A Daily Glance
Anne Gorrick’s Kyotologic is a reimagining of Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book, a fascinating Heian period Japanese book that explores court life. It helps only slightly to know Shonagon’s work when reading Gorrick’s poems, for these poems stand on their own; still, the way that Gorrick uses the forms seems to allow for other voices. One of the poems is written as dialogue, but most of them seem to be like dialogue because the poet will hang a single word or several in a column and then indent the rest of the stanza, and that format creates a subtle call and response. In ways, it seems like Bahktin’s fiction concept of the dialogic might apply here. Beyond the form, it’s interesting that Gorrick picked Shonagon. During the Heian period, Japan had several great female writers. Shonagon’s work is intelligent and playful, and we have nothing like it during a similar period in the West. Translating her spirit into the West is a way of commenting on gender in writing historically and specifically on the lack of women’s writing in the West in most periods. The one thing that troubled me about the book was the book note on the back cover which states about Heian life that “women enjoyed almost all the same freedoms as men.” I wish it were true, but a reading of Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji would dispel that myth. Nonetheless, Gorrick’s book is a fascinating read with hints of maple and cherry.
Anne Gorrick’s Kyotologic is a reimagining of Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book, a fascinating Heian period Japanese book that explores court life. It helps only slightly to know Shonagon’s work when reading Gorrick’s poems, for these poems stand on their own; still, the way that Gorrick uses the forms seems to allow for other voices. One of the poems is written as dialogue, but most of them seem to be like dialogue because the poet will hang a single word or several in a column and then indent the rest of the stanza, and that format creates a subtle call and response. In ways, it seems like Bahktin’s fiction concept of the dialogic might apply here. Beyond the form, it’s interesting that Gorrick picked Shonagon. During the Heian period, Japan had several great female writers. Shonagon’s work is intelligent and playful, and we have nothing like it during a similar period in the West. Translating her spirit into the West is a way of commenting on gender in writing historically and specifically on the lack of women’s writing in the West in most periods. The one thing that troubled me about the book was the book note on the back cover which states about Heian life that “women enjoyed almost all the same freedoms as men.” I wish it were true, but a reading of Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji would dispel that myth. Nonetheless, Gorrick’s book is a fascinating read with hints of maple and cherry.
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