Overview

Floating Words is the latest book by Yoko Danno. The first part consists of 'Grace Notes' - two short, graceful, renga-like sequences and a single haiku. This is followed by a series of longer poems featuring hungry, angry or compassionate gods and goddesses, draughts of pure lake water, green tea and wine, and dishes of ( among other things ) tofu, vegetables, sashimi and citrus-flavored miso. This section culminates in a powerful prose-poem concerning the loss of her son, who died young in a Himalayan mountaineering accident in 1986. The second part of the book is a complete translation of the classic fifteenth-century hundred-link renga Minase Sangin Hyakuin by the poets Sōgi, Shōhaku and Sōchō, widely acknowledged to be the greatest masterpiece of the hyakuin genre. Yoko Danno has translated it following the syllabic count and has provided an introduction, notes, and helpful translations of the classic poems from the Imperial Anthologies that the three Minase poets are alluding to in their contributions to the sequence.

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9784907359553

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Yoko Danno writes poetry solely in English. Her collections include trilogy ( 1970 / 2010 ), Hagoromo: A Celestial Robe ( 1984 / 2010 ), Aquamarine ( 2014 ), and Woman in a Blue Robe ( 2016 ), as well as her collected poems, Further Center: Poems 1970 -1998 ( 2017 ). The second edition of her translation, Songs and Stories of the Kojiki, a collection of creation myths, songs and historical narratives compiled in eighth-century Japan, appeared in 2014, and she is currently at work on an illustrated third edition. She lives in Kobe, where she runs the Ikuta Press.

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