Yuki Tanaka: Chronicles of Drifting

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Copper Canyon Press

Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 15, 2025

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Print length ‏ : ‎ 80 pages

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1556597053

Yuki Tanaka’s stunning debut, Chronicle of Drifting, explores rootlessness, its beauty and perils. Tanaka’s restless imagination roams among places and personae—a village mermaid, a geisha in the Midwest, a flâneur in Tokyo—searching for a permanent self and a sense of community. In the feverish world of these poems, inspired by the Japanese tradition of tanka and haiku, as well as by timeless surrealism, one meets a light-lashed horse, an imaginary chauffeur, an out-of-business psychic, a girl who skewers a fish with a flower stalk. In poems ranging from lyric to prose, Tanaka creates a poignant dreamlike realm where the inner and outer worlds, the self and others, merge—like the train passenger who, looking out the window and seeing the sky through his reflection, feels “empty, a blue outline.”