BOOKS FOR TANGLED HAIR: YOSANO AKIKO

Boy do i love going into a used bookstore or the library and finding some gold...finding some shit that just sends me to the moon...lights a fire in my woodstove and inspires me to chop some wood, throw my daughter in the air, kiss my wife, write some poetry on a cedar tree, cuddle my cat, feed my fish, eat some candy...and boy did i strike gold in finding this "Tangled Hair" book by a Japanese woman named Akiko Yosano...written back in 1900 in the Tanka style...which is generally in a 5-7-5-5-5 rhythm format...but Akiko is not a traditionalist by any stretch...she was part of a new school movement of poets that were trying to get away from the conservative confines of traditional

Tanka poetry which by the year 1900 was a bloated corpse...to get paid as a poet or to even be read you had to be part of the lineage holders...but these new jacks said fuck that...and not only did they play around with the Tanka structure but the topics they chose were groundbreaking...Akiko at that time was 20 years old and in a passionate love triangle with one of the leader's of the new school...Tekkan Yosano...so these poems were filled with passion and angst, love and despair, beauty and death...poems describing her feelings in diary style was just not done at that time...topics usually covered nature...they didn't cover staring at your naked body in the mirror...i would love to go back in time and ask Akiko out on a date...early spring cherry blossom watching...combing her tangled hair...trying to catch some black butterfly's as i slipped my hand into her Kimono to fondle her breasts...ahhhhhhh...daydreaming...