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The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa
Winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation • The electrifying collected works of “one of the most innovative and prominent avant-garde poets in early twentieth-century Japan” ( The New Yorker ).
Translated by and with an introduction by Sawako Nakayasu
An important and daringly experimental voice in Tokyo’s avant-garde poetry scene, Chika Sagawa broke with the gender-bound traditions of Japanese poetry. Growing up in isolated rural Japan, Sagawa moved to Tokyo at seventeen, and begin publishing her work at eighteen.She was immediately recognized as a leading light of the male-dominated Japanese literary scene; her work combines striking, unique imagery with Western influences. The results are short, sharp, surreal poems about human fragility and the beauty of nature from Japan’s first female Modernist poet.
The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.
AMERICAN INDIAN STORIES • THE AWAKENING • THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY • THE HEADS OF CERBERUS • LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET • LOVE, ANGER, MADNESS • PASSING • THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER • THERE IS CONFUSION • THE TRANSFORMATION OF PHILIP JETTAN • VILLETTE
Translated by and with an introduction by Sawako Nakayasu
An important and daringly experimental voice in Tokyo’s avant-garde poetry scene, Chika Sagawa broke with the gender-bound traditions of Japanese poetry. Growing up in isolated rural Japan, Sagawa moved to Tokyo at seventeen, and begin publishing her work at eighteen.She was immediately recognized as a leading light of the male-dominated Japanese literary scene; her work combines striking, unique imagery with Western influences. The results are short, sharp, surreal poems about human fragility and the beauty of nature from Japan’s first female Modernist poet.
The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.
AMERICAN INDIAN STORIES • THE AWAKENING • THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY • THE HEADS OF CERBERUS • LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET • LOVE, ANGER, MADNESS • PASSING • THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER • THERE IS CONFUSION • THE TRANSFORMATION OF PHILIP JETTAN • VILLETTE
176 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2015
About the author
Chika Sagawa
5 books16 followersSagawa Chika (左川 ちか, 1911–1936) was a Japanese avant-garde poet.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
February 10, 2021
I'm glad I read this -- it was refreshing to learn about a pioneering modernist beyond the ones we're taught about in school, and an Asian woman to boot. And Sagawa's loosely bound images can be stirring, even exhilarating, like taking a wander through a gallery of cubist art. Like feeling the dust being beaten out of the rug of your mind. There is a kind of chilling fierceness in her programmatic enthusiasm for modernism, embodied by lines like "The sound of things breaking, and the allure of a continuously dynamic space, are wonderful" and "wash away the artificial rouge of technique from the lips...." Ultimately, however, I think I may personally prefer a bit more narrative or formal structure, a bit more tethering and cohesion than what was here.
Some lines I liked:
"Trying to reach the outside world that is like the back of an embroidery, I become a moth that slams into the window."
"The sun is more warm bread than can be carried...."
On snow: "The road was white like the hallway in my dream."
"Turning into a battle cry for those who awaken repeatedly while tumbling around the eternal abyss, that sound gives birth to me, and the light shoots me through."
I love the idea that the outside world is the back of an embroidery (rough, lots of loose ends, not designed to please), while the inner world of the mind or the spirit is the embroidery's fantastically multicolored front, designed to tell a coherent story or at least please the beholder's eyes: two realms tantalizingly close to each other yet eternally distinct and in some ways impossible to bridge. Yet the poet is willing to be hurt or even destroyed trying to cross from one to the other. A bit like a modern retelling of Plato's cave.
I like the third quote for how matter-of-factly she refers to her dream, as though we are all already supposed to know about it, as though it is as real as anything else.
The last quote I gave above is one I find elementally stirring, yet almost impossible to parse. But maybe its knotty grammar is part of the source of its atomic power. I like how, partly through its strange word order, it scrambles time and also scrambles cause and effect: the sound (that sound) is a battle cry, yet instead of being produced by the speaker and the other repeatedly awakening poets of the world, it produces her. I'm reminded of the contemporary Korean poet Kim Kyung Ju's poem "Synopsis for the Theremin," in which one of the speakers is the reincarnation of a piece of a music -- a person (re)birthed by a sound. And here, the birth is happening in the present tense, not the past tense, leaving us to wonder who it was that spoke the first half of the sentence, since that was before the speaker was born. Did the first half of the sentence speak itself?
And then we come to the penetrating light that irradiates, but maybe also annihilates. The light, rather than being shot forth by a source, is perhaps its own source. It is not shot; it shoots. The sentence becomes a self-reproducing thing, an organism. And what is perhaps the most shocking part of the sentence (the idea that we are tumbling around an eternal abyss, some asleep and some awake) is syntactically buried in recursively nested clauses in the middle of the sentence as if it is obvious, axiomatic, and maybe also beside the point. The idea could be a Buddhist one (as could the idea of reaching for the back-of-the-embroidery that is Ultimate Reality), but she lifts it out of any specific dogma and makes it her own.
Some lines I liked:
"Trying to reach the outside world that is like the back of an embroidery, I become a moth that slams into the window."
"The sun is more warm bread than can be carried...."
On snow: "The road was white like the hallway in my dream."
"Turning into a battle cry for those who awaken repeatedly while tumbling around the eternal abyss, that sound gives birth to me, and the light shoots me through."
I love the idea that the outside world is the back of an embroidery (rough, lots of loose ends, not designed to please), while the inner world of the mind or the spirit is the embroidery's fantastically multicolored front, designed to tell a coherent story or at least please the beholder's eyes: two realms tantalizingly close to each other yet eternally distinct and in some ways impossible to bridge. Yet the poet is willing to be hurt or even destroyed trying to cross from one to the other. A bit like a modern retelling of Plato's cave.
I like the third quote for how matter-of-factly she refers to her dream, as though we are all already supposed to know about it, as though it is as real as anything else.
The last quote I gave above is one I find elementally stirring, yet almost impossible to parse. But maybe its knotty grammar is part of the source of its atomic power. I like how, partly through its strange word order, it scrambles time and also scrambles cause and effect: the sound (that sound) is a battle cry, yet instead of being produced by the speaker and the other repeatedly awakening poets of the world, it produces her. I'm reminded of the contemporary Korean poet Kim Kyung Ju's poem "Synopsis for the Theremin," in which one of the speakers is the reincarnation of a piece of a music -- a person (re)birthed by a sound. And here, the birth is happening in the present tense, not the past tense, leaving us to wonder who it was that spoke the first half of the sentence, since that was before the speaker was born. Did the first half of the sentence speak itself?
And then we come to the penetrating light that irradiates, but maybe also annihilates. The light, rather than being shot forth by a source, is perhaps its own source. It is not shot; it shoots. The sentence becomes a self-reproducing thing, an organism. And what is perhaps the most shocking part of the sentence (the idea that we are tumbling around an eternal abyss, some asleep and some awake) is syntactically buried in recursively nested clauses in the middle of the sentence as if it is obvious, axiomatic, and maybe also beside the point. The idea could be a Buddhist one (as could the idea of reaching for the back-of-the-embroidery that is Ultimate Reality), but she lifts it out of any specific dogma and makes it her own.
July 20, 2016
She was only 24 when she died in 1935 but her writing is so mature and confident. Such beauty.
July 12, 2016
for those who awaken repeatedly while tumbling around the eternal abyss
July 10, 2021
I stumbled upon this book at a bookstore in Marfa (Marfa Book Company), and that's always the best way to discover a book, just perusing shelves, squinting at the spines, making the decision to pull a particular book and take a closer look, then flipping pages and realizing — Wow, I have to get this book. So glad that this happened with The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa. The story of the poet is tragic, in that she died at such a young age. It's difficult to separate that part of the story from the poems - but ultimately, what shines through is the mesmerizing beauty of the groundbreaking work. Sagawa was breaking norms and developing a unique style that will seem very familiar now, but given the time period in which she was writing, it is truly astonishing. Many of the poems in this book took my breath away. I just had to put the book down and let the poem resonate. It is one of my favorite collections of poetry, and I go back to it regularly. I find it deeply meaningful and very inspirational. This poems are translated by Sawako Nakayasu (a poet herself), who also wrote an incredible introduction to the collection. Highly, highly recommended.
September 11, 2017
What a shame she died so young! I loved her prose fragments the most, her perception of spectacles and her anecdotes.
October 5, 2020
A sampling of some of my favorite poems from this collection:
DEPARTURE
Night’s mouth opens, forests and clock towers are spit out.
The sun stands up and runs down the street of blue glass.
The city is cut into slivers of music by cars and skirts,
Then dive into the display window.
The fruit stand smells of morning.
Even there the sun multiplies in blue.
People throw rings at the sky.
In order to capture the suns.
WHITE AND BLACK
The white arrow races by.
A bird of night is shot down, dives into my pupil.
Incessantly obstructs the sleep of figs.
Silence prefers to pause in the room.
They were candlestick shadows,
a pot of torn-off primula, mahogany chairs.
Time and flames entangle,
and I watch over them planing the perimeter of the window.
O, the black-faced man comes again today in the rain,
Slaps around the garden in my heart, and runs off.
O rain that comes wearing boots,
Must you trample the earth all the night through.
AFTERNOON
Raining like flower petals.
Hit by a heavy weight, insects descend the tree shade.
Gathering at the mast wall, trailing a faint breeze –
Sounds are killed by the sun, the waves.
My skeleton places white flowers upon it.
Interrupted by thoughts, fish climb the cliff.
OCEAN ANGEL
The cradle rings loudly.
A spray shoots up,
As if stripping off feathers.
I wait for the return of those who sleep.
Music marks the bright hour.
I try to protest, raising my voice –
The waves come erase it from behind.
I was abandoned in the ocean.
LAVENDER GRAVE
All the keys have left the piano
I shall drown my joys into the pitch black wilderness.
Exposed chords of the air that obstruct
The naked parade of afternoon shall be severed.
Rhythmical waves long for the festival that has passed.
The loud laughter of the spirits, as if praying forever,
Prod the branches to take a bow
And blow out our activities.
The destruction of those giants
Will soon set the frozen marble into the earth.
A couple of my favorite quotes from the prose:
“Some of the poems in ‘Pedal Organ’ are quite unruly, I must say. In them I hear meaningless, nonsensical music as if a fine lady just plunked herself down on the keys of a piano. Although I am mistrustful, I am attracted nonetheless to this carefree mode. I am in the habit of taking at face value anything I see with my eyes, so I am puzzled by the sight of the many muses leaping out of the bellows, as they are played by skillful feet. It is delightful that poetry can have so much fun while wearing normal clothes.” - from Mr. Kinumaki and his poetry collection, Pedal Organ
“We joked about how there were jobs in Chile for Japanese school teachers and it really seemed like Ema-san might just up and go. We would talk about opening a trendy shop in Ginza together, maybe a bookstore, maybe a cake shop, and we’d daydream about the fun we’d have spending the money we made. And so our dreams matched up very nicely. Ema-san had a sparkle in her eye. And then a thought would occur to me. Even if we harboured similar dreams, it was Ema-san that somehow had the ability to realize them and be satisfied. Me, I am just dreamer. She never gets tired, and she’s very much at peace with her own happiness … we got to talking about wives in novels, and how some wives are just greedy. Fortunately neither of us are married yet, so we felt free to badmouth wives …” - from Ema Shoko and my radiant dreams
... the handful of pages of writings about her friend and fellow poet Ema Shoko are not particularly profound - attractively lighthearted and even ordinary in a collection of such strikingly original poetry, but in retrospect very poignant when one contrasts the lives of these two friends. Sagawa's life was tragically cut short at the age of 24 or 25. Ema, only a year or two her junior, lived another 70 years, dying in 2005, seeing the edition of her complete poetic works published in 1999.
DEPARTURE
Night’s mouth opens, forests and clock towers are spit out.
The sun stands up and runs down the street of blue glass.
The city is cut into slivers of music by cars and skirts,
Then dive into the display window.
The fruit stand smells of morning.
Even there the sun multiplies in blue.
People throw rings at the sky.
In order to capture the suns.
WHITE AND BLACK
The white arrow races by.
A bird of night is shot down, dives into my pupil.
Incessantly obstructs the sleep of figs.
Silence prefers to pause in the room.
They were candlestick shadows,
a pot of torn-off primula, mahogany chairs.
Time and flames entangle,
and I watch over them planing the perimeter of the window.
O, the black-faced man comes again today in the rain,
Slaps around the garden in my heart, and runs off.
O rain that comes wearing boots,
Must you trample the earth all the night through.
AFTERNOON
Raining like flower petals.
Hit by a heavy weight, insects descend the tree shade.
Gathering at the mast wall, trailing a faint breeze –
Sounds are killed by the sun, the waves.
My skeleton places white flowers upon it.
Interrupted by thoughts, fish climb the cliff.
OCEAN ANGEL
The cradle rings loudly.
A spray shoots up,
As if stripping off feathers.
I wait for the return of those who sleep.
Music marks the bright hour.
I try to protest, raising my voice –
The waves come erase it from behind.
I was abandoned in the ocean.
LAVENDER GRAVE
All the keys have left the piano
I shall drown my joys into the pitch black wilderness.
Exposed chords of the air that obstruct
The naked parade of afternoon shall be severed.
Rhythmical waves long for the festival that has passed.
The loud laughter of the spirits, as if praying forever,
Prod the branches to take a bow
And blow out our activities.
The destruction of those giants
Will soon set the frozen marble into the earth.
A couple of my favorite quotes from the prose:
“Some of the poems in ‘Pedal Organ’ are quite unruly, I must say. In them I hear meaningless, nonsensical music as if a fine lady just plunked herself down on the keys of a piano. Although I am mistrustful, I am attracted nonetheless to this carefree mode. I am in the habit of taking at face value anything I see with my eyes, so I am puzzled by the sight of the many muses leaping out of the bellows, as they are played by skillful feet. It is delightful that poetry can have so much fun while wearing normal clothes.” - from Mr. Kinumaki and his poetry collection, Pedal Organ
“We joked about how there were jobs in Chile for Japanese school teachers and it really seemed like Ema-san might just up and go. We would talk about opening a trendy shop in Ginza together, maybe a bookstore, maybe a cake shop, and we’d daydream about the fun we’d have spending the money we made. And so our dreams matched up very nicely. Ema-san had a sparkle in her eye. And then a thought would occur to me. Even if we harboured similar dreams, it was Ema-san that somehow had the ability to realize them and be satisfied. Me, I am just dreamer. She never gets tired, and she’s very much at peace with her own happiness … we got to talking about wives in novels, and how some wives are just greedy. Fortunately neither of us are married yet, so we felt free to badmouth wives …” - from Ema Shoko and my radiant dreams
... the handful of pages of writings about her friend and fellow poet Ema Shoko are not particularly profound - attractively lighthearted and even ordinary in a collection of such strikingly original poetry, but in retrospect very poignant when one contrasts the lives of these two friends. Sagawa's life was tragically cut short at the age of 24 or 25. Ema, only a year or two her junior, lived another 70 years, dying in 2005, seeing the edition of her complete poetic works published in 1999.
January 26, 2021
Illusory Home, Green Flames, Blue Horse, One Other Thing, Backside, A Plain Moonlit Night, Flower
August 8, 2022
Qué delicadeza, qué profundidad y cuánta belleza y amor por la naturaleza y lo cotidiano💘
February 7, 2023
pleasantly surprised!! i really enjoyed her work + diary entries always make me sad :’(
December 20, 2023
“Rejecting the illusion of darkness, I come to understand. The faithlessness of people.”
Beautifully woven collection of poems that depict nature and the passing of seasons as well as pose irrefutable matters such as death and grief. The writing style feels a bit repetitive, and much like Matsuo Basho’s, it can be perceived as narrow.
Beautifully woven collection of poems that depict nature and the passing of seasons as well as pose irrefutable matters such as death and grief. The writing style feels a bit repetitive, and much like Matsuo Basho’s, it can be perceived as narrow.
Read
September 18, 2022Sensorial, contemplativo, hermoso... un paseo reflexivo y sutil por las estaciones del año y su efecto en la naturaleza y en nosotras mismas...
Chika Sagawa es un tesoro escondido que supone un placer descubrir ❤
Chika Sagawa es un tesoro escondido que supone un placer descubrir ❤
April 3, 2021
Wonderful stuff. I totally ate it up, loving her languorous, quirky style. It’s completely original, cool, and invigorating. It actually made me view poetry differently!
Read
May 9, 2023If I came back to earth to finish what C.S. came here to do, I take up the cause with gratitude. to all the foremothers and poets, our Stars
March 19, 2021
Tremendously pleasant to read. These poems offer perspective, refreshment, and self-awareness. I read most of the book as, I would imagine, Sagawa intended - on various walks in sunny, Spring afternoons.
Most inspiring to me, though, are the selection of 10-15 odd book reviews at the end of the collection labelled as 'prose poems.' What majesty! What beautiful deceit. I one day hope to publish many 'prose poems' in each of my books, too.
Most inspiring to me, though, are the selection of 10-15 odd book reviews at the end of the collection labelled as 'prose poems.' What majesty! What beautiful deceit. I one day hope to publish many 'prose poems' in each of my books, too.
January 29, 2018
I loved a lot of these poems translated by Sawako Nakayasu. My favorites extrapolate on a sensation or a moment in a way that a haiku or tanka might, but does so with radically different techniques. A painterly interest in color and light depicted from a vantage point between the cityscape and the naturescape feels contemporary. Everything is roaring.
The Day the Bell Tolls
All day
I hear the fallen, trampled leaves groaning.
Such is the afternoon of life
It reports the time that has already passed.
As when the sound of the bell
Shaves away the flesh of trees
Piece by piece
Because time no longer exists there.
The Day the Bell Tolls
All day
I hear the fallen, trampled leaves groaning.
Such is the afternoon of life
It reports the time that has already passed.
As when the sound of the bell
Shaves away the flesh of trees
Piece by piece
Because time no longer exists there.
December 28, 2016
A really unique collection from a poet I'd never heard of before I stumbled across her in my local book store. Some favorite poems: In White, Sleeping, Ancient Flowers and Prelude. A great introduction to modern Japanese poetry.
July 8, 2022
A gorgeous collection. I had discovered Nakayasu through the 2020 Wave edition and knew I had to read more. Finding Sagawa was a joy, to see the surrealism and avant garde Japanese writing in full of a person who truly should have lived longer.
April 26, 2017
There are a couple just outstanding poems in here. But many more I couldn't hold onto or find my way into, particularly the prose/poem pieces.
March 6, 2020
Sagawa Chika, born in 1911, died of stomach cancer before her twenty-fifth birthday. Part of the modernist movement in Japan, her poetry, which is free verse rather than the traditional poetic forms of Japan, has the originality of youth and the haunting imagery of someone who is physically fragile to the point of being hallucinatory. There is something surreal about her writing, with the surprising shifts of a consciousness left to drift on its emotions. There is something also disturbing about the writing. Perhaps it’s Sagawa’s closeness to death, but I sense also that it has to do with her youth facing death as well. It’s as if the shifts are arbitrary and perhaps only verbal rather than connected to experience. Even so, this is a thought-provoking writer of extreme talent.
I have been reading a lot of the writers of this period, unfortunately in translation, and I find them very engaging. That mix of Shinto and Buddhism with their profound connection to nature and time combined with an openness to form brought in from the West gives the writing a quality that is both shimmering and profound. I prefer it immensely to the identity politics of the US today and to the self-conscious strivings of experimental poets (and I include my own writing in that).
I have been reading a lot of the writers of this period, unfortunately in translation, and I find them very engaging. That mix of Shinto and Buddhism with their profound connection to nature and time combined with an openness to form brought in from the West gives the writing a quality that is both shimmering and profound. I prefer it immensely to the identity politics of the US today and to the self-conscious strivings of experimental poets (and I include my own writing in that).
May 10, 2021
I haven't read any surrealist poetry before, and I don't think it is my jam on the whole.
I did like "Rusty Knife," "Black Air," "Portrait of Winter," "Shapes of Clouds," "Climbing to Heaven," and "Afternoon of Fruit."
I really liked these lines from the prose poem "Prelude": If the past is to be thrown away like a worn-out piece of air, I wonder what kind of conversation would be the most comforting to the aged. The reason why people look back into the fading distance until their scars shine with brilliance is because we hold in our hearts the belief that our youthful adolescence lies in the direction where the flowers are blooming."
The collection ends with some (maybe all?) of her extant prose writing. Most of it reads like notes to herself, but I like the glimpse into her personality. The diary entries at the end when she is dying in the hospital of stomach cancer are particularly poignant.
In one prose piece, she writes of a friend, "when she is acting lighthearted I find myself copying that, and before I know it, there is something that wasn't there before that has steadily made its way inside." I love that; what a wonderful way to describe the power of a friend to lift the mood.
I did like "Rusty Knife," "Black Air," "Portrait of Winter," "Shapes of Clouds," "Climbing to Heaven," and "Afternoon of Fruit."
I really liked these lines from the prose poem "Prelude": If the past is to be thrown away like a worn-out piece of air, I wonder what kind of conversation would be the most comforting to the aged. The reason why people look back into the fading distance until their scars shine with brilliance is because we hold in our hearts the belief that our youthful adolescence lies in the direction where the flowers are blooming."
The collection ends with some (maybe all?) of her extant prose writing. Most of it reads like notes to herself, but I like the glimpse into her personality. The diary entries at the end when she is dying in the hospital of stomach cancer are particularly poignant.
In one prose piece, she writes of a friend, "when she is acting lighthearted I find myself copying that, and before I know it, there is something that wasn't there before that has steadily made its way inside." I love that; what a wonderful way to describe the power of a friend to lift the mood.
Read
June 26, 2025"people are crazy here/ there is no point in feeling/ sorrow nor in speaking/ their eyes are dyed green/ believing/ grows uncertain and looking enrages me" (7)
"The infinite propagation of the sun" (30)
"One day, at last, blue fish and rose-colored birds will burst through/ my head./ The things I've lost are never to return" (40)
"The June sky is immobile. Covered by the shadow of plants grown rampant to the point of depression" (47)
"Everything upon the earth is a shadow of life" (48)
"Just as the years arrive from somewhere/ And quietly go to ruin/ They are already invisible/ Young girls collect with their fingertips the lips of the waves/ Sounding a hollow ring" (49)
"I believe poetry is the study of language. Unlike spoken language, it is a language of the heart, not visible from the surface. It is the filling of the air with words selected out of deep contemplation" (125)
"The infinite propagation of the sun" (30)
"One day, at last, blue fish and rose-colored birds will burst through/ my head./ The things I've lost are never to return" (40)
"The June sky is immobile. Covered by the shadow of plants grown rampant to the point of depression" (47)
"Everything upon the earth is a shadow of life" (48)
"Just as the years arrive from somewhere/ And quietly go to ruin/ They are already invisible/ Young girls collect with their fingertips the lips of the waves/ Sounding a hollow ring" (49)
"I believe poetry is the study of language. Unlike spoken language, it is a language of the heart, not visible from the surface. It is the filling of the air with words selected out of deep contemplation" (125)
July 16, 2017
Poetry is not my forte. I read this for a reading challenge and it was light torture. The only time in my life I feigned an enjoyment for poetry was when an internet friend's interpretation of whatever poem I just read was available to me to read, enabling me to understand the poem I just read. Chika Sagawa has no such internet friend interpretations.
For the low score, apologies to the Sagawa estate, in case you're reading this, and to you humans who can get something out of avant-garde poetry. Two stars is being generous. I just hate poetry.
Her Ema Shoko prose and select diary entries were bearable.
For the low score, apologies to the Sagawa estate, in case you're reading this, and to you humans who can get something out of avant-garde poetry. Two stars is being generous. I just hate poetry.
Her Ema Shoko prose and select diary entries were bearable.
May 25, 2026
Me ha gustado mucho esta edición de libro, un gran trabajo de traducción y de formato, es un libro precioso en papel y la introducción de la traductora es preciosa también. Sin embargo, no he conseguido conectar demasiado emocionalmente con la voz poética de Sagawa. Me parece más interesante en japonés que en castellano (por eso agradezco tanto esta edición que nos presenta ambas versiones) pero aún así, no sé si su poesía es para mí. Hay poemas que sí, como el que da título al libro, Insectos, o el Ángel del Mar. Sagawa tiene un estilo descriptivo, observador: pinta imágenes de paisajes surrealistas con sus palabras. Quizás algunos de ellos tienen imágenes más evocadoras que otros.
February 22, 2018
This collection is phenomenal. Sagawa uses innovative language and imagery that brings fresh emotion to the poetry she writes. Her poems are incredibly dreamlike and this allows the images to bring forth unbelievable tones that impact her audience. While reading this work I felt dread, happiness, joy, and sorrow.
I'm glad Sawako Nakayasu translated Sagawa's works because I feel like the poetry community is a little less without this young author's work.
I'm glad Sawako Nakayasu translated Sagawa's works because I feel like the poetry community is a little less without this young author's work.
January 7, 2021
This is a very interesting book, The author’s poems are quite ethereal, and sometimes eerie, they evoke the connections between nature and darkness, but sometimes they were quite difficult for me to follow, as some of them seemed a bit disjointed. I enjoyed her prose as well, she was very observant and the descriptions of her friends are vivid and engaging. All in all, I think that this is a good book to read slowly and truly take in the beauty of the poetry.
August 22, 2022
“Un edificio enorme de recuerdos
encima de cada una de las cosas arruinadas
para despertar, esperar y desear.
La belleza que construye en vano nuestro pensamiento,
dentro del límite del tiempo
todas sus tristezas
nunca van a ser contadas.
(…)
Durante el invierno todas las cosas
no son más que una proyección de la sombra del alma”.
“el lento verano se esconde también dentro de la ortiga
en nuestro pecho
una llama tan bella describe un círculo”
encima de cada una de las cosas arruinadas
para despertar, esperar y desear.
La belleza que construye en vano nuestro pensamiento,
dentro del límite del tiempo
todas sus tristezas
nunca van a ser contadas.
(…)
Durante el invierno todas las cosas
no son más que una proyección de la sombra del alma”.
“el lento verano se esconde también dentro de la ortiga
en nuestro pecho
una llama tan bella describe un círculo”
March 3, 2026
“All shadows drop from the trees and gang up on me.”
“Who blindfolds me from behind? Shove me into sleep.”
“Pale blue dusk scales the window.
A lamp dangles from the sky like the neck of a woman.
Murky dark air permeates the room—spreads out a single blanket.
The books, ink, and rusty knife seem to be gradually stealing the life out of me.
While everything sneered,
Night was already in my hands.”
“Who blindfolds me from behind? Shove me into sleep.”
“Pale blue dusk scales the window.
A lamp dangles from the sky like the neck of a woman.
Murky dark air permeates the room—spreads out a single blanket.
The books, ink, and rusty knife seem to be gradually stealing the life out of me.
While everything sneered,
Night was already in my hands.”
April 26, 2019
I felt I was reading a short film of Maya Deren's in being beautiful and quiet, symbolic and fluid. This might be one of the most beautiful translation work I have ever read even though I'm not experienced in Japanese or translating, but there's something to be said about doing the original intent justice for it to be so fluid and to render my own emotional response. Translators are rock stars.
May 29, 2026
Love this collection; I love that Chika Sagawa's tragically short body of work has been shared and preserved primarily through the efforts of her passionate fans. Great poems, and I love her prose pieces even more. It is too sad that we will never know what kind of poet and thinker she would have grown into had it not been for her untimely death.
October 5, 2020
Not bad; it was very well translated. But really not my thing. Very difficult to make sense of. That said, the occasional times I did make sense of something, I quite liked it. It just didn't happen often enough, I suppose. 3 stars.
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