Tree Spirits Grass Spirits by Hiromi Ito and translated by Jon L Pitt

This is poetry from Japan.

Tree Spirits Grass Spirits by Hiromi Ito translated by Jon L Pitt is published by Nightboat Books. This is a Book originally written in Japanese. This was published in 2023.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78164362192E12.

Tree Spirits Grass Spirits, by Hiromi Ito and translated by Jon L. Pitt, belongs to the wild, animist, bodily current that makes Ito such a necessary poet. The title is full of presences: not trees and grass as background, but spirits, agencies, forms of address. Ito’s Japanese poetry often lets myth, ecology, gender, aging, appetite, and unruly speech travel through the same mouth. I would read this book as a reminder that the natural world in poetry is not always soothing. Sometimes it is strange, ancestral, invasive, funny, and alive in ways the reader cannot manage. Pitt’s translation has to hold that unruliness without making it picturesque. For readers interested in eco-poetics that still has teeth, this is a strong and peculiar collection.

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.