Wild Grass on the Riverbank

by Hiromi Itō, Jeffrey Angles (Translator)

Set simultaneously in the California desert and her native Japan, tracking migrant children who may or may not be human, or alive, Hiromi Itō’s Wild Grass on the Riverbank will plunge you into dreamlike landscapes of volatile proliferation: shape-shifting mothers, living father-corpses, and pervasively odd vegetation. At once grotesque and vertiginous, Itō interweaves mythologies, language, sexuality, and place into a genre-busting narrative of what it is to be a migrant.

Genres: Poetry, Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Contemporary, Asia

103 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Hiromi Itō is one of the most prominent woman writers of contemporary Japan, with more than a dozen collections of poetry, several works of prose, numerous books of essays, and several major literary prizes to her name.

Reviews

[Guttersnipe Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild Grass on the Riverbank
Hiromi Ito
Translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Action Books, 2014

As I read and reread this gorgeous and unnerving book, I thought of an afternoon in graduate school when I went to my advisor and confessed to him that I liked the way that poets told stories much more than the way prose writers did. He agreed with me very seriously and quietly, as though I had discovered something true, but which could not safely be discussed in public.

As evidence, here is Wild Grass on the Riverbank, one of the first narrative book-length poems to be written in modern Japan. Gory and explicit, damning and redemptive in turns, this book is required reading for poets, storytellers, wanderers, rebels, and ecologists -- for anyone who aims to survive.

This long poem, in 18 parts of varying lengths, is written in a combination of prose and poetry, in language that is sometimes childlike, sometimes scientific, and must have been fiendishly difficult to translate. Angles’ translation’s conveys a tremendous emotional force while giving a sense of the different registers of language through which Ito cavorts with both daring and playfulness.

When I began reading this book I was pulled in first by curiosity, enjoying Ito’s wild narrative strategies and her utter willingness to convey the full messy details of life and death, neither of which is ever a closed category or final state. (For Hiromi Ito, as for Jose Saramago, death is only an interruption. It comes and goes.)

As I read further, then reread, what finally impressed me most was the emotional and incantatory power of long sections like “We Live at the Riverbank” and “We Make Our Way In”, unified narrative poems that are both edgy and exultant and can suddenly flash with a force that brings to mind Alvaro de Campos or Whitman.

Jeffrey Angles, increasingly well-known for his fine translations of Chimako Tada, Taruho Inagaki, and Takahashi Mutsuo, earlier published a translation of “Killing Kanako”, the book that first brought Hiromi Ito renown in Japan. In his introduction Angles refers to other books by Ito: a book of prose poetry, as well as novellas and essays. I hope very much that more of this work can be made available in English.

One of the most important poets of modern Japan, Hiromi Ito has been called a “shamaness of poetry”. Exactly right. Here is poetry that is unafraid to strip bare, copulate or reek, hiss or howl. An exploration of being “naturalized” in every sense of the word: an unending series of changes, deaths, ecstasies, resistances, and transformations.

[Carolyn DeCarlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really sure if this one's a five star or more like a three star for me, so I've just gone in the middle. This one took me a while to finish - I read the first half for Food Court book club's January meeting, but only just got back into it and finished it up in an evening. The images Hiromi evokes in this collection are FULL ON - no joking. So many corpses, rotting dead things, inappropriate sex/pedophilia, and so much displacement and grief. It feels like she's accessing her emotions of anger and her disassociation by just pushing these hardcore images on the reader, like using really graphic shit pushes the reader into the same head space as someone who has gone through what she has. I think this is so smart, albeit a massive trigger warning. It's like she's trying to trigger the reader, and send them into a similar place of discomfort and feeling sick that she's been in herself. It also feels like she's detached from these graphic images because of their repetition, like by constantly seeing dead bodies, the bodies become almost funny, almost normal. It becomes normal to have her dead father's corpse come into poem after poem. These poems take up the whole page, and would need a lot of work to truly unpack in this sort of speedy review. In the right mood, this is a knockout, but if you're feeling upset - I wouldn't suggest this as a comfort read.

[niels munk · Rating 5 out of 5]

var meget betaget af denne bog, rejsen, scenerne, relationerne, planterne.
de voksede veje man ikke kunne forudse og man blev nødt til bare at måtte blive ved og være med og prøve på at forstå
sympatien ligger et andet sted, hvad der er vigtigt er noget andet

[Josefine Schultz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Er ret betaget af Vildgræs ved flodlejet! Totalt grotesk og klam indimellem, men den fangede mig også virkelig med dens prosalignende lyrik, der drives frem ad overraskende meget handling og vilde natur/plantebeskrivelser, hvilket altid er et hit hos mig :’) det føltes meget perfekt at læse den her i sommervarmen hvor vildtvoksende natur føles mere virkeligt. Og familiekonstruktion er også vanvittig, da jeg læste havde jeg det helt chok-agtigt, sådan: må man virkelig skrive sådan en tekst?
Også et rigtig fint efterord, elskede pointen om planter som ikke-døende, men altid genopstående og digtenes kombi af chokeffekt og genkendelse.

[isabell ☮︎︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hiromi Itōs måde at bruge sproget på er magisk. hun formår at bruge sin skrift som et poetisk medium for dyr og planter, hvor hun skaber et sted hvor død og liv, menneske, dyr og plante, kaos og orden slet ikke er modsætninger men en del af et smukt, sammenvævet hele. Det er simpelthen så smukt.

Itōs måde at beskrive kroppens væsker og forplantning på er vild, skræmmende og utroligt smuk. hendes brug af ord skaber en helt anden måde at opleve naturen og kroppen på – det føles som en slags ætsende metafysisk magi.

efterordet af Olga Ravn, der trækker paralleller til Inger Christensen, var sådan en fed overraskelse! jeg kunne virkelig mærke forbindelsen mellem de tre forfattere, som alle på hver deres måde udforsker de dybe, skræmmende og smukke sider af livets cyklus. I LOVE WOMEN SO MUCH.

hvis du er til noget, der både er poetisk og lidt creepy, og som virkelig udfordrer dine tanker om livet, kroppen og naturen, så er Vildgræs ved flodlejet et must-read!

[Istvan Zoltan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A creative text. It is like a forceful current that pushes one down the river, without being harmful or hurting. This long poem-story will resonate with anyone who has experiences of relocating internationally into a different culture, of family strife, or of difficult relationships with siblings.
It also captures well the many dimensions of puzzlement that children experience when faced with the behavior of adults. And it offers a strange but fascinating journey into the domain of plants too. If you don't shy away from reading something that is unlike most other stuff you've read - don't complain that there is no very traditional character building, narrative identity, poetic devices, verse and metre, etc. - then this book will be a wild adventure, both emotionally and literarily!

[Leia Penina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not enough stars. LOVE. LOVE.

[Jack Lyell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I could best describe this as hallucinatory. The editor described it as a deliberate act of translationese on the part of the original author and his own work with the piece and I think this very much comes across. The prose can be graphic, utterly disgusting, sometimes written in the matter-of-fact register of a child and sometimes just opaque on detail. The shifting reality of the piece as it moves between places and further into an overvivid wilderness is not often easy to read, nor is the constant mention of bugs (so many mites in this story, sometimes on people, or as gruesomely described on plants... make no mention of this book's attitudes on sex and death) palatable. The last thing it is trying to be is palatable to any sensibility, literary or sensory, and in the repetitions, scientific names, afterlives, and other eccentricities lies a piece that takes you onto the Riverbank, of living past death(s), and keeps you there. Not a faint of heart read, and I feel like I'm the least qualified person to be talking on it, but I thought it was an engaging take on diaspora.

[Jamjun Rorsoongnern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Itō's ability to vocalize a fractured child's voice is incredible and harrowing as we follow her journey. Moving across the liminal biome of the riverbank (spanning many cultural and geographic/borderlands) is both dream and nightmarish. The poetic ecosystem of death, detritus, and survival becomes entangled in surreal social and natural systems. Itō's linguistic play around the politics of naming, melding languages, and self-expression from the speaker creates a defamiliarization, and unstable language is enamoring. The familial decay and defiance in this collection are overwhelming and inventive excavated manner. This collection spoke to my readerly baggage (being a second-generation Asian American) and made me laugh and cry and wince in wonderfully masochistic, gory ways. It pushed my comfort zone and tolerance for triggers, but I think with some distance when I revisit this it will be 5 stars (for now a little harsh on the heart).

[Aske Christiansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very curious poem/novel with a unique style that is very inspiring to read. Not knowing much about the biography of the author and of the real world events that partly inspired the text, it was hard to fully engage with the text at times, though it was always surprising and beautiful (in a morbid kind of way).
It is a liberating form, and above all, that is probably my favorite thing about the book, even if it is also great on a line by line basis.
the central metaphors of migration and natural spread, and domesticated versus wild are well and good, but slightly worn.
As with any highly text sensitive work, reading it in translation is a loss, but it still stands strong despite it.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fucked up in only way Japan likes to bring it. The book could stand as a testament to a window into mind unique of the fucked up Japan all of her own. I understood absolutely none of this book. I think it was about plants coming to life and killing. I remember I had to look up in the dictionary a lot of plant names and If I could understand this book somehow on a greater metaphorical level maybe it would be a 5 but I digress.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

È la prima volta che leggo un poema narrativo, ma Itō Hiromi è stata in grado di catturarmi fin dalla prima pagina. Una voce potente tra Giappone e America che non ha paura di raccontare nulla, né di sesso né di immigrazione. Bizzarro nel suo stile ma decisamente consigliato (per ora disponibile solo in traduzione inglese).

[Ryan Bollenbach]

Not a whole lot to be said about this that hasn't been said. If you're into surrealism, the undead, immigration narratives, novellas, Neil Young, the desert, and body horror, this book is for you. It took me too long to read it and I'm def. checking out Killing Kanoko.

[Zack]

i really loved this book. it's one of my favs read in a while for sure.

[Val · Rating 5 out of 5]

A genius book of narrative poetry. The metaphor is enchanting and this book could only be done by Itō Hiromi. A wonderful tale about family, immigration, and belonging.

[Ida-Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wtf

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denne her bog kravlede, så Rasmus Daubjergs "Rygtet" kunne gå.

[Sharvaree]

Weirddddd

[Genevieve Poppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was creepy, and icky, and weird, and confusing, and I really enjoyed it! I know it doesn't seem that those things should go together, but this strange form combined poetry, and prose, and almost novella, to tell a visceral story of decay, and death, and life. It was wonderfully written and the words formed such super vivid imagery, that at times it didn't really feel like reading, but instead like experiencing the story. And isn't that all we really want out of writing?

[Matilda Davidsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild Grass on the Riverbank by Hiromi Itō is a contemporary japanese free verse narrative poem that builds on the tradition of post war women’s literature in Japan. It explores migration between “The Wasteland” (California, US) and “The Riverbank” (Kumamoto, Japan) through the voice of a young girl and the nature that surrounds her. Death and decay are as natural as life in this weird surrealist story. The metaphor of immigrants as weeds is played with and looked at from a different perspective.

Sexuality and the mother-daughter relationship is also a common theme, but more based around neglect than connection. Bodily fluids are fascinating instead of taboo and the text is grotesque at times. Fathers are corpses. Little brother is almost always itchy. Ito’s character finds a voice instead of shame in her identity as a woman and language is also important. By defamiliarizing nature and prescribing it with human features, even blurring the line between human and non-human, Ito creates a world full of movement, dualisms and different types of weeds. The narrative changes forms and is interwoven with Neil Young’s song “Out on the Weekend”. The text is a translation from its japanese original, and there are notes to help understand the translator’s choices.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me far too long to read this book. But I'll read it again. It's gd bonkers and elemental and stuttering and flowing and cyclical and dead/not dead and hallucinatory and makes me want to know more about the plants in my front yard.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so disgustingly bonkers and inventive I f*cking love it

[Mari Jacobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

SAVAGE