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raypaws's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Death, and Grief
Minor: Alcohol
nmcannon's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0
As another reviewer said, I’m here because Asagiri Kafka-san is good at his job. Asagiri-san is the writer behind the manga, Bungo Stray Dogs. He and the illustrator Harukawa Sango-san reimagine early 20th century Japanese literary figures as crime-fighting frenemies in the modern day. In interviews, Asagiri-san has said that he hopes his writing will entice readers to explore Japanese literature, and it worked on me. Nakahara Chūya is my favorite character, so of course I borrowed The Poems from the library.
The Poems of Nakahara Chūya are not what I expected. When I hear “debauched drunk who constantly cosplayed as a gay French poet,” I don’t think of delicate meditations on nature and grief. There is one poem about having a hangover, but that’s a blip on the radar. Poems discuss the loneliness of returning to a hometown; the light dancing under the door at night when you’re trying to sleep; living on after catastrophic death. A poem about his late son, Fumiya, made me cry. I realized mid-read that Poems was my first piece of Dada-esque literature that I can recognize as Dada-esque. Following the “nonsense” leaps was a fun game. There were many beautiful, sill moments sitting with nature. Nakahara-san’s poetry can really capture the quietude of the soul: those soft emotions and absolute truths only articulated in deepest hush.
All that praise being said, this book is very weird. The front matter contains Nakahara-san’s biography, which is very edifying. It’s during Paul Mackintosh’s forward that things get funky. Mainly, he views his own translation as an atrocity that should not exist. Poetry, as an artistic medium, is hard to translate in the first place. Nakahara-san’s poems are known for their lyricism—he set them to music sometimes—and Mackintosh admits, point-blank, that he couldn’t translate that music to English. He could translate the words, but not the musical cadence. He urges the readers to treat Poems as a taste of Nakahara-san’s work, and to not study the translation in an academic way. The implication that all English translations are colonialist violence sat odd in the stomach.
Mackintosh calling this book a “horrible butchery” is not conducive to 5 stars, but I still liked the poems, so…3 stars? Mackintosh is the one who threw me, not the nerdy hat rack.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Child death and Death
emeh's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
A fantastic read!
Content Warnings
Minor: Alcohol, Child death, and Grief
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