Is It Poetry? - Paperback

Is It Poetry? - Paperback

$17.95


by Toshiko Hirata (Author), Eric E. Hyett (Translator), Spencer Thurlow (Translator)

A profound collection of poetry from Japanese poet Toshiko Hirata, expounding on readership and everyday life.


Produced on the same day each month over the course of two years, every poem in Is It Poetry? (a pun also meaning "the seventh day" in Japanese) is a window into everyday life in Japan. Toshiko Hirata's poems evoke awe and light in the daily minutiae of contemporary life, achieving both prosody and narrative cohesion colored by her dark yet warm artistic sensibility. Beloved and awarded in Japan, Hirata possesses an extraordinary ability to turn an ordinary event like an old man cycling through a park into a journey that elucidates something profound.


This translation offers entry into a busy Tokyo brimming with puns, imagery, sounds, and whimsy and asks what is to cherished, feared, loved--and what is not.

Author Biography

Hirata Toshiko is one of Japan's best-known contemporary poets, as well as a renowned playwright and author of seventeen novels. She is associated with the 'women's boom' in contemporary Japanese literature. Her collection, Shinanoka (Tokyo, Shichōsha, 2004), or, Is It Poetry? earned Hirata the Hagiwara Sakutarō Prize for poetry.

Eric E. Hyett and Spencer Thurlow are a poetry translation team from Massachusetts. Their first translated book, Sonic Peace by contemporary female Japanese poet Kiriu Minashita (Phoneme Media, 2018), was shortlisted for the 2018 National Translation Award and the 2018 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Their translations and essays have appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, World Literature Today, Modern Poetry in Translation, Pendemics, Transference, The Cincinnati Review.

Number of Pages: 240
Dimensions: 0.6 x 7.8 x 4.9 IN
Publication Date: January 23, 2024
Shop Pay Continue Shopping

Estimated delivery: June 10 - June 13, 2026

Secure Checkout

Free Returns

Proudly USA Based

Accepted Payment Methods

American Express
Apple Pay
Diners Club
Discover
Google Pay
Mastercard
PayPal
Shop Pay
Visa