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1) Tell me a little about yourself and who or what inspired your interest in Japanese poetry.
Since a young age, I’ve been surrounded by poetry, books, and art, whether it be my father’s collection of ukiyoe and sōsaku hanga art (he bought on leave as a soldier/office assistant during the Korean War), or my mom’s obsession with biographies of artists and writers, I’m lucky to have been brought up in such a stimulating environment.
In high school, I read all the novels I could find by Mishima Yukio that had been translated, and my college fiction writing workshop teacher encouraged me to switch to poetry instead. While living in Japan in the mid-90s, I was an editor for Printed Matter: Journal of International Literature and the Arts, where I was introduced to English versions of Japanese modern & contemporary poetry by skilled translators. In the late 90s I had the pleasure of hearing John Solt discuss his critical study Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: The Poetry and Poetics of Kitasono Katue at Roppongi’s I-House. That book was a revelation; it was a proper introduction to a major practitioner of Japanese avant-garde art and poetry and showed how more traditional art can appear anachronistic. John is an advisor of this book and his assistance is appreciated.
In the mid-90s, Donald Richie recommended me to the editors at Japan Times to write book reviews. They carried my monthly column “Poesie Mignette” for a few years. I witnessed Shiraishi Kazuko perform her multimedia collaborations with butoh dancers, improvised jazz musicians, and even noise artists like Haino Keiji. (Regrettably, I didn’t see her perform poetry with John Zorn.)
I became a paying member of local private poetry coterie journals Sei-en (Blue Flame) and gui. Some of those editors and writers were formerly members of notable clubs such as VOU (headed by Kitasono), Madame Blanche, and Pan Poesie.
I’ve been lucky to have students of Kenneth Rexroth from whom I’ve learned so much. (Rexroth was one of the first to have published a modernist Japanese poet. In Seasons of Sacred Lust, his book of Kazuko’s from New Directions is pioneering in opening up the field of translation studies.)
I joined an individualized MA program with Antioch College and devised a poetry course. Cid Corman was important to me as a poet, translator, and teacher. Having said that, I find it remarkable that his Japanese language skills were quite low, yet his translation of Oku no hosomichi is still widely respected. My first translation was of the senryu by Gengorō (whose work is also included in this book). That was with Hokuseido, a nice hard-cover one. Through one of the coteries, I discovered VOU poet Torii Shōzō, who Kazuko was friends with. I became enamored with his surrealist poetry, which is often filled with epic visions. It took me over ten years to finish his translations of the collected poems (2013) https://highmoonoon.com/books-1/bearded-cones-and-pleasure-blades-the-collected-poems-of-tori-shozo
I put my experience and knowledge of poetry in Japan by editing specially themed issues such as “Japan and the Beats” (2018) and in the same year, an issue on “Butoh and Poetry.”
Then my first visual poetry title was issued from Isobar Press (2021) after thirty years in the making, an anthology focusing on photography from the VOU group.
Currently, I’m back in VOU mode with a new stand-alone project on the visual and lexical poetry of Tsuji Setsuko, a most impressive practitioner on both counts — yet mostly unknown — even to Japanese. Now I’m translating her word poems where there’s always something to be startled, impressed, or chuckled by.
2) What do you think sets poetry apart from prose? Is there something about poetry, per se, that lends itself to interpretation in other mediums or art forms that prose does not have?
There’s so much prose in poetry today, not in a good way. On the other hand, you have that famous one by W. C. Williams, “so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow…” It’s framed as a poem but is actually narrative prose. So technically, it isn’t composed poetically. The poetry is there in the image, in the content.
Poetry is wonderful; prose, to be sweepingly general, is the mode of logic. I suppose the question could be, how can contrasting genres overlap? Certainly, we’ve had the experience of witnessing a great artist who just has something: magic, an aura, a feeling, a fleeting idea. Somehow, I think the dance of Ohno Kazuo is poetic. To me that means, a unique, unpredictable movement or gesture has impossibly happened. In the end, it probably just comes down to taste rather than a definition.
Since a young age, I’ve been surrounded by poetry, books, and art, whether it be my father’s collection of ukiyoe and sōsaku hanga art (he bought on leave as a soldier/office assistant during the Korean War), or my mom’s obsession with biographies of artists and writers, I’m lucky to have been brought up in such a stimulating environment.
In high school, I read all the novels I could find by Mishima Yukio that had been translated, and my college fiction writing workshop teacher encouraged me to switch to poetry instead. While living in Japan in the mid-90s, I was an editor for Printed Matter: Journal of International Literature and the Arts, where I was introduced to English versions of Japanese modern & contemporary poetry by skilled translators. In the late 90s I had the pleasure of hearing John Solt discuss his critical study Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: The Poetry and Poetics of Kitasono Katue at Roppongi’s I-House. That book was a revelation; it was a proper introduction to a major practitioner of Japanese avant-garde art and poetry and showed how more traditional art can appear anachronistic. John is an advisor of this book and his assistance is appreciated.
In the mid-90s, Donald Richie recommended me to the editors at Japan Times to write book reviews. They carried my monthly column “Poesie Mignette” for a few years. I witnessed Shiraishi Kazuko perform her multimedia collaborations with butoh dancers, improvised jazz musicians, and even noise artists like Haino Keiji. (Regrettably, I didn’t see her perform poetry with John Zorn.)
I became a paying member of local private poetry coterie journals Sei-en (Blue Flame) and gui. Some of those editors and writers were formerly members of notable clubs such as VOU (headed by Kitasono), Madame Blanche, and Pan Poesie.
I’ve been lucky to have students of Kenneth Rexroth from whom I’ve learned so much. (Rexroth was one of the first to have published a modernist Japanese poet. In Seasons of Sacred Lust, his book of Kazuko’s from New Directions is pioneering in opening up the field of translation studies.)
I joined an individualized MA program with Antioch College and devised a poetry course. Cid Corman was important to me as a poet, translator, and teacher. Having said that, I find it remarkable that his Japanese language skills were quite low, yet his translation of Oku no hosomichi is still widely respected. My first translation was of the senryu by Gengorō (whose work is also included in this book). That was with Hokuseido, a nice hard-cover one. Through one of the coteries, I discovered VOU poet Torii Shōzō, who Kazuko was friends with. I became enamored with his surrealist poetry, which is often filled with epic visions. It took me over ten years to finish his translations of the collected poems (2013) https://highmoonoon.com/books-1/bearded-cones-and-pleasure-blades-the-collected-poems-of-tori-shozo
I put my experience and knowledge of poetry in Japan by editing specially themed issues such as “Japan and the Beats” (2018) and in the same year, an issue on “Butoh and Poetry.”
Then my first visual poetry title was issued from Isobar Press (2021) after thirty years in the making, an anthology focusing on photography from the VOU group.
Currently, I’m back in VOU mode with a new stand-alone project on the visual and lexical poetry of Tsuji Setsuko, a most impressive practitioner on both counts — yet mostly unknown — even to Japanese. Now I’m translating her word poems where there’s always something to be startled, impressed, or chuckled by.
2) What do you think sets poetry apart from prose? Is there something about poetry, per se, that lends itself to interpretation in other mediums or art forms that prose does not have?
There’s so much prose in poetry today, not in a good way. On the other hand, you have that famous one by W. C. Williams, “so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow…” It’s framed as a poem but is actually narrative prose. So technically, it isn’t composed poetically. The poetry is there in the image, in the content.
Poetry is wonderful; prose, to be sweepingly general, is the mode of logic. I suppose the question could be, how can contrasting genres overlap? Certainly, we’ve had the experience of witnessing a great artist who just has something: magic, an aura, a feeling, a fleeting idea. Somehow, I think the dance of Ohno Kazuo is poetic. To me that means, a unique, unpredictable movement or gesture has impossibly happened. In the end, it probably just comes down to taste rather than a definition.
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If you admire an artwork, it has spark, I think that spark is the essence of poetry, of improvised creation, across a number of fields.
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Jean Cocteau was a versatile artist, practicing among the fields of cinema, poetry, fashion, graphic art, fiction, and drama. I think he considered all these different fields to be triggered by the essence of poetry (or poetic sense), which rings true to me.
Starting the book is the famous haiku “kare eda ni…” So you have a crow landing on a beat-up branch and it’s the dusk in Fall.
Starting the book is the famous haiku “kare eda ni…” So you have a crow landing on a beat-up branch and it’s the dusk in Fall.
Morikawa Kyoriku
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The intense focus of the yūgen-filled image can make one’s hair stand. It goes beyond the visual to a near-physical reaction.
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Not only that, but the calligraphy of the haiku on what must be textured paper adds more to the meta of the visual. We have the sōsaku hanga artist and poet Onchi Koshiro who wrote a lexical poetic homage to the poet Hagiawara Sakutaro. There’s also the portrait by Onchi of Hagiwara, so there’s a lot of interaction of genres there in this book for sure.
Yamamoto Kansuke wrote lexical poems as well as snapping often surreal photographs. Who’s to say that his visually-heavy lexical work isn’t related to his photography? That photo of the nail of his with a blaze atop is poetic AF, imo. I suppose collage is harder to explain why it could be called visual poetry (especially if there are no words shown) but in the end, if there’s that something that element that attracts you and you dig it, it’s poetry. I love FLANGER’s work, somehow it is imbued with poetry, perhaps in its nostalgia. Ray Craig juxtaposes a crossword puzzle with its title and a posing Japanese woman. Together they create a new meeting of word and image, a new kind of poetry.
3) Because visual poetry is, as stated in the introduction, integral to Japanese culture--rock engravings/monuments, theater, music, ritual, to name a few instances where poetry plays a role in Japanese culture--there must have been so much to choose from in so many different mediums. Can you talk a little about how you approached putting together this collection and what about these particular works made them part of the collection?
The book had a built-in deadline for its “soft” book launches on December 16. If it were a university publication we could’ve included much more work, but time was a factor. Rick Elizaga, coeditor and designer and I both live in Japan. Andrew’s work is based in the US so it wasn’t practical to include a more exhaustive spread. Campana’s knowledge of this topic is authoritative; part of his intro may have been a wish list or outline of sorts.
My strategy was to consider visual poetry in an expansive manner, thus opening up interpretation. The haiku is important because the content is often imagistically composed and surely influenced Objectivism. When reading those haiku & short poetry selections, the mind’s eye is put to work, going from the lexical to the visual, “no ideas, but in images.”
When I proposed this project, mostly everything was already chosen, from many years back. I had received broadsides from Karl Young in the early 90s, via Printed Matter, featuring Kamimura Hiro, same with Tanabu Hiroshi and Yamanaka Kyojiro. Through being a member of poetry coteries, I knew of Shikama Hiroko’s and Kunimine Hiroko’s, & Takahashi Shohachiro’s work. I specialize in poetries composed by members of the VOU Club, a rich treasure trove to tap, thankfully. Then there’s the mail art person of Japan, Ryosuke Cohen, a legend on his own, so it was thrilling corresponding with him (see his Orion Soup).
I felt it was integral to include artists from the Taisho period, especially from the MAVO group, which used letterpress design on the page to a high degree with the influence of Russian and Italian Futurism. Rick did a superlative, yet painstaking job in reproducing work by Renkichi Hirato and Hagiwara Kyōjirō, gratitude.
It shows that long before Americans had occupied and “liberated” Japan, there was advanced, civilized work of this nature being produced, even in the 1920s.
The Ephemera section includes pieces chosen directly from my collection: pieces from projects John Solt had spearheaded, Fujitomi Yasuo’s charming Self-portrait with the New York Times (a cheeky way of getting in the NYT pages). The calligraphic works are poetic among the strokes themselves (Rona Conti), Gengorō’s senryu gets the shodo treatment and Eric Selland’s work all flaunt the curves and angles of characters, actual ones or invented in a flurry of improvised style. I had the great pleasure of meeting Fujitomi Yasuo (ee cummings’ translator) at one of his exhibitions. I became familiar with Rona’s work when spearheading Tokyo Poetry Journal, we chose her work for the cover of issue 2. Eric I’ve known as a friend for years, who’s also a walking talking compendium on Japanese poetry. The Onchi Koshiro portrait of Hagiwara is also from my collection, a gift from the folks.
Once you’ve lived in Japan for over thirty years, and focus somewhat on a niche field like this, you pick up things along the way. My background in collecting vinyl records may have assisted me in projects like these. My only regret was I wasn’t able to find more work from Niikuni Seiichi’s era and his ASA Journal compatriots. It seems these days there aren’t as many coteries as there were, which is slightly depressing.
4) In his introduction, Andrew Capana says enormous gaps of times/periods are not represented in this book. Is that because of a lack of poetry available at particular periods or was it an editorial choice?
I knew I could rely on Andrew’s knowledge of this field, which is more comprehensive than mine. I’m always grateful to be less ignorant after reading an article. Perhaps we will work closer together on volume two, or whether there will be an expanded edition. This question may have hit on an idea, to make a more comprehensive, historical, academic tome. A tough road ahead for sure, but what a gift that’d be!
5) One thing that stood out in the book is how artists in different time periods used different technologies available to them. At the end of VOU, there are examples of AI-generated 3-D poetry. How do you (and perhaps other artists you have spoken with) see this new technology? Is it a tool, a danger? Can AI-generated art/poetry be poetic?
I had heard that Tomomi Adachi is Japan’s most respected sound poet. Visual poetry is a small jump to the Audio. I was not a fan of AI-produced art at all. However, when he sent me those works, they surmounted expectations. I love the three-dimensionality of them, reminding me of the appearance of alphabet soup or shaped cereal, albeit surreal cereal.
Yamamoto Kansuke wrote lexical poems as well as snapping often surreal photographs. Who’s to say that his visually-heavy lexical work isn’t related to his photography? That photo of the nail of his with a blaze atop is poetic AF, imo. I suppose collage is harder to explain why it could be called visual poetry (especially if there are no words shown) but in the end, if there’s that something that element that attracts you and you dig it, it’s poetry. I love FLANGER’s work, somehow it is imbued with poetry, perhaps in its nostalgia. Ray Craig juxtaposes a crossword puzzle with its title and a posing Japanese woman. Together they create a new meeting of word and image, a new kind of poetry.
3) Because visual poetry is, as stated in the introduction, integral to Japanese culture--rock engravings/monuments, theater, music, ritual, to name a few instances where poetry plays a role in Japanese culture--there must have been so much to choose from in so many different mediums. Can you talk a little about how you approached putting together this collection and what about these particular works made them part of the collection?
The book had a built-in deadline for its “soft” book launches on December 16. If it were a university publication we could’ve included much more work, but time was a factor. Rick Elizaga, coeditor and designer and I both live in Japan. Andrew’s work is based in the US so it wasn’t practical to include a more exhaustive spread. Campana’s knowledge of this topic is authoritative; part of his intro may have been a wish list or outline of sorts.
My strategy was to consider visual poetry in an expansive manner, thus opening up interpretation. The haiku is important because the content is often imagistically composed and surely influenced Objectivism. When reading those haiku & short poetry selections, the mind’s eye is put to work, going from the lexical to the visual, “no ideas, but in images.”
When I proposed this project, mostly everything was already chosen, from many years back. I had received broadsides from Karl Young in the early 90s, via Printed Matter, featuring Kamimura Hiro, same with Tanabu Hiroshi and Yamanaka Kyojiro. Through being a member of poetry coteries, I knew of Shikama Hiroko’s and Kunimine Hiroko’s, & Takahashi Shohachiro’s work. I specialize in poetries composed by members of the VOU Club, a rich treasure trove to tap, thankfully. Then there’s the mail art person of Japan, Ryosuke Cohen, a legend on his own, so it was thrilling corresponding with him (see his Orion Soup).
I felt it was integral to include artists from the Taisho period, especially from the MAVO group, which used letterpress design on the page to a high degree with the influence of Russian and Italian Futurism. Rick did a superlative, yet painstaking job in reproducing work by Renkichi Hirato and Hagiwara Kyōjirō, gratitude.
It shows that long before Americans had occupied and “liberated” Japan, there was advanced, civilized work of this nature being produced, even in the 1920s.
The Ephemera section includes pieces chosen directly from my collection: pieces from projects John Solt had spearheaded, Fujitomi Yasuo’s charming Self-portrait with the New York Times (a cheeky way of getting in the NYT pages). The calligraphic works are poetic among the strokes themselves (Rona Conti), Gengorō’s senryu gets the shodo treatment and Eric Selland’s work all flaunt the curves and angles of characters, actual ones or invented in a flurry of improvised style. I had the great pleasure of meeting Fujitomi Yasuo (ee cummings’ translator) at one of his exhibitions. I became familiar with Rona’s work when spearheading Tokyo Poetry Journal, we chose her work for the cover of issue 2. Eric I’ve known as a friend for years, who’s also a walking talking compendium on Japanese poetry. The Onchi Koshiro portrait of Hagiwara is also from my collection, a gift from the folks.
Once you’ve lived in Japan for over thirty years, and focus somewhat on a niche field like this, you pick up things along the way. My background in collecting vinyl records may have assisted me in projects like these. My only regret was I wasn’t able to find more work from Niikuni Seiichi’s era and his ASA Journal compatriots. It seems these days there aren’t as many coteries as there were, which is slightly depressing.
4) In his introduction, Andrew Capana says enormous gaps of times/periods are not represented in this book. Is that because of a lack of poetry available at particular periods or was it an editorial choice?
I knew I could rely on Andrew’s knowledge of this field, which is more comprehensive than mine. I’m always grateful to be less ignorant after reading an article. Perhaps we will work closer together on volume two, or whether there will be an expanded edition. This question may have hit on an idea, to make a more comprehensive, historical, academic tome. A tough road ahead for sure, but what a gift that’d be!
5) One thing that stood out in the book is how artists in different time periods used different technologies available to them. At the end of VOU, there are examples of AI-generated 3-D poetry. How do you (and perhaps other artists you have spoken with) see this new technology? Is it a tool, a danger? Can AI-generated art/poetry be poetic?
I had heard that Tomomi Adachi is Japan’s most respected sound poet. Visual poetry is a small jump to the Audio. I was not a fan of AI-produced art at all. However, when he sent me those works, they surmounted expectations. I love the three-dimensionality of them, reminding me of the appearance of alphabet soup or shaped cereal, albeit surreal cereal.
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One cannot help but to imagine the tactility of those letters and numbers.
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I like how the titles come out announcing how they were made -- refreshingly honest. The unpredictable works surmounted my initial reservations as to the method of construction. We can let ourselves be piqued.
6) I love that the intro points out the nexus of poetry with other art forms, especially uta-awase, poetry competitions. It reminded me of modern-day rap battles and how Japanese art influenced some of the West's greatest artists, like Klimt and Van Gogh. I don't have a question here, lol, just wondering if you have any thoughts about that?
Yeah, it’s said Iharu Saikaku (Life of an Amorous Man), improvising, composed over 23,000 poems (or most likely the individual ku meant to be part of the renku) in one day and night in 1684 at Sumiyoshi Shrine…free-styling pioneer! I like how Professor Miryam Sas pointed out that poet Yamamura Bochō, who was a practicing catholic priest, wrote a wild “poem” called Geigo that somewhat defied logic, well proceeding the founding of surrealism. If I recall, the Japanese han-geijutsu group were already conducting “happenings” before George Manciunas founded Fluxus. Angoku Butoh is a unique postwar dance form original to Japan. The “Iroha Uta” is superlative in its poetic example of using all the kana in the holo-alphabetic lines exactly once. That’s gotta go in next time! I heard that Japan’s leading gay poet, Mutsuo Takahashi, influenced Allen Ginsberg to be more expressive as a gay poet. Apparently, M. C. Escher loved to use Japanese textured paper, wagami.
7) What do you want people to come away with after experiencing this book?
If you are going to take the time to produce a book in Japan, avoid falling into the pitfalls of repetition. Dig deeper, find something new. Instead of translating haiku, check out bareku, hiraku, zappai, maekuzuke forms, etc. Focus on the great era of modernism in Japan where so much remains undiscovered. Don’t get hung up on definitions, consider both Japanese poetry and the literary genre in a wider aspect.
Allow stereotypes to be broken.
8) And now for something completely different...what, besides poetry, thrills you, inspires you?
I mentioned in passing about record-hunting in the wild. When working on this project, I went to Osaka to meet Rick. Of course, I had to hit the rekkid shops there for the first time. Some great scores of hardcore, post-punk and more. Highlights were a still sealed Bad Brains from 1982; PiL’s first album, Japanese edition with obi and inserts. And a J Zorn project, similar to Naked City. A mate and I went to see Mr. Bungle earlier this March. Going to live shows of Melt-Banana, Sakamoto Shintaro, Khraungbin, Fontaines DC, Dry Cleaning, Yard Act… good times for sure. A bit of an indulgence, but hey.
6) I love that the intro points out the nexus of poetry with other art forms, especially uta-awase, poetry competitions. It reminded me of modern-day rap battles and how Japanese art influenced some of the West's greatest artists, like Klimt and Van Gogh. I don't have a question here, lol, just wondering if you have any thoughts about that?
Yeah, it’s said Iharu Saikaku (Life of an Amorous Man), improvising, composed over 23,000 poems (or most likely the individual ku meant to be part of the renku) in one day and night in 1684 at Sumiyoshi Shrine…free-styling pioneer! I like how Professor Miryam Sas pointed out that poet Yamamura Bochō, who was a practicing catholic priest, wrote a wild “poem” called Geigo that somewhat defied logic, well proceeding the founding of surrealism. If I recall, the Japanese han-geijutsu group were already conducting “happenings” before George Manciunas founded Fluxus. Angoku Butoh is a unique postwar dance form original to Japan. The “Iroha Uta” is superlative in its poetic example of using all the kana in the holo-alphabetic lines exactly once. That’s gotta go in next time! I heard that Japan’s leading gay poet, Mutsuo Takahashi, influenced Allen Ginsberg to be more expressive as a gay poet. Apparently, M. C. Escher loved to use Japanese textured paper, wagami.
7) What do you want people to come away with after experiencing this book?
If you are going to take the time to produce a book in Japan, avoid falling into the pitfalls of repetition. Dig deeper, find something new. Instead of translating haiku, check out bareku, hiraku, zappai, maekuzuke forms, etc. Focus on the great era of modernism in Japan where so much remains undiscovered. Don’t get hung up on definitions, consider both Japanese poetry and the literary genre in a wider aspect.
Allow stereotypes to be broken.
8) And now for something completely different...what, besides poetry, thrills you, inspires you?
I mentioned in passing about record-hunting in the wild. When working on this project, I went to Osaka to meet Rick. Of course, I had to hit the rekkid shops there for the first time. Some great scores of hardcore, post-punk and more. Highlights were a still sealed Bad Brains from 1982; PiL’s first album, Japanese edition with obi and inserts. And a J Zorn project, similar to Naked City. A mate and I went to see Mr. Bungle earlier this March. Going to live shows of Melt-Banana, Sakamoto Shintaro, Khraungbin, Fontaines DC, Dry Cleaning, Yard Act… good times for sure. A bit of an indulgence, but hey.