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Leza Lowitz
For Leza Lowitz's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 30, 2003
Power and glory of temple ruins
ANGKOR: Celestial Temples of the Khmer Empire, text by Ian Mabbett, Eleanor Mannikka, Jon Ortner, John Sanday and James Goodman; photos by Jon Ortner. New York: Abbeville Press, 2003, 289 pages, $95 (cloth).
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 13, 2003
Heartfelt poetry from and inspired by Asia
EPITAPH FOR MEMORIES, by Yoko Danno. The Bunny and The Crocodile Press, 2002, 53 pp., $10 (paper). NINETY-FIVE NIGHTS OF LISTENING, by Malinda Markham. Mariner Books, 2002, 80 pp., $12 (paper).
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 25, 2003
Vietnamese cuisine in a Parisian scene
The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, 261 pp., $24 (cloth). It's Paris, 1929. You're young, Vietnamese and gay. You don't speak much French, but you can cook a mean omelet. You see an ad in the paper: "Two American Ladies Wish to Retain a Cook." You answer the ad. You get the job.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 9, 2003
Dropping out and tuning in to the rhythm of nature
SANTOKA: Grass and Tree Cairn, translated by Hiroaki Sato. Vermont: Red Moon Press, 2002, 74 pp., $14.95 (paper) No matter how deep one's faith or religion is, one may experience feelings of resignation and defeat as well as the loss of compassion for others and oneself.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 5, 2003
Essay collection by master haiku poet wins high praise
THE NICK OF TIME: Essays on Haiku Aesthetics, by Paul O. Williams. Edited by Lee Gurga and Michael Dylan Welch. Foster City, CA: Press Here Books, 2001, 112 pp., paper ($12) What is a haiku, really? How do we know one when we see it? Are English-language haiku less authentic than Japanese haiku? And how do we know if a haiku is bad? These questions are answered and more are raised in this important and delightful new volume of 16 essays by master haiku poet Paul O. Williams. His ruminations on the art, craft and love of haiku will go a long way toward furthering the discussion of what constitutes this ancient form today.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 8, 2002
Expat writers shoot from the lip
FACES IN THE CROWDS: A Tokyo International Anthology, edited by Hillel Wright. Printed Matter Press: Tokyo, 2002, 254 pp., 2 yen,500/$25 (cloth) "Faces in the Crowds" is a hyperkinetic grab bag that brings work by a cross section of Tokyo's expat writers, and Japanese writers working in English, together in an act of literary homage. Many of the authors in these pages have strutted their stuff at events such as the "Power of the Spoken Word" series hosted by Taylor Mignon and the open-mike sessions held at What the Dickens, a British pub in Ebisu. They've honed their work at meetings of the Tokyo Writers Group and Temple University Japan Poets, and published it in Wingspan, Printed Matter and Yomimono and through Saru Press and other local literary presses and magazines.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 10, 2002
Coming of age in Heartbreak Hotel, New Jersey
WAYLAID, by Ed Lin. Kaya Press: New York, 2002, 169 pp., $12.95 (paper) This terrific first novel by Chinese-American writer Ed Lin revolves around a 12-year-old coming of age in New Jersey in the 1970s, burdened by his virginity and motivated mainly by the desire to lose it.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 13, 2002
Confessions over a cup of coffee
ON TSUKUBA PEAK: Tanka by Hatsue Kawamura. Five Islands Press: Wollongong, Australia, z2002, 93 pp., $20/1,500 yen (paper) MEMORIES OF A WOMAN: Tanka by Harue Aoki. Mura Press, Tokyo, 2001, 204 pp., 1,800 yen (paper) Women poets have a long and industrious history in Japan, where they have been writing tanka for over 1,000 years, appearing in the first Imperial anthologies and in the oldest novel in the world, Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji." While many aspects of the tanka form, such as the 31-syllable count and seasonal words have lasted through the ages, other time-bound traditions have fallen by the wayside. Chief among them are the use of tanka as a form of courtship between lovers. No longer set in the rarified realm of aristocratic romance, modern tanka reflect the changes in women's social status and the myriad lives they lead.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 22, 2002
Hsia Yu: modern, universal and refreshing
FUSION KITSCH: Poetry by Hsia Yu, Translated by Steve Bradbury. Zephyr Press, Massachusetts, 2001, 131 pp., $13 (paper) The title of this book, the first bilingual collection of work by Taiwanese poet Hsia Yu, is apt. In fact, translator Steve Bradbury, a professor at National Central University in Taiwan, says that what first drew him to Yu's poetry was that it was both "very Chinese and refreshingly cosmopolitan." For most poets writing in Chinese, these are necessarily contradictory conditions. The desire to affirm a cultural or national identity in the face of increasing Western influence is strong. But Yu, who lives in France, apparently doesn't grapple too hard with this problem. One of the first woman poets writing in Chinese to have broken dramatically from the conventions and constraints of traditional Chinese poetry, she's just as happy among the mysteries of Paris as in the warrens of her native Taipei.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 28, 2002
Taking a shortcut to enlightenment
THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING BUDDHISM, by Gary Gach. Alpha Books, 2002, 408 pp., $18.95 (paper) Half a billion people in the world consider themselves Buddhists, and millions of Westerners have embraced the religion and its tenets. For the uninitiated, and even for some initiates, Buddhism is overwhelming and mystifying. Often associated with Zen, it's sometimes reduced to the image of meditation, but as this hefty but accessible guide reveals, there are many streams of Buddhist thought and practice in the world today.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 12, 2002
Poetry that's music to the ears of millions
POEMS OF THE GOAT, by Chuya Nakahara, translated by Ry Beville. American Book Company, Richmond, VA, 2002, 77 pp., $15/2500 yen (paper) Why do some writers get translated and others -- better, more deserving -- remain obscure? This is a question that Ry Beville, a young Virginia native, asked himself seven years ago when studying literature at Nanzan University in Nagoya.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 30, 2001
Simple words for Zen living
TO SHINE ONE CORNER OF THE WORLD: Moments with Shunryu Suzuki (Stories of a Zen Master Told by His Students), edited by David Chadwick. Broadway Books, 2001, 144 pp., $16.95 (cloth) Is it possible to impart the wisdom of Zen through words? Or are the lessons of mindful living communicable through action? Perhaps both. Like a temple bell that strikes through air to the heart of sound, the anecdotes and quotes in "To Shine One Corner of the World" offer humor, wisdom, enlightenment and the perfect example of a Zen life: that of Soto Zen priest Shunryu Suzuki, who helped introduce thousands of Americans to Zen.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2001
Nagashima provides balm for the caregiver's soul
THE GIRL WHO TURNED INTO TEA, by Minako Nagashima, translated by Hiroaki Sato. P.S., A Press, 2000, 56 pp., $12. The frailties and failings of the human body and mind are not usually the stuff of poetry, but Minako Nagashima, a longtime social worker and aid to the physically and mentally handicapped, has found in them a rich and compelling subject matter.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 17, 2001
Sounds of a poet who writes to live, and lives to write
COLLECTED POEMS OF SHUNTARO TANIKAWA, CD-ROM. Iwanami Shoten Publishers, Tokyo, 2000, 19,000 yen. It's been a recent trend in the music industry to come out with boxed sets commemorating the work of some of our most celebrated musicians, from John Coltrane to the Beatles. That such a trend has spread to the world of poetry is no small cause for celebration.
CULTURE / Books
May 13, 2001
When the nightmare broke through: "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche"
UNDERGROUND: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel. Random House, Vintage International; 366 pp., $14.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 27, 2001
Fairy tales for modern Japan
GHOST OF A SMILE: Stories, by Deborah Boliver Boehm. Kodansha International, 2000, 288 pp., 2,900 yen (cloth). Imagine Lafcadio Hearn venturing to 21st-century Tokyo reincarnated as a single American woman with a penchant for the exotic and erotic, and you will have a sense of the stories in "Ghost of a Smile."
CULTURE / Books
Dec 19, 2000
Making mush of Meadowlark
SHOPPING: A Novel, by Gavin Kramer. Soho Press, 2000, 216 pp., $22 (cloth). It's easy for a foreigner to feel like a freak in Japan -- tall, different, culturally unaware, linguistically tongue-tied. This wickedly clever novel of manners turns its lens on the foreign protagonist as spectacle, British lawyer Alistair Meadowlark, rather than the usual cast of impenetrable Japanese characters. Written with virtuoso confidence, this first novel hurls along at breakneck speed, its breathless sentences skimming the surface of Tokyo's churning waters and leaving mounds of cultural detritus in their wake.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 21, 2000
Beautiful poetry from the ashes of Hiroshima
BLACK FLOWER IN THE SKY: Poems of a Korean Bridegroom in Hiroshima, by Chong Ki-Sheok. Katydid Books, distributed by the University of Hawai'i, 2000, 79 pp., $20 (paper). As the war generation grows older, casting glances back on life, poetry of witness has become increasingly urgent. Perhaps time and distance have brought freedom, or a desire to delve into the past and express one's history as a way of both lessening and sharing the burden.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 9, 2000
From nothingness, a celebration of life
A DREAM LIKE THIS WORLD: One Hundred Haiku, by Nagata Koi, translated by Naruto Nana and Margaret Mitsutani. Tokyo: Todosha Publishers, 2000, 147 pp., 2,381 yen (cloth). Dream and waking life. Reality and illusion. Where does one begin and the other end? This question radiates at the heart of Nagata Koi's impressionistic haiku.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2000
The art of hearing what lies behind words
HEART OF BAMBOO: Poetry and Music in the Zen Tradition, by Sam Hamill, Elizabeth Falconer, Christopher Yohmei Blasdel. CD and Listener's Guide (32 pp.), Copper Canyon Press, 1999; $12. "The roots of poetry inevitably return us to music," Sam Hamill writes in "Listening in the Zen Tradition," one of two essays that make up the Listener's Guide to this new CD. "All poetry aspires to the condition of music. Poetry and music share a common root: Both begin in deep listening."

Longform

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