Waka and Things, Waka as Things

Waka and Things, Waka as Things
Author: Edward Kamens
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0300223714

A challenging study offering a new perspective on classical Japanese poems and how they interact with and are part of material culture This generously illustrated volume offers a fresh perspective on classical Japanese poetry (waka), including many poems treated here for the first time in a Western-language publication. Edward Kamens examines these poems both as they relate to material things and as things in and of themselves, exploring their intimate connections to artifacts and works of visual art, sacred and secular alike, and investigating the unique rhetorical messages and powers accessed and activated through these multimedia productions. This book makes a major contribution to Japanese literary and cultural studies.

While I Was Away

While I Was Away
Author: Waka T. Brown
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 006301713X

Named one of New York Public Library's & Bank Street's Best Books of the Year! The Farewell meets Erin Entrada Kelly's Blackbird Fly in this empowering middle grade memoir from debut author Waka T. Brown, who takes readers on a journey to 1980s Japan, where she was sent as a child to reconnect to her family’s roots. When twelve-year-old Waka’s parents suspect she can’t understand the basic Japanese they speak to her, they make a drastic decision to send her to Tokyo to live for several months with her strict grandmother. Forced to say goodbye to her friends and what would have been her summer vacation, Waka is plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and flown across the globe, where she faces the culture shock of a lifetime. In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn’t quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Even though this is the country her parents came from, Waka has never felt more like an outsider. If she’s always been the “smart Japanese girl” in America but is now the “dumb foreigner” in Japan, where is home...and who will Waka be when she finds it?

Kokin Wakashu

Kokin Wakashu
Author: Helen Craig McCullough
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 1985
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780804712583

A Stanford University Press classic.

Dream, Annie, Dream

Dream, Annie, Dream
Author: Waka T. Brown
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0063017180

In this empowering deconstruction of the so-called American Dream, a twelve-year-old Japanese American girl grapples with, and ultimately rises above, the racism and trials of middle school she experiences while chasing her dreams. As the daughter of immigrants who came to America for a better life, Annie Inoue was raised to dream big. And at the start of seventh grade, she’s channeling that irrepressible hope into becoming the lead in her school play. So when Annie lands an impressive role in the production of The King and I, she’s thrilled . . . until she starts to hear grumbles from her mostly white classmates that she only got the part because it’s an Asian play with Asian characters. Is this all people see when they see her? Is this the only kind of success they’ll let her have—one that they can tear down or use race to belittle? Disheartened but determined, Annie channels her hurt into a new dream: showing everyone what she’s made of. Waka T. Brown, author of While I Was Away, delivers an uplifting coming-of-age story about a Japanese American girl’s fight to make space for herself in a world that claims to celebrate everyone’s differences but doesn’t always follow through.

Star Waka

Star Waka
Author: Robert Sullivan
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1869405676

Published on the cusp of the new millennium, Sullivan's third book of poems, Star Waka, came with some strings attached: each poem had to feature either a star, a waka, or the ocean. Within these parameters, and in 2001 lines, Sullivan creates 100 poems that, he says, themselves function like a waka: 'members of the crew change, the rhythm and the view changes - it is subject to the laws of nature'.

A Waka Anthology, Volume Two

A Waka Anthology, Volume Two
Author: Edwin A. Cranston
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 1332
Release: 1993
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804748254

Grasses of Remembrance, the second volume of Edwin Cranston's monumental Waka Anthology, carries forward the story of Japanese court poetry, drawing on sources dating from the 890s to the 1080s. The book presents over 2,600 poems in lively and readable translation, including all 795 poems from The Tale of Genji.

One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each

One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each
Author:
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 014139594X

A new edition of the most widely known and popular collection of Japanese poetry. The best-loved and most widely read of all Japanese poetry collections, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu contains 100 short poems on nature, the seasons, travel, and, above all, love. Dating back to the seventh century, these elegant, precisely observed waka poems (the precursor of haiku) express deep emotion through visual images based on a penetrating observation of the natural world. Peter MacMillan's new translation of his prize-winning original conveys even more effectively the beauty and subtlety of this magical collection. Translated with an introduction and commentary by Peter MacMillan.

Essential Haiku

Essential Haiku
Author: Hass
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1995-08-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0880013516

American readers have been fascinated, since their exposure to Japanese culture late in the nineteenth century, with the brief Japanese poem called the hokku or haiku. The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Infused by its great practitioners with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku has served as an example of the power of direct observation to the first generation of American modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and also as an example of spontaneity and Zen alertness to the new poets of the 1950's. This definite collection brings together in fresh translations by an American poet the essential poems of the three greatest masters: Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century; Yosa Buson in the eighteenth century; and Kobayashi Issa in the early nineteenth century. Robert Haas has written a lively and informed introduction, provided brief examples by each poet of their work in the halibun, or poetic prose form, and included informal notes to the poems. This is a useful and inspiring addition to The Essential Poets series.

Staked

Staked
Author: Kevin Hearne
Publisher: Del Rey
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345548523

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the eighth book in The Iron Druid Chronicles, two-thousand-year-old Druid Atticus O’Sullivan faces the clan of vampires who have been bent on destroying him—including Leif, his former best friend turned enemy. When a Druid lives as long as Atticus does, he’s bound to run afoul of a few vampires—make that legions of them. Even his former friend and legal counsel turned out to be a bloodsucking backstabber. Now the toothy troublemakers—led by power-mad pain-in-the-neck Theophilus—are no longer content to live undead and let live. Atticus needs to make a point—and drive it into a vampire’s heart. As always, Atticus wouldn’t mind a little backup. But his allies have problems of their own. Ornery archdruid Owen Kennedy is having a wee bit of troll trouble: Turns out when you stiff a troll, it’s not water under the bridge. Meanwhile, Granuaile is desperate to free herself of the Norse god Loki’s mark and elude his powers of divination—a quest that will bring her face-to-face with several Slavic nightmares. As Atticus globe-trots to stop his vampire nemesis, the journey leads to Rome. What better place to end an immortal than the Eternal City? But poetic justice won’t come without a price: In order to defeat Theophilus, Atticus may have to lose an old friend. Don’t miss any of The Iron Druid Chronicles: HOUNDED | HEXED | HAMMERED | TRICKED | TRAPPED | HUNTED | SHATTERED | STAKED | SCOURGED | BESIEGED

My Broken Mariko

My Broken Mariko
Author: Waka Hirako
Publisher: Yen Press LLC
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1975318595

Tomoyo Shiino has stood by her friend Mariko through years of abuse, abandonment, and depression. However horrific her circumstances, their friendship has been the one reassuring constant in Mariko's life-and Tomoyo's too. That is, until Tomoyo is utterly blindsided by news of Mariko's death. In life, Tomoyo felt powerless to help her best friend out of the darkness that ultimately drove her over the edge. Now, Tomoyo is determined to liberate Mariko's ashes for one final journey together... to set free her dear, broken Mariko.