Praise for Names and Rivers"Shuri Kido is well-known in his native Japan, and his work at last comes to the United States in this lovely bilingual selection, translated by Tomoyuki Endo and Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander. Kido's poems are frequently spiritual dramas set in a dreamlike landscape of symbols, in which a central, isolated figure encounters mysterious phenomena while making ambiguous progress toward an inscrutable goal. 'Elusive water, ' he writes in 'Some Thoughts on Kozukata.' 'You draw it up, / pour it over yourself. / Today courses by like yesterday, / today floats like a cork on tomorrow. / And that's why you draw water.'"-Troy Joillimore, Washington Post "The Five Best Poetry Collections of 2022""The expansive, philosophical poems in Names and Rivers: Selected Poems by Shuri Kido consider themes of solitude, time, and 'naming' through close attention-fueled by both scientific knowledge and awe-to geological forms and rivers. According to co-translator and scholar Tomoyuki Endo's substantial introduction, Kido, an eminent writer known as Japan's 'far north poet, ' draws on his 'geographical imagination' to engage with 'time as an encompassing palimpsest.'"-Heather Green, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation
"Kido's first foray-and a rewarding one-into English translation."-Metropolis
"Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander dizzyingly transpose Shuri Kido's exploration of synchronous time and realization through an array of carefully selected and presented poems. Beginning with a delightful essay on Kido's conception of time as 'an encompassing palimpsest' by Tomoyuki Endo, Names and Rivers urges the reader to detach from a linear view of time and to open their eyes to the smudged writing in the margins. . . . Names and Rivers is an intense, looming permutation of Shuri Kido's poetry. It is a hand drawn halfway from the river as two currents crash back into one. It is a call to see everything as everything, to 'take to our feet, to get going, ' and to continue crossing the river."-Action Books Micro-Reviews
"The collection spans 18 of Kido's works, from his 1985 debut anthology Shokan (Summoning) to 2010's Maboroshi no haha (
