No Choice but to Follow
"Taking their cue from over a hundred years of Japanese linked verse, four erstwhile strangers set out on their own adventurous pilgrimage of renshi. Straying from classical constraints, these women use a looser method—last line/title or first line—to create a new narrative that is routed by collaborative spirit and individual concerns. Wobbly bicycle wheel, tumor, local bradas ... first gardenia. Join them on this fragrant path."
—Kimiko Hahn, author of The Narrow Road to the Interior
"Like a candlelight procession, each candle lit from the flame of the one before, this year-long poem chain generates a moving light, as it connects, through poems, the inner lives of these four gifted women with one another. And here, too, is a delightful unveiling of the act of writing poetry, as we are treated to each poet’s candid commentary of how she wrestled with the line given her—sometimes inspired, sometimes “gnawing on the brush,” but always ending with a poem she would never have written without it."
—Eleanor Wilner, author of The Girl with Bees in Her Hair
"This collection of linked renshi poems has much heart, delicacy and interconnectedness on personal and social levels in Hawai‘i and beyond, so it is a fitting 30th anniversary commemoration for the wonderful work of Bamboo Ridge. The poems were composed through 2008; one gets a sense of seasonal and social change as well as the whole quotidian gamut of life and, also, through the device of beginning the following poem with the last line of the previous one, a sense of multiple consciences and perspectives through these four gifted and vital poets. I wholeheartedly recommend this emotionally intelligent book that teaches us to be attentively human and to celebrate or heal memories great and intimate."
—Robert Sullivan, author of Star Waka and Voice Carried My Family
"From King Kamehameha to Barack Obama, Webster's Dictionary to the ‘opiuma tree, from koi to white ginger, from ropes made of women's braids to chili pepper water—these four poets from Hawai‘i prove there is no subject that renshi, a Japanese form of linked poetry, cannot contain. As the poems are passed collaboratively to one another, each poet ruminates on the lifelines they are struggling with and celebrating with the distinctive voice of a distinguished string quartet. A joy to read, this book would be a treasure to teach."
—Nell Altizer, Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing
University of Hawai‘i – Manoa
Includes commentary and a CD of the poets reading all 48 poems.
Visit the Bamboo Ridge Press online store.
Tags: Ann Inoshita, Bamboo Ridge Press, Christy Passion, Japanese poetry, Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, poetry, renshi
