Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Killing Kanoko review

[I found this review of Killing Kanoko on the Amazon.com web site:]

I want to get rid of or kill Kanoko
Before she spills my blood...
Congratulations on your destruction
Congratulations on your destruction

These words come from "Killing Kanoko," one of the most controversial and dramatic poems from contemporary Japan. Published in 1985, this poem conveys the Japanese poet Hiromi Ito's exhaustion as a mother and her thoughts of infanticide. She was subsequently pilloried by the popular press for her writing, while feminist writers held her up as a hero, praising her for her bold and unflinching exploration of the dark, emotional underside of motherhood. This collection includes this famous poem, as well as many other poems exploring gender, sexuality, language and the female body.

Hiromi Ito, born in 1955, is one of the most important contemporary poets and novelists in Japan. She has has published over a dozen critically acclaimed collections of poetry, several novels and numerous essays. She has also won many important Japanese literary prizes including the Takami Jun Prize, Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize, and the Izumi Shikibu Prize.

As the introduction explains, many critics have credited her dramatically direct poetry and sophistication as igniting the wave of "women's poetry" in the 1980s. This book of English translations makes her most dramatic and historically important work available to the English-speaking public.

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