A collected series of intertwined poetic essays written by acclaimed Japanese poet Hiromi Ito--part nature writing, part travelogue, part existential philosophy. Written between April 2012 and November 2013, Tree Spirits Grass Spirits (Nightboat Books, 2023) adopts a non-linear narrative flow that mimics the growth of plants, and can be read as a companion piece to Ito's beloved poem "Wild Grass on the Riverbank". Rather than the vertiginously violent poetics of the latter, Tree Spirits Grass Spirits serves as what we might call a phyto-autobiography: a recounting of one's life through the logic of flora. Ito's graciously potent and philosophical prose examines immigration, language, gender, care work, and death, all through her close (indeed, at times obsessive) attention to plant life.
For a better understanding of this collection and the author, the following books are recommended by translator Dr. Jon Pitt:
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Eugenio Refini, "Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy" (Legenda, 2022)
"Solstice" Magazine: A Discussion with Richard Hoffman
Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires, "The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2023)
Bill Meiners, "Sport Literate" and "Game: A Sport Literate Anthology" (2023)
"n+1" Magazine: A Discussion with Dayna Tortorici
Cassander L. Smith, "Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic" (LSU Press, 2023)
Jakob Norberg, "The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Brian Gastle et al., "The Lover's Confession: A Translation of John Gower's Confessio Amantis" (Medieval Institute Press, 2023)
Hwisang Cho, "The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea" (U Washington Press, 2020)
Jessica Goethals, "Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
Julius Taranto, "How I Won a Nobel Prize" (Little, Brown, 2023)
Kyle Gervais et al., "Lucan and Flavian Epic" (Brill, 2023)
Leanne Trapedo Sims, "Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawai'i Women's Prison Writing" (Duke UP, 2023)
Miles P. Grier, "Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
Raul Palma, "A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens" (Dutton, 2023)
Michael Quinn Dudley, "The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy" (Cambridge Scholars, 2023)
Courtney Denelle, "It's Not Nothing" (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2022)
Patrick R. O'Malley, "The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
Mark Ernest Pothier, "Outer Sunset" (U Iowa Press, 2023)
Jessica Romney, "Lyric Poetry and Social Identity in Archaic Greece" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
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