Kitasono Katue was one of the most important Japanese Avant Garde
poets of the 20th Century. Due to circumstances ranging from
language barriers and lack of translators to stereotypes to
misfortunes in publication, his work is not widely known outside
Japan. Ezra Pound considered him one of the great poets of the century,
and the two corresponded and influenced each other for decades.
Kenneth Rexroth believed Kitasono was the best of Japan's Avant Gardists,
and as John Solt puts it, Rexroth "kick-started" Solt's translation of
Kitasono by urging Solt, one of his most trusted students, to translate
him. Robert Creeley had previously published a small volume of Kitasono's
poems through his Divers Press, and considered it and Charles Olson's
Mayan Lettersthe most important of the work he published. Kenneth
Patchen also saw him as a major figure. Yet however important he was
to these poets, even those who published him, his work remained largely
unknown outside small circles in the English-speaking world. A significant
selection of Solt's translations, Glass Beret got little circulation,
in part due to the death of publisher Ed Burton shortly after the book came
out. Solt's study of Kitasono, Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning,
published by Harvard University's Asia Studies Center, has done well
enough to make Kitasono somewhat better known outside Japan, and has
received the recent honor of being translated into Japanese. With luck,
this edition of Solt's translations will generate a wider readership for
Kitasono.
The publication of the book and this issue Big Bridge may provide a
unique opportunity to gather first responses to a major and largely
unknown poet outside his own country. The first review of the book
written was produced by the indefatigable
Anny Ballardini. She wrote the review in part as fulfillment of a degree
program, and in part to publish on the web. The first published
review was by Aysegül Tözeren. Her review consisted of a
brief introduction and an extremely sagaciously chosen passage from an
interview with Kitasono which appears in the book. Ms. Tözeren
translated her introduction from Turkish for us, and for the rest we
simply reproduced the English translation from which she worked.
The third review, by Susan
Smith Nash, was published as part of her work in setting up on-line
teaching programs.
Whether this book is the milestone it's editors think it or not, the
current project provides a snap-shot of how criticism and commentary on
major work begins and how it functions and grows at this time. This suggests
paradigm shifts from previous literary periods, and seems felicitous in
relation to a poet so thoroughly ahead of his time as Kitasono. It seems
noteworthy, for instance, that the first three reviewers were women, and
were not asked to review the book. Ms. Ballardini lives in Italy; Ms.
Tözeren, in Turkey; Ms. Nash has her home base in Oklahoma, but is a
dedicated traveler and internationalist, who has done impeccable work in
translating and promoting the work of poets, particularly women, living in
other countries and often ignored by the mainstream.
None of the first responses come from specialists in Japanese literature.
Ms. Tözeren, in fact, makes her living as a medical doctor, and
balances this with her work as a poet. All three are in different ways at
the leading edges of poetry in their respective environments, however, and
it seems important that these women who have consistently been ahead of
curves in international poetry should be the book's first reviewers. The
next three reviewers have also proved perspicacious in their advocacies
and interests. Some of the participants have taken part in the translation
project Kitasono
Katue and the Colors of the World's Words, and all, including Carlos
M. Luis, whose contribution is in Spanish, would like to see Kitasono as
a global poet, not simply as a Japanese poet whose selected poems have been
translated into English.
Karl Young. the co-editor and author of the introduction of the book
and co-editor of this page, began publishing reviews of books by multiple
reviewers in the 1970s to get away from what he saw as the falsification
of poetry by single-perspective criticism. (See his comments on this in
Margins at Big
Bridge.) He sees the current project as a continuation of this effort. In this
instance, readers get the beginnings of a chronology of responses to a
specific book. We think it important that none of the contributors was
aware of Kitasono before the book's publication, and that their responses
come without any influence from previous commentators.
Mr. Solt and Mr. Young placed the following quote from Kitasono on the
last page of the book: "My poetry is so simple that only specialists seem
to understand it." The present group of first responders seem to give this
more depth than Kitasono, Solt, or Young may have originally understood
themselves. If the work can't be read in the Italian Alps, Istanbul, or
Norman, Oklahoma with significant appreciation assisted by no more than
the introduction, perhaps Kitasono's poetry should remain in Japanese. That
these first commentators from widely different backgrounds found plenty
to say about Kitasono, and weren't too shy to say it, suggests how
profoundly vital Kitasono is for a global audience. We hope other 20th
Century Japanese poets will find translators and publishers outside Japan
in this century, even if the rest of the world missed them in the last, and that
Japanese poets of the current century will not have to wait as long for
the audience they deserve. Specialists in Japanese literature will join
in the comments on Kitasono, but it seems appropriate that poets without
preconceptions and with artistic attitudes and practices similar to
Kitasono's should have the first, if not the definitive, word on this book.