By Yoshioka Minoru (trans. Eric Selland) Macrocosm Though the building is made of stone eternal It is not from the second floor on up There are purple windows You can see Venus’ ass Being stroked The peels in the pineapple salad in the cupboard Support the spirit High noon When the laundry man brings dirty dress shirts What is that painter and his dog all about Living on the fourth floor Below the stars and stripes painted white A dog being beaten I eat a hamburger That should have its picture taken A black man in a wash basin From the rainy reed fields of our current situation All the way to ..read more

from Spindle Form, 1959-1962 Ode to an Old man The old man brings along A lonely, naked child and a pelican For the moment when he dies as king of the sick He confirms the virtue of flesh and the isolation of the heart And cuts down all the trees in the forest with a saw As slowly as possible He assembles a spirit boat Visible beneath his nightwear All that it carries is broken teeth The old man ventures out From his homeland of hemorrhoids and lung disease He rides the swell of deep waves that continue from under the skin He lays his hairy wife down on her stomach And with the poison from h ..read more

Note: This is the original introduction to the anthology of 20th century Japanese poetry before more recent changes (originally it was to have been two volumes covering all genres including haiku and tanka). It was written over ten years ago. There are some little things here and there that I might do differently today, but I still, essentially, stand by what I wrote then. Perhaps some of the more philosophical content might be considered tangential to the subject – the piece is as much an essay in the philosophy of history as it is about Japan and its poetry in particular – but I still see so ..read more

I am happy to announce that my translation of Yoshioka Minoru’s Kusudama, which I originally translated while I was living in Tokyo during the 1980s, has been reissued by Isobar Press (London/Tokyo). Announcement from the press is shown below. Spread the word! Eric Selland Tokyo The fourth 2021 publication by Isobar Press has just come out: a revised edition of Eric Selland‘s remarkable translation of Kusudama, the magnum opus of Yoshioka Minoru. Kusudama was published in Japanese in 1984 when the young Eric Selland was living in Tokyo and spending his Saturday afternoons at the Top Café in Sh ..read more

Books on Japanese Modernism and Related Subjects Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s, by William O. Gardner, Harvard University Asia Center, 2006 Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan 1913-1938, edited by William J. Tyler, University of Hawai’i Press, 2008 Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, by Miriam Silverberg, University of California Press, 2006 Miryam Sas, Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism, Stanford University Press, 2001 John Solt, Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: The Poetry and Poetics of Kitasono Kat ..read more

Translation and commentary by Eric Selland: The Dead Child I On top of a large bib lies the dead child Enemy to no one Nor ally The dead child is spirit Inheritor of an immortal lineage If there is a humanity This is the crown of thorns Of its cursed memory Eternal heart and stench of flesh Once marked with the seal Of its mother’s mirror and womb The fruit of the sweat of its beautiful soul Cannot be taken away Wrapped in straw, he goes out to work With his father New teeth in earth’s roundness Firm backside and reliable weight But starting today Neither his father’s artificial eye Nor his mo ..read more

The Diseased Face in the Depths of the Earth From the depths of the earth a face appears, The face of a lonely invalid. In the darkness below the surface of the earth, Everywhere fingers of grass burst forth like a stain, Then nests of mice sprout up, The nests entangled hopelessly In countless hairs quivering as they emerge. From the lonely diseased earth of midwinter, Slender roots of green bamboo grow, Grow and spread. How absolutely miserable they look, Like a thickening fog, How horribly, horribly pitiful they look. In the darkness below the surface of the earth, The miserable face of a ..read more

Note: This is the original, non-edited version of my afterward to Sho Sugita’s translation of Hirato Renkichi (Spiral Staircase, Ugly Duckling Presse). I am posting this earlier, and longer version because it relates to the development of Japanese Modernist and avant-garde poetry in general. —————————————————————————– It is impossible to overstate the importance of this book’s arrival, because for the first time ever, readers of poetry in the U.S. are given the chance to encounter the poetry of one of Japan’s pioneers of the Modernist avant-garde. It’s been awhile now since Japan’s own Modaniz ..read more

Books on Japanese Modernism and Related Subjects Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s, by William O. Gardner, Harvard University Asia Center, 2006 Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan 1913-1938, edited by William J. Tyler, University of Hawai’i Press, 2008 Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, by Miriam Silverberg, University of California Press, 2006 Miryam Sas, Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism, Stanford University Press, 2001 John Solt, Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: The Poetry and Poetics of Kitason ..read more