of great contextual and social significance, but they lack the elegance of the tankas. But at its best, in the tankas, Akiko's verse exhibits a powerful simplicity and grace that make this volume one of much more than historical interest. (Apr.)