Paul Klee's Table and Other Books

Minoru Yoshioka (1919-1990), the great late-modernist poet, published nine major collections between 1955 and 1984. He was unique in that he was a poet of the postwar generation who continued writing under the influence of Japan's prewar modernist tradition at a time when many Japanese poets had rejected this approach. Written in a time of much political and social turmoil, the poems are profoundly critical of the materialist values upholding Japan's postwar middle class. Although Yoshioka was not politically active, this questioning can be seen coming through in his surrealist imagery, in the absurd tales in which he satirizes popular icons and images, in his narrative discontinuity, and in his extravagant disruptions of conventional meaning formation. After his emergence in 1955 with the publication of Still Life, the first book translated here, Yoshioka went on to become the most influential poet of the Japanese avant-garde, while many of the major poets of the generation following him were profoundly influenced by both his work and his friendship. Six major books published by Yoshioka between 1955 and 1980 are translated in their entirety here, thus bringing the important and influential work Yoshioka produced during the first two decades of his career to an English language readership for the first time.