Mouth: Eats Color -- Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals

by Sawako Nakayasu, Chika Sagawa

Poetry, Translation. Ten poems by Sagawa Chika are conveyed into English and other languages through a variety of translation techniques and procedures, some of them producing multilingual poems. Languages used include English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Chinese.

Genres: Poetry, Japan

90 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2011

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

[juch · Rating 5 out of 5]

love a book that’s a BOOK
I loved the way things were “translated” through recurring images. Something that might seem like just a cool image would get expanded into a story, like blanket of ants

Inspired me to be less precious about making a book (doesn’t have to be some tight master narrative, just pieces that resonant with each other, form a fragile order that can be constantly disrupted - loved the beehive metaphor in the end notes also cool that the end notes were chaotic!) and to write a COLLABORATIVE BOOK!!! I loved the variety of voice across the recurring images and themes

[Regan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't wait to read Nakayasu's poetry & translations again in the summer, somewhere new where I can sit in the sun and really take my time.

[Heidi ✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

She destabilises the idea of ‘original’ and ‘translation’ to the extent that once the ‘true’ (i.e. first published) ‘original’/source appears, I almost didn’t trust it. I will never be as cool at Sawako Nakayasu.

[Paulette · Rating 4 out of 5]

you feel everything but never reach complete satisfaction.

4.5/5

[Jenny Lee]

Super strange, super interesting.
Probably a book where being able to read Japanese would help, but luckily I borrowed a copy of a lovely lil frog who likes to annotate 💚
It almost felt like the whole book was one poem that the author has broken up into fragments and expanded and there are clearly multiple versions of the poems, potentially none of which might be the "original".
I absolutely couldn't tell what came from the author and what came from the translator but I kinda liked that?
Very strange read, very interesting

I have no idea how to rate it in stars... 4 out of 5 time ticking ants...?
5 out of 5 cannibalistic Italians?
words have no meaning anymore...

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

The saisons changent their 手袋
A trois o'clock
薄れ日の
Petals des fleurs that bury leur report
ホワイト and ブラックの screen
Les yeux covered par the nuages
Evening se couche on some jours sans プロミス.

(from Promenade, p11)

[Calvin]

Soooo good... collab so good

[Ellie Equizi · Rating 4 out of 5]

highly recommend reading this alongside her book of straight translations- it's fascinating to see what Nakayasu chooses to change and to keep, and which of Sagawa's poems most preoccupy her. reckon she'd have made Chika proud.

[Greg Bem · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt my insides curl up but never reach a ceiling.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read some of Nakayasu's poems in the New Census anthology and I was really interested in reading more, so I grabbed this.... It doesn't contain any of those poems, but I think these are engaged in similar questions, about translation and multiplicity, language change, etc. So this is almost a translation of poems by Sagawa Chika, a 20th C Japanese modernist, only some of her poems (esp this one called Promenade) are translated multiple times, following different strategies. It's similar to reading several versions of the same photo, with different tones, hues, and contrasts being used.

There are also translations of English language poems that Chika translated into Japanese, re-translated back into English-- poems by Mina Loy, etc, English-language writers that resonated with Chika in her day. And there are also poems that are in Japanese (I imagine), or poems that run Japanese and English characters together. On her webpage, Nakayasu reprints an interview that explains this all more fully.

It's a cool project. The poems are good, but maybe more interesting for the way they resist being seen as complete poems; they show the fissures where meaning is made, or craft would usually be deployed to smooth over something unseemly. Here, that seam is visible.

I want to read more....

[Ivan Zhao · Rating 5 out of 5]

technically I think this is a reread but I read it on a train so clearly I have fucking forgot everything that has happened.

sawako nakayasu is mother, her work in translation, microtranslation, and antitranslation are so interesting to me and also the fact that she played hockey #heatedrivalry