We are pleased to announce that Masako’s Story by Kikuko Otake will be part of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum’s push for a future free of nuclear weapons to be held in every state of the United States this year. Jesse

From time to time I like to put up a map of where we’re heading at Ahadada Books. Dan Sendecki is almost finished with the corrections for Yoko Danno’s Kojiki. The Kojiki promises to be one of our best, both in content and in design. After he finishes that, then e-chaps by Judith Skillman and Bruce Slater will be going up. We’re also happy to announce that Alison Croggon has given us a manuscript for an e-chap.

This August we hope to finish a double book by Elizabeth Smither/ Robert Lax. We also have a wonderful new translation of Lu You “The Old Man Who Does What He pleases” by Burton Watson to finish this August. Later this year we’ll have the official Occidental release of Lou Rowan’s remarkable Sweet Potatoes. After that we have a double novelette by Michael Heller in the works.

And those are just a few of the goodies. Jesse

Please order via this website or directly from Small Press Distributors.

In response to a mailing including Jesse Glasss’ Trimorphic Protennoia, Ralph Lichtensteiger spontaneously put together two sound recordings. What he calls ‘a sound window’ — as he samples sounds as they come in through his window and refactors them through software.

So chech out ‘A sound window for Jesse Glass’. Writes Lichtensteiger in his Diary:

I spontaneously did these two sound pieces called Listening I & II [for Jesse Glass] after the arraival of your surprise package containing Trimorphic Protennoia and your wonderful poetry readings. Ambient sound recordings: capturing the sound through the window of my library, in combination with sounds generated via software [CellSynth 1.7, MetaSynth 4.0] © 2007 by musique trouvé…

Click here for Lichtensteiger’s sound pieces. Remember to click PLAY on both players simultaneously for full effect.

Ralph Lichtensteiger was born in Switzerland in 1962. The rest is impossible to explain. I suggest you try to find out yourself at his site!

“Poetry is where the heart’s wishes go. What lies in the heart is ‘wish’, when expressed in words, it is ‘poetry’. When an emotion stirs within one, one expresses it in words; finding this inadequate, one sighs over it; not content with this, one sings it in poetry; still not satisfied, one unconsciously dances with one’s hands and feet.” From the “Preface to The Book of Poetry.”

Thanks to Jeff Korman of the Enoch Pratt Free Library for including a link to The Witness in their digital collection of Maryland slavery documents. The link is here. That’s the “Slave Documents Collection—Enoch Pratt Free Library“. Your help greatly appreciated in getting the word out! — Jesse

Masako’s Story; Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
by Kikuko Otake
Ahadada Books, 96 pages,
Perfect bound Paperback, US$15.00
ISBN 978-0-9781414-6-2
Soon to be available from SPD.

For a downloadable PDF of this Press Release, click here.

On August 6, 1945, when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Furuta family was living one mile away from the hypocenter. Five year old Kikuko, her mother, Masako, and her two brothers barely escaped with their lives. However, their soldier father was not so fortunate. Masako never talked about her family’s experiences on that day and the grim days following the bombing. Then one day, Masako started to talk about what happened–breaking a silence of nearly fifty years.

Written by Kikuko (Furuta) Otake, now an assistant professor of Japanese in the United States, Masako’s story is a bilingual collection of prose-poetry, based on the true story of her family’s tragedy. The appendix presents the original Japanese poetry written to capture the story as her mother said it in Hiroshima dialect. Moreover, the English translation is written with an “Objectivist” lineation similar in its understated power to Charles Reznikoff’s “Testimony”:

After crossing the Aoi Bridge,
I walked diagonally across the grounds of the Gokoku Shrine
To take a short cut.
Oh. That ground was filled with hundreds of people with horrible burns
Scattered everywhere.
Many of them were dead.
But those that still lived,
Begged, “Mizu! Mizu o kudasai,” in faint whispers.
Soon my way was blocked by their outstretched arms.
One of them even grabbed my ankle, though feebly,
To stop me from running past him.
His burnt skin sloughed off his fingers,
As I pulled from his grip.

(pg. 23).

Kikuko Otake’s Masako’s Story is a powerful addition to the literature of the Atomic Bomb, and yet more evidence that we should all work together to stop the Nuclear madness.

Aram Saroyan; Complete Minimal Poems
Ugly Duckling Presse
Lost Literature Series
284 pages, paperback. $20.00
www.uglyducklingpresse.org

A fascinating collection from an early minimalist, whose experimental forays inside individual words (think pipettes inserted into tardigrades/ nano windmills raised on molecular landscapes erected with the aid of electron microscopes), paved the way for today’s storming of the citadels of poetic form.

j;u;n;g;l;e

Need I say more?