It's almost always a bad sign when the best thing about a book is its cover photo, but here we are: that's the best thing about this book, in my eyes.

To be fair, that's because I really dislike poetry of this kind, inward looking and obsessed with suffering. The translator's preface makes it sound quite interesting, formally; apparently Sakutaro is known as a kind of modern Japanese Dante, using 'ordinary' language rather than the ultra-stylized language of previous poets. However, with this book, he returns to that stylized language. That's interesting. Poems which read, e.g.,

"How is it you are so noble,
so gentle, elegant, fragrant,
you alone emit fragrance above all else?
I am ugly beast
unworthy even of your pity.
To start, I am a slave, a barn beast
I'll lie on my stomach under your feet, will serve you like a dog"?

Such poems are not interesting in the slightest. That's one of the worst, and there are some better ones: Fire, A Useless Book. But in general, poets who fret *in poetry* about the nihility of their epistemology are fairly tough to swallow. ( )