A Long Rainy Season Haiku & Tanka

Contemporary Japanese Women's Poetry, Volume 1

edited by Leza Lowitz, Miyuki Aoyama, and Akemi Tomioka

200 pp, 5.5 x 7.25 inches paper
ISBN 1-880656-15-9, $12.00

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The first collection of contemporary Japanese women's verse in English translation. Fifteen poets write on love, motherhood, daughterhood, politics, body parts, nature, corruption.
A companion to Other Side River: Free Verse.

"Shows how passion, ideas, and the broad range of human experience can be held in brief poems of large reach--a great gift for us all."--Jane Hirshfield

A Long Rainy Season was awarded the 1995 Benjamin Franklin Award for overall design and editorial excellence in Fiction/Poetry by Publishers Marketing Association.

If you've ever wanted a glimpse inside the heart of Japan, these two books of women's poetry will provide it ... The poets here come from everywhere in Japan, and they address every woman's experience of betrayal, love, resignation, hope, and disappointment. Their work collected here is sensual, brutally honest, and emotionally exhilarating. The imagery may haunt you long after you've turned the page ... If you don't read another book of poetry this year, try both of these."?
Marilyn Colter, BooksForWomen.com

Resisting the need
to pee,
I walk through a belt-like park
covered with
fallen bush clovers.

--Ei Akitsu

 

The nuisance
of breasts-
a long rainy season.

--Nobuko Katsura

 Irises-
Plucking a single stalk
I go to see him.

--Kiyoko Uda

 

 

Dark stairs
in a strange city-
I feel more lonely
with your hand down my pants.

--Amari Hayashi