Minoru Yoshioka

Broschiertes Buch

Paul Klee's Table and Other Books

Poems 1955-1980

Beschreibung

Minoru Yoshioka (1919-1990), the great late-modernist poet, published nine major collections between 1955 and 1984. He was unique in that he was a poet of the postwar generation who continued writing under the influence of Japan's prewar modernist tradition at a time when many Japanese poets had rejected this approach. Written in a time of much political and social turmoil, the poems are profoundly critical of the materialist values upholding Japan's postwar middle class. Although Yoshioka was not politically active, this questioning can be seen coming through in his surrealist imagery, in the absurd tales in which he satirizes popular icons and images, in his narrative discontinuity, and in his extravagant disruptions of conventional meaning formation. After his emergence in 1955 with the publication of Still Life, the first book translated here, Yoshioka went on to become the most influential poet of the Japanese avant-garde, while many of the major poets of the generation following him were profoundly influenced by both his work and his friendship. Six major books published by Yoshioka between 1955 and 1980 are translated in their entirety here, thus bringing the important and influential work Yoshioka produced during the first two decades of his career to an English language readership for the first time.

Autor

Minoru Yoshioka (1919-1990), the great late-modernist poet, published nine major collections between 1955 and 1984. He was born in the working-class district of Tokyo known as Shitamachi and attended public school until age 15, before going to work as an apprentice at a publisher of medical books. He spent most of the war years in Manchuria as a buck private assigned to caring for the officers' horses. He was repatriated to Japan by the Americans by the end of 1945, and he began putting his life back together in the ruins of Tokyo where he took a job with a publisher. During his long career as an editor and book designer, the manuscripts of many of Japan's major literary figures passed through his hands, most notably the collected works of the major poet Junzabur¿ Nishiwaki, who became a close friend and mentor. When in 1959 his second collection, Monks, won a major prize for younger poets, he was embraced by the avant-garde, and in the following years would influence a broad range of younger poets. In the 1970s he began experimenting with appropriation and collage. The culmination of these experiments is his magnum opus, Kusudama (1984), Eric Selland's English translation of which was published by Isobar Press in 2021. Yoshioka died suddenly of kidney failure in 1990.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Isobar Press
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. Oktober 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 203mm x 203mm x 13mm
• Gewicht: 406g
• ISBN-13: 9784907359539
• ISBN-10: 4907359535
• Artikelnr.: 75774287