Leith Morton – författare

The poetry of Yosano Akiko covers all the many and varied aspects of the experience of love—from early romantic encounters between the lover and beloved to the intimate pleasures of mutual infatuation and then true love. The journey outlined in Akiko’s verse also grapples with jealousy and unrequited passion, as Akiko’s poem-narrative treats the rivalry between herself and her best friend, the poet Yamakawa Tomiko, for the affection of the dashing young literary lion, Yosano Tekkan, who later became Akiko’s husband. Thus, How Dark Is My Flower: Yosano Akiko and the Invention of Romantic Love tells a number of stories: a real-life romance unfolds in the poetry of these three poets examined in the book, as well as the story of the journey from romanticism to modernism undertaken by early 20th century Japanese poetry.How Dark Is My Flower emphasizes the astonishing innovations in diction and style, not to mention content, in Akiko’s work that transformed the tanka genre from a hidebound and conservative mode of verse to something much more daring and modern. This book pays particular attention to poetry, particularly the tanka genre, in the evolution of modernism in Japanese literature and breaks new ground in the study of modern Japanese literature by examining the invention and evolution of the concept of romantic love.

The poetry of Yosano Akiko covers all the many and varied aspects of the experience of love—from early romantic encounters between the lover and beloved to the intimate pleasures of mutual infatuation and then true love. The journey outlined in Akiko’s verse also grapples with jealousy and unrequited passion, as Akiko’s poem-narrative treats the rivalry between herself and her best friend, the poet Yamakawa Tomiko, for the affection of the dashing young literary lion, Yosano Tekkan, who later became Akiko’s husband. Thus, How Dark Is My Flower: Yosano Akiko and the Invention of Romantic Love tells a number of stories: a real-life romance unfolds in the poetry of these three poets examined in the book, as well as the story of the journey from romanticism to modernism undertaken by early 20th century Japanese poetry.How Dark Is My Flower emphasizes the astonishing innovations in diction and style, not to mention content, in Akiko’s work that transformed the tanka genre from a hidebound and conservative mode of verse to something much more daring and modern. This book pays particular attention to poetry, particularly the tanka genre, in the evolution of modernism in Japanese literature and breaks new ground in the study of modern Japanese literature by examining the invention and evolution of the concept of romantic love.

This book analyzes avant-garde contemporary Japanese poetry published in the monthly poetry journal Gendai shi techō (Contemporary Poetry Handbook).Featuring analyses and English translations of original poetry and poetics by leading younger Japanese poets, as well as older, veteran poets whose work appears frequently in the journal, the book explores the impact of social media and Internet on the world of poetry as well as issues and concerns of 21st-century Japanese poets such as eco-criticism, love and relationships.As the first scholarly monograph to be focused on the complicated and fascinating realm of 21st-century Japanese poetry, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese poetry and literature, as well as poetry in translation.

This book analyzes the literature that emerged from World War II. It also examines the literature that resulted from the two major earthquakes that have struck Japan over the course of over the last hundred years. The small number of volumes previously published examining the literature of war and earthquakes in Japan have almost always focused exclusively on fiction while this volume focuses mainly on poetry. This volume breaks new ground in its attempt to draw together and analyze the literature produced by these tragedies as a single phenomenon. It provides a new template for the literature of trauma produced by such events as the earthquake that accompanied the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in northeast Japan in 2011.