62 Sonnets & Definitions

Translated by William I. Elliott and Kawamura Kazuo. The two collections in this volume present differing aspects of Japan's most widely appreciated modern poet. 62 Sonnets appeared in 1953 when he was 22 years old. It boldly affirmed the privileged sensitivity of the younger generation that had just survived a catastrophic holocaust andrejected the oppressive language and ideas of the past. Definitions, however, did not appear until 1975, and represents the author at the height of his mature poetic powers, while radically suppressing the intense lyric freedom of the earlier work.

Shuntaro Tanikawa was born in 1931 in Tokyo, the son of a philosopher. His first book of poems was published in 1952. His poetry has been collected in more than sixty books and translated into fifteen languages. In addition, he has translated Mother Goose rhymes and Charles Schultz's Peanuts into Japanese. He has earned a reputation as one of Japan's most inventive masters of form and language. In 1989 he received the American Book Award for Floating the River in Melancholy.