Is It Poetry?

by Toshiko Hirata, Eric E. Hyett (Translator), Spencer Thurlow (Translator)

A profound collection of poetry from Japanese poet Hirata, expounding on readership and everyday life. American readers’ awareness of contemporary Japan, through literature and poetry, has increased in recent decades, but many are still left with little means of understanding the everyday cultural phenomena that makes Japanese culture what it is. Hirata uses her poems to genuinely investigate aspects of Japanese culture in a way that makes it easy for the reader to understand, and she has an extraordinary way of breaking down a normal event, like seeing an old man riding a bicycle in a park, into a journey that elucidates something profound. Her poems gain prosody while keeping a core narrative aspect which is colored with her own dark and warm artistic lens. Every poem in Is It Poetry? helps the reader understand and think about what is to be cherished, feared, loved, and what is not.

Genres: Poetry

240 pages, Paperback

Published January 23, 2024

Reviews

[kite ⭐️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 stars
this was cool! i normally don't read poetry, much less translated poetry, so this was a really interesting read. for sure some of the poems i didn't fully get, but they were really fun to think about. i liked how some things were referenced later and the entire set up of the book as months. in my literature class the translators of this book visited and talked to us about their process, which was so fascinating and really made me appreciate the art of translation, especially in poetry. some of the original japanese to english translation seemed so difficult, and it's amazing what they did! i loved that the book also included the original japanese side by side for the reader to see, even if the reader doesn't understand japanese. it was so fun reading them side by side (although am nowhere near proficient) that was a very fun exercise in language. hearing from the translators was so amazing though and definitely changed the way i view poetry and translation for the better :-)

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing a poem every month for two years about what happens to be going on that day is disjointed enough; now imagine translating all that everyday talk from casual Japanese to English. You could either call that impossible or very fun; fortunately for us, these translators chose the latter.

[Carson Meloche · Rating 3 out of 5]

reminded me a lot of frank o haras “lunch poems”

[jelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautiful, started it this morning and couldn't put it down. Such a thoughtful piece, can't wait to read more from author.