The Iceland by Sakutarō Hagiwara and translated by Hiroaki Sato

This is poetry from Japan.

The Iceland by Sakutarō Hagiwara translated by Hiroaki Sato is published by New Directions. This is a Book originally written in Japanese. This was published in 2014.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780811221603E12.

The Iceland, by Sakutarō Hagiwara and translated by Hiroaki Sato, brings one of modern Japanese poetry’s essential figures into a cold, estranging imaginative landscape. Hagiwara’s work helped transform Japanese free verse, often moving through melancholy, urban unease, bodily disturbance, and psychological intensity. The title’s “Iceland” may be less travel destination than psychic climate: remote, frozen, beautiful, and inhospitable. Sato’s translation gives English readers access to Hagiwara’s unsettling music. I would read The Iceland for its atmosphere of distance and interior cold. Some poets make emotion lush; Hagiwara often makes it stark, feverish, and strange. The result is a landscape where modern loneliness feels almost geological.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.