So We Have Been Given Time Or by Sawako Nakayasu

by Sawako Nakayasu

Nakayasu's book-length poem uses its tumbling dramatic form to create a new inquiry into "character," "time," "place," "direction " and other elements. Lyrical language and personal, engaging voices take the reader on a dizzying and affecting journey through a "geography of risk." This wholly original work brings poetry into regions hitherto explored only by the most experimental forms of music and plastic arts.Sawako Nakayasu was born in Yokohama, Japan, and has lived in the US since the age of six. Her previous pubications include Clutch (Tinfish, 2002), Balconic (Duration, 2003), and Nothing fictional but accuracy or arrangement (she (Faux, 2003), and she edits the press Factorial. In 2003 she received the US-Japan Creative Artists' Program Fellowship from the NEA.

Genres: Poetry

Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

SAWAKO NAKAYASU's books include So we have been given time Or, (Verse, 2004) Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she, (forthcoming from Quale Press, 2005) and Clutch (Tinfish chapbook, 2002). Find more info here: http://www.factorial.org/sn/sn_home.html

Reviews

[Abbigail K · Rating 5 out of 5]

So We Have Been Given Time Or by Sawako Nakayasu is a phenomenal poetry collection. Borrowing its form from a theatre script, the form is provoking and meaningful. The book has no distinct sections but tells a riveting progression of time, love, and human existence. Nakayasu manages to bring humour and playfulness into the philosophical dialogue about time/place/person with lines like “cow: for cooked meat / examples insecurity / a mouthful of moo,” “characters: statistical cretins” or “a smile called fuck you” (43, 45, 62).
My favourite lines are
“AND: tenuous redefining.
tenuous redefining its terms and for whom.
tenuous reaching out for another gift of time, illusions of timing.
tenuous adding up the time, filling in blanks, claiming ownership.
tenuous claiming to be somewhere, own something, have stakes, be at stake

OR: tenuously searching for ground” (103).

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book-length poem, with it's worrying over ever-morphing phrases and script-like presentation, readily recalls Beckett's more experimental theater works. that said, it was still an emotionally charged work, even if the emotions were impressions and indirect. almost immediately, I was able to stage and plot what the audiobook / radio play of this work could sound like. I might actually hang on to this one and try to realize it someday...

[Edward Rathke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think it makes sense to give this poem/play a rating and I'll explain why.

First, I don't know how to rate it based on what it's trying to do. Second, poetry, in most cases, takes at least two reads before it really reveals itself. Third, a rating for something like this, the theatre of poetry, seems rather meaningless.

The sensation of riding a train is the closest approximation I can give to reading So We Have Been Given Time Or. If the subject or theme of this piece is the scenery you watch from the train, then it is blurred by the rate at which its reading pushes us forward. The rhythm and playfulness of the structure and lines is the jostle of the train, subduing you and freeing your thoughts to wander beyond the scenery. And so, what can I say about this?

Interesting, certainly. Quite pretty, at times, using enjambment and negative space very cleverly and beautifully, but it has an ethereal quality to it--esoteric, maybe.

I enjoyed it, if that counts for anything, and surely it does, but it's not the kind of enjoyment that leads to a recommendation or anything like that.

For now, I can say that I have read this. Maybe in a few days or hours or years, I'll have a rating for it. Maybe if I sit down and read it again, everything will become a bit more clear and I can say whether I loved or hated or qualify some kind of value to it.

[ethan pickett · Rating 5 out of 5]

extremely thorough exploration of a poetic idea that also serves as proof of concept for (what I perceive to be) its poetics. uses play as pun and pun (or double entendre) as structural binding force, provoking sincerity from a tool often written off as cheeky or unserious. falls into the linguistic play lineage of the symbolists->dada->surrealists->oulipo, at a time when such conceits are glaringly absent.

basically all I wanna say is this book is very fun then it's not (in a good way!) then it is.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read thus far this summer!

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.sleepingfish.net/5cense/Sa...

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

fine art.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

My intro to Nakayasu's work, I still haven't read anymore but I found this fascinating. Not sure I understood everything but, oh well.