A Kiss for the Absolute

Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi

Shuzo Takiguchi, Mary Jo Bang, Yuki Tanaka

$44.95 $38.17

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Princeton University Press
01 March 2025

Poetry; Poetry by individual poets

Series: The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation

In 1923, Shuzo Takiguchi's first year at Tokyo's Keio University was cut short by the Great Kanto Earthquake, which nearly destroyed the Japanese capital. When he returned to school two years later, he was hit by a second earthquake

French Surrealism. Takiguchi (1903-1979) began to write surrealist poems, translate surrealist writers, curate exhibitions of surrealist art, write art criticism, and, later, paint, helping introduce Surrealism to Japan. He eventually became a major Japanese artistic and cultural figure whose collected works number fourteen volumes.

In A Kiss for the Absolute, Mary Jo Bang, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her fellow poet and translator Yuki Tanaka present the first collection in English of Takiguchi's ingenious, playful, and erotic poems, complete with an introduction and the original Japanese texts on facing pages. Takiguchi's obvious interest in style is perfectly wed to his daredevil rhetorical antics. His poems read as if they could have been written today, yet they are so original that they couldn't have been written by anyone else. Bang and Tanaka's skillful, colloquial translations offer English readers a long-overdue introduction to this important poet.

By: Shuzo Takiguchi
Translated by: Mary Jo Bang, Yuki Tanaka
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9780691263885
ISBN 10: 0691263884
Series: The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation
Pages: 218
Publication Date: 01 March 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Mary Jo Bang is the author of nine books of poems, including A Film in Which I Play Everyone and Elegy, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has published translations of Dante and Matthias Gritz and is a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. Yuki Tanaka was born and raised in Japan and teaches at Hosei University in Tokyo. His debut poetry collection, Chronicle of Drifting, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. He received an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in English from Washington University in St. Louis.

Reviews for A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi

""A Kiss for the Absolute introduces Shuzo Takiguchi’s surreal, mythical world to English readers, inviting them into a poetic landscape where Japanese culture and French surrealism meet in a celebration of beauty, desire, and wonder. This collection is more than an introduction to Takiguchi’s poetry; it’s an invitation into a cultural and linguistic dialogue that feels deeply mysterious and illuminating.""---Georgia McInnes, The Indiependent