Salad Anniversary

Lovely. Lyrical.

Lovely poems that are a kind of melancholic sweet. Missed connections, lost love, first moments of love, leaving home - all covered expertly. Tawara write poems about love that are never over-wrought or saccharine. Perfect for freshmen in college!

Very beautiful poetry from Japan, able to describe relationships without using a lot of words.

Poesie molto belle dal Giappone, capaci di descrivere le relazioni senza usare tante parole.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND PUSHKIN PRESS FOR THE PREVIEW!

'Salad Anniversary' is a marvelous collection of poetry. Machi Tawara has managed to elevate a traditional poetic form to an entire new level, incorporating everyday matters and feelings into it in the most successful way possible.

Anyone who has experienced love, its initial excitement and its eventual loss will find themselves nodding in silent agreement to the feelings and situations described. I loved how each poem was like a short story by itself, but they all connected with each other somehow, as the personal element was evident in most of them.

Loneliness and emptiness are prevalent in all the poems, and the collection leaves you off with the bittersweet feeling of loss. However, not all the poems are about love. Machi Tawara also explores themes such as family, her experience as a school teacher, travelling and so on.

Overall, it is a poetry collection that I treasure immensely now, as the tenderness and despair of the poems have hit home for me. I loved every bit of this book and I can completely understand why it has gained this enormous recognition in Japan.

Marvelous, beautiful, unique, and compelling. I loved this book of poems and was unable to stop reading it. I found myself immersed in Tawara's words and images. LOVED this booK!!

What a fantastic collection of poetry.

The poet has a deft hand with language, using realism to create emotion that never overwhelms but embraces. A fantastic example of contemporary poetry.

L'antica forma del tanka prende nuova vita nelle mani abili di Machi Tawara, poetessa dell'anima, che con pennello delicato dipinge la vita convulsa nel Giappone di oggi e l'ondivago moto di una relazione d'amore.
Incantevole, aerea collezione di attimi e sentimenti, questa raccolta fonde passato e presente offrendo attimi di vera suggestione - e lampi improvvisi di riconoscimento.

Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter Machi Tawara's first book of fifteen poems, Salad Anniversary was first published in 1987 in Japan where, remarkably for a poetry book, it sold over two million copies. In this slim, but delightful volume, she combines the classical ‘tanka’ Japanese form of short poetry, consisting of 30 tone syllables in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern) to document a doomed love affair. The poetry is sensuously beautiful, yet pared down, the language deceptively simple, yet talking in unsentimental tones about the beginning and the ending of love. In August Morning the narrator is with her lover: “You and I on a night beach face to face in silence – a sparkler softy sputters. /Breaking your hesitation, I watch you hunt for words to break the silence/Your left hand/exploring my fingers one by one – maybe this is love.” Or is it? Later on in the same poem, the narrator says simply: “Now that I wait for you no more, sunny Saturdays and rainy Tuesdays are all the same to me.” Longing suffuses these poems, moments are briefly captured as in the title poem Salad Anniversary: “Folding towels,/I wrap the smell of the sun – /perhaps one day I too shall be a mother.”
The love affair continues in Baseball Game, but the signs are there: “You have your future, I mine, and so we take no snapshots”, and later in the same poem, “Cooking an omelette/flavoured with tears/of coming morning and farewell.” This achingly beautiful set of poems is accompanied by an afterward by the translator Juliet Winters Carpenter. Highly recommended.

Salad Anniversary, first published in 1987 in Japan to tremendous following, is now being published By Pushkin Press and will now be available for an American audience. It is comprised of Tawara's tanka poetry on a variety of subjects, most very personal insights into modern life and love. This was a new, personal approach when it first appeared and highly popular and successful.

There is an afterward (which I recommend reading prior to the poetry) which explains tanka poetry. I found it helped to explain some issues I had had with my early reading in the book.

As I read, I found that these deceptively simple poems became more and more appealing in their simplicity and beauty.

Through the falling rain,
a shower of shivering "S" sounds, I watch your umbrella recede

Your disappearing figure, a little too cool--
It's always the man

who sets off on a journey*
(loc 193, from Salad Anniversary)

There are small moments that struck me. From My Bisymmetrical Self:

the ordinariness of home is what I like best

From mother-and-daughter we turn into a pair of women (loc 239)*

And lastly, from Jazz Concert:

Photographer snapping away at the stage---he, too, master of his instrument

Like a hit man he peers into his camera wrapped in layers of blue smoky air

.....

On the stage, tangled cords lie sprawled like bars of melted music fallen off the page. (loc 261)*

It did take me a little reading to become comfortable with the format and to slow down, settle in to the words, not hurry though. When I did that, I enjoyed this book and plan to read it again.

*Any issues of layout are mine.

Recommended for those who enjoy poetry.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I liked this and reread sections of it a few times, especially when something would remind me of a certain line or poem in the book.