Book record
My floating mother, city
Kazuko Shiraishi
Translated from Japanese by Samuel Grolmes, Yumiko Tsumura
My floating mother, city, by Kazuko Shiraishi and translated by Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura, carries a title that feels urban, maternal, and dreamlike all at once. Shiraishi is an important Japanese poet associated with jazz, performance, surreal energy, and a cosmopolitan postwar imagination. The phrase “floating mother, city” refuses to settle into a single image. Mother becomes city; city becomes body; memory drifts rather than stands still. The translators bring that movement into English. I would read this book for its fluidity and improvisation, the sense that identity can be composed from rhythm, place, family, and the unstable lights of modern life. Shiraishi’s poems often feel like they want to be heard as much as read.
- Published
- 2009
- Publisher
- New Directions Pub. Co.
- Language
- Japanese
- Country
- Japan
- ISBN
- 9780811217965