PRAISE FOR KITASONO KATUE
“For forty years or more, Kitasono Katue was a most valuable link between the literary cultures of Japan and the United States. The magazine ‘Vou’ was, to my knowledge, the only one which made a systematic effort over the years to present Western avant-garde culture to Japan.” -James Laughlin
“He was certainly the poet who did most to introduce modern poetry—‘the international idiom’—to Japan, in superlative translations . . . Furthermore, he was himself an excellent poet—a true leader and exemplar. Not least, his ‘concrete’ poem [Monotonous Space]…is the best thing of its kind anywhere.” -Kenneth Rexroth
"Katue Kitasono is already marked as one of the few important contemporary poets." -Charles Olson
“I think that the memory for Kitasono Katue will help all of us to never forget what concrete poetry really wanted to be, how pure, simple and rich all in one it can be.” – Eugen Gomringer
“A major, truly experimental poet & artist.” -Jerome Rothenberg
“By common consent the most distinguished experimental Japanese poet of his generation… one of the great radical writers of modern letters.” – Richard Kostelanetz
“For half a century after Papa Flaubert started writing, any man who wanted to write English prose had to start by reading French prose. And it may be that from now on any man who wants to write English poetry will have to start reading Japanese...these poems are better work than any save those of E.E. Cummings at his happiest...I know that nowhere in Europe is there such a vortex of poetic alertness. Tokio Takes over, where Paris stopped.” -Ezra Pound