PennSound podcast #47

Yosuke Tanaka and Ariel Resnikoff.

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The poet and translator Yosuke Tanaka visited Philadelphia and the Kelly Writers House in late 2014. The purpose of his visit was threefold: to join a scientific conference on cell biology; to see the Writers House in person after spending much time there virtually as a participant in the open online course called “ModPo”; and to sit down in the Wexler Studio with Ariel Resnikoff to talk about contemporary Japanese poetry. (His visit with ModPo’s teacher-curator Al Filreis resulted in a nine-minute video conversation about the experience of modern and contemporary American poetry from the point of view of a Japanese participant.)

Tanaka was born in Tokyo in 1969 and made his debut as a poet in the prestigious literary magazine Eureka at the age of nineteen. So far, he has published two poetry books, A Day When the Mountains are Visible in 1999, and Sweet Ultramarine Dreams in 2008.

Ariel Resnikoff is a poet, translator, and critic; has interviewed Jerome Rothenberg, among other writers; contributed “a test of Jewish American modernist poetics” in the Zukofskyian mode; and published poems in Eleven/Eleven, The Oxonian Review, Matrix Magazine, and Scrivener Creative Review. One of his major interests is the translation and study of the work of Yiddish American modernist poet Mikhl Licht.

Amaris Cuchanski introduces the podcast, part of the ongoing PennSound Podcasts series. Julia Bloch, who joined Ariel and Yosuke in the studio, welcomes them and introduces the conversation.

About Yosuke Tanaka, Yasuhiro Yotsumoto has written: “[He] writes about climbing mountains, riding a bicycle in a city while singing ‘Rally-ho’ and of feeling the moist air in the anticipation of summer rain. He also writes about food and of the sensation of tasting it. All of these materials are to him nature, which seems to be the main source of his creativity. And in his day job, he continues to deal with nature in the same way as in his poems by mixing old and new: he is a scientist specialised in the field of molecular cell biology.”

Below is a translation of the second poem Tanaka reads in the recording, “Salted Mackerel and Girl,” provided by the author.

Salted Mackerel and Girl

Yosuke Tanaka



Strange creatures

I haven’t written about them yet

Honey-like ecstasy

I haven’t written about that either

Natural disasters

I haven’t described them at all

Salted mackerel

I haven’t said anything about it either

But I

Am now thinking about wheeled luggage

Those bags with wheels that people drag all over the city

Where do they go with them?

They drag them bumping up staircases into train stations

I imagine, they are carrying suits to transform strange creatures

They will wear them

To transform into unusual characters

To feel their honey-like ecstasies

At home, at the office, on the stage,

That is where they must be headed

Dragging their wheeled luggage

Wearing masks

White girls

Are frequently seen

Especially young girls are wearing white masks

The natural disaster

Brought about

That sort of situation, in these days, somehow

Inside the mask

You found a salted mackerel lying about

Having deep dark circles under her eyes

The shadow of death was already on her face

She was grown up in a honey-like family

And spoiled,

Despite of such a strict

Upbringing, she was spoiled

In the end

I’m the good girl kept in cotton, wearing a white mask,

Why are you bitching me out?

We are packed into lots of wheeled luggage

Kidnapped,

Loaded on a wheeled box

That runs on tracks

To and fro

With murderous speed

He wears a black mask and a black hat and hides his face

He covers himself with a black coat

He stays at the corner of the car and looks at me

He darts strange glances at me

He must be a poet

He wears a lot of inlaid

Silver rings on his fingers

But his weird imagination is suddenly broken

When he notices a salted mackerel,

All the cells of the fish

Have shrunken in the salt

And what’s more

It is totally covered in white salt crystals

Coming out of the white lump

Salty drops spill over the burned summer asphalt!

Exposed to the strong rays of the sun

The lump of mackerel is burned, with love,

Scattering salt and oil

And all too soon

To be covered with ash and mud

Then

Strange creatures wearing worn-out clothes

Rise up from the mud

One, two, three …

They stand

Extending their hands

And circle with extraordinary speed

You know, they are the spirits of the mackerel,

They are the spirits of the salted mackerel,

Are they an omen to disaster?

One, two, three …

They are

Circling,

We saw

The spirits of

Mackerel

Circling, with extraordinary speed

Extending her hairy hands

Like a primitive man

The girl

Threw away her white mask

And joined in the circle of dance

She is given, a salted

Mackerel’s

Spirit

A

Salted

Mackerel’s

Ethos

Something special

Of her own

Finally

She, joins

Into the

Ring of dance

By the weird

Mackerel-headed

Ashen gray

Spirits,

Where the

Depths of the world

Are whispered

All creatures

Should be altruistic

Like the mackerel, all the time.

Only with the altruistic ways of life,

Your world will draw

The most natural curve, said they.

Alas, she suddenly felt

An unearthly salty taste in her mouth

And

An indescribably fishy, bitter odor

Clung to her nose,

She groaned,

Her eyes rolled back,

She fell on her back

On the land of honey!

Oh, she fell because

The raw extract of the mackerel

Mistakenly entered into her mouth

Oh, it made her finally

Recover from the edge of death

She roars and roars and roars

To celebrate

The revival of

Life

Mackerel,

Like honey,

Mackerel,

Like honey,

(You are still talking about salted mackerel, right?

One, two, three …

One, two, three …

(translated by the author, with the kind help of Jeffrey Angles)