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.
Nagashima was born poor in 1943 and grew up poor, enduring life struggles that gave her tremendous empathy for others while providing her with a healthy dose of reality. Later, she married a man 26 years her senior who suffered an incapacitating stroke that left him physically and mentally diminished. She acted as an unfailing caretaker, feeding him, washing him, administering medications and above all loving him. Although her life was certainly full by anyone's standards, at 40 she decided to write poems that "gave her a real sense she was alive." She did this by chronicling the difficulties and rewards of giving -- and receiving -- care. Her fourth book, "The Bean-Bun Diary," about living with her stricken husband, was published in 1998 and received the Oguma Hideo Prize. Here, poems have been selected from five previously published books in Japanese by the poet and her renowned translator Hiroaki Sato, then translated into English.
Nagashima starkly re-creates the personal struggles of caretaking for someone who is no longer able to care for himself, and her no-frills imagery captures the reality of his suffering. We can almost see, hear, smell and feel the frustrations in both sides of the relationship. In the poems about caring for her husband, the profound sense of duty and shared history that binds the couple threads its way through the words with both sadness and irony. Though this man's life is now reduced to total dependence, he was a former army man who once embraced order. And for all the poet's professed distance, the poems are surprisingly visceral, such as "Love:"