Distant Rain: A Conversation between Jakucho Setouchi and Tess Gallagher

by Tess Gallagher, Keiko Hara (Illustrator)

The eloquent American poet Tess Gallagher discusses the loss of her husband Raymond Carver and the life of a writer with the prolific Japanese novelist and Buddhist nun, Jakucho Setouchi. Their heartfelt and uplifting conversation took place at "Jakuan," Jakucho Setouchi’s temple in Sagano, Japan. This stunning masterpiece of book design and construction is a work of art that reproduces the wood block and stencil prints of Keiko Hara with the exquisite lettering of typographer Maki Yamashita and the craftsmanship of master bookbinder Atsuo Ikuta.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

28 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2006

About the author

Tess Gallagher is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including Dear Ghosts, Moon Crossing Bridge, and My Black Horse. She will release her collection of New and Selected Poems entitled Midnight Lantern in October 2011. Gallagher is also the author of Amplitude, Soul Barnacles: Ten More Years with Ray, A Concert of Tenses: Essays on Poetry, and three collections of short fiction: At the Owl Woman Saloon, The Lover of Horses and Other Stories and The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories. She also spearheaded the publication of Raymond Carvers Beginners in Library of Americas complete collection of his stories released Fall 2009. She spends time in a cottage on Lough Arrow in Co. Sligo in the West of Ireland and also lives and writes in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington"

Reviews

[Yifei Men · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is hard to place Distant Rain. As a work of text, its content is weak, an exchange between two writers in grief, reminiscing about love, seeking peace. The dialogue itself, at least in its English version, is plain, almost too conversational and unpolished. The beautifully restraint assurances and insecurities of the two ladies come across beautifully and naturally. However, the words themselves hardly impresses.

As an art piece, though I must say this book is a moving and intimate marvel of book binding. I find myself drawn to the creases on the translucent paper, its texture, the wrinkled spots left by wet fingers; most of the time, I was peeling off the text to marvel at the illustrations hidden underneath, or pressing down the page so that the types fade into undiscernable scrawls against a palette of blues and teals.

Distant Rain is a book that I won't hesitate to buy, if given the chance again. Just not for the text itself, but as a little gem of book-binding art that I can own safely stash away on my bookshelf.

[arson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably the most beautiful book I've ever seen.

The book unfolds accordion-style in the orihon format, a traditional Japanese bookbinding style that is, appropriately, associated with Buddhist literature. Gorgeous art, mostly comprising abstract blues and greens, forms the binding on which vellum paper is overlaid. The effect is delicate and stunning, and then it's done again when you open the book in the opposite direction and see the conversation reproduced in the other language. I don't think I've ever opened a library book that made me feel like I was unwrapping a present or a work of art.

It is on that vellum paper that the text is printed. An interview between American poet-writer Tess Gallagher and Japanese nun and writer Setouchi Jakucho, conducted in 1990, is republished after its initial appearance in a magazine.

It's impossible for me to read the conversation--part of which is centered on Gallagher's celebrated husband, Raymond Carver--and not imagine the things unsaid. Setouchi at one point mentions that, in her life before nunhood, her lovers were often married men who wanted to have their cake and eat it too: they had her on the side but intended to keep it a secret from their wives and children, never letting their love disturb their "normal" lives. "Japanese men are sly," she says. Given how tumultuous I gather Carver's love life was--from the book and a skim of Wikipedia--I wonder how Gallagher felt hearing that.

Also loved the following part; I'm not sure if the difference in narrative expectation is best characterized as cultural or personal: Setouchi discusses a project of hers that delves into the lives of great Japanese Buddhist priests. "But none of these noble-minded priests, no matter how great he was, started out being wise about everything. They had to suffer from the problem of love."

Gallagher: "So do you begin with the early life of those priests and then go on to write about how they were delivered from such troubles and sufferings--how they overcame them?"

Setouchi: "I write in a fictional style, not in chronological order. Take Ryōkan's case, for instance. He became a priest, and then, when he was seventy, he met a thirty-year-old nun." The promise of linear progress, of overcoming and triumphing, followed by a plateau of more-or-less easy success, is such a natural desire. I found it charming that Gallagher wished for it in the lives of these priests, whereas Setouchi saw in their lives a constant struggle to live up to the ideals of Buddhism.

The conversation flits from topic to topic, flowing right from Buddhist concepts of the afterlife to hair (which, of course, ends up being about love). Gallagher asks Setouchi if it was hard to part from her hair. Setouchi responds, "Well, since I thought my long hair was my most charming feature, yes, I cared a lot. But 'form first' was my decision at the time. I believed I couldn't be a true Buddhist nun until I shaved my head."

One last quote I loved, also from Setouchi: "To love somebody means to hope to be with that person for as long as possible--even if it's only for a second or a minute."

The text is short, but I'm not mad. I'd heard of Setouchi and wanted to know more about her. There are worse ways to use paper than to beautifully reproduce a conversation between two interesting people. At the very least, it did make me want to read Tess Gallagher's works.

[Glen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I met Tess Gallagher the year this volume came out (2006), and even though it had been more than 16 years since the death of her beloved husband Raymond Carver, from the way she talked about him it could have happened the previous week. Tess was in Spokane at the "Get Lit!" festival sponsored in part by Eastern Washington University, whose press produced this beautiful work. She graciously signed it for my wife and I, and it was a very pleasant and poignant encounter with a great poet. The book truly is beautiful, a work of bookmaking art, but the content is rather blase, a brief conversation on the subject of grief between Gallagher and the Japanese novelist and Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi. So, get this book for the visual look and feel of it (it has English characters read one way, then can be reversed and read in Japanese script)and the admirable design elements incorporated therein (it incorporates the art of Keiko Hara), but don't have huge expectations for the sentiments captured therein. The two statements Gallagher makes that I found most interesting in this book are the claim that while not all storytellers are poets, any poet can be a storyteller if he/she chooses, and her musings on an essay she wrote called "The Poem as a Reservoir for Grief".

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful production, a pleasure to see and handle.I did not find the content outstanding