News at Eleven: This may seem strange and chilly,

but as Christopher Drake remarks in an admirable essay on [Ryuichi] Tamura, the most powerful words the poet ever heard were those that announced the beginning of the Pacific war, and, later, the conclusion of it when Japan surrendered.

The prospect is bleak in the aftermath of war, but the poet sees it clearly:

In your sightless imagination
this world is a wilderness for hunting
where you are a hunter in winter
always trying to close in on a single heart

from The Japan Times: Bold move into Tamura's cold verse

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