Author: Machi Tawara
Publisher: Steerforth
Rating: WARTY!
Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter.
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
Machi Tawara is a young Japanese poet who single-handedy revived the ancient tanka style of poetry in Japan, but for me it just tanked. The poetry left me completely flat. It was nothing uplifting or edifying. It wasn't educational or moving. All it consists of is Tawara pining over a lost love - which she personally never had to begin with - or talking about her everyday activities which frankly, was boring.
For this she became a superstar poet in Japan, selling some two to three million copies of the book. I guess you had to be there. What appeals to the Japanese isn't necessarily what appeals to we westerners, nor vice-versa, and while I am sure that Juliet Winters Carpenter gave the translation her best shot, the fact is that you can't translate Japanese to English and have the idea behind Tanka remain true. If you did, the English version would not be in a series of triplets, as it appears in the iPad translation, or in an apparently random mix of couplets and others as it is in the kindle, but printed vertically down the page, which in English would be a tough read. Clearly no thought whatsoever has been expended on the ebook versions.
Salad Anniversary begins with two blank pages in the iPad version, and the title with a capital S towards the end of Anniversary in the Kindle version. This tells me that as little thought went into the ebook as went into the print version. Given the rise of ebooks the publisher might want to give some thought to how they offer their wares.
Here's the list of poem titles:
- August Morning
- Baseball Game
- Morning Necktie
- I Am the Wind
- Summertime Ship
- Wake-up Call
- Hashimoto High School
- Pretending to Wait for Someone
- Salad Anniversary
- Twilight Alley
- My Bisymmetrical Self
- So, Good Luck
- Jazz Concert
- Backstreet Cat
- Always American
You can see from this alone that there's nothing Earth-shattering on offer, but this would have been fine had what was offered actually delivered something of value. For me, it didn't. Here are some short unconnected samples so you can judge a little bit, at least, for yourself. Note that these are taken out of context, but I saw very little flowing from one triplet to the next anyway.
On Kujukuri Beach
taking picture after picture
I may only throw away
Sunday morning
in sandals, we set off together
to shop for bread and beer
I boil three chestnuts
to make an autumn for one-
remembering the far-off sea, and you
Buy myself a pair of slippers
yellow as spring flowers
now that I love here
There are three problems. First of all, the poetry doesn't speak or call out to me. Instead, it whines with self pity. I kept wondering if the author rent her clothing or wore sackcloth and put ashes in her hair before she sat down to write it. Second, it's impossible, as I mentioned earlier, to properly represent the poetry in English in the way it would appear in Japanese. Third, you cannot duplicate the cadence adequately in English and still maintain the wording or meaning which the original author intended.
I have to wonder if the choice to migrate this to English was truly done with an honest desire to share some potentially interesting Asian poetry with the west, or if it was simply done because the author scored a hit in Japan and there was potentially money to be made in the west? Either way I can't recommend this.
