Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Ito
KILLING KANOKO is a powerful, long-overdue collection (in fine translation) of poetry from the radical Japanese feminist poet, HiromiIto. Her poems reverberate with sexual candor, the exigencies and delights of the paradoxically restless/rooted female body, and the visceral imagery of childbirth leap off the page as performative modal structures--fierce, witty, and vibrant. Hiromi is a true sister of the Beats. --Anne Waldman.The appearance of this generous and beautifully rendered translation of Hiromi Ito's poetry is a significant and memorable event for American letters. For Ito is poet of truly international stature, whose work breaks down barriers of language and gender, bringing an unprecedented erotic energy and eruptions of transgressive and domestic excess into areas of deep myth and shamanistic performance. It is a poetry of her world and of our worlds as well, the gift of a supremely intelligent and relentlessly exuberant mind, situated somewhere between bliss and nightmare. That she has now chosen to live among us is a still further cause for celebration. --Jerome Rothenberg