A Daily Glance
Mark Young's Genji Monogatari obviously references the work of Murasaki Shikubu, the Japanese novelist of Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji). Parts of the novel definitely filter into the pieces, such as the fifth poem in Mark's book which is about the young Murasaki who is taken in by Genji to be groomed as a wife. Really, she's just a child, and Mark describes that with the lines:
Unnatural made
natural by a Prince's
actions.
Mark's book deals with more than just Shikubu's work, as one notices quickly with references to Walmart, Ebay, and Guantanamo. Western and Eastern philosophies are contrasted in the book, and the speaker comments on many aspects of the contemporary world, such as the colonizing tendencies of the U.S. Hegel shows up in several of the poems, and many of the poems deal with the nature of language and its private and public uses. Moreover, we follow Genji from youth to old age in the book, just as we do in Murasaki Shikubu's novel, except that here he's mostly a scattered presence, and in the end he seems to be having trouble making sense of the new images he sees around himself.
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