Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi

Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi (1921) is a collection of poems by Yone Noguchi. Although he is widely recognizing as a leading poet in English and Japanese of the modernist period, Noguchi was also a dedicated literary critic who advocated for the cross-pollination of national poetries. Alongside a brilliant introduction, in which he addresses the collective power of world literature, he provides a selection of his best poems from a quarter century of work.

”The time is coming when, as with international politics where the understanding of the East with the West is already an unmistakable fact, the poetries of these two different worlds will approach of one another and exchange their cordial greetings.” A firm believer in plainspoken language and a practitioner of free verse, Noguchi envisioned his art as a humble contribution to the union of East and West. In his early poems written in California, he reflects on loneliness and the natural world while reveling in the extended lines and celebratory phrases made popular by Whitman. In his third collection, From the Eastern Sea (1903) he settles into a more reserved prosody, characterized by stillness and vibrant imagery. Included in this collection are his prose poems and a series of Japanese Hokkus, whose minimalism and spiritual clarity continue to captivate readers and poets of all languages and nations. “Is there anything new under the sun? / Certainly there is. / See how a bird flies, how flowers smile!” These poems not only teach us to look, but to see the world anew.

This edition of Yone Noguchi’s Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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