Poetry. This long-overdue, luminously expressive volume collects poems, notebook fragments, Japanese/English vocabulary lists, and expatriate observations written during the author's eleven years in Japan. These delicately cadenced, sometimes hilarious, poems are filled with the realia of Japanese life, including station names, temples, butoh dancers, foods ("sexy sexy/sweet black bean dumpling") and found English ("Octopus army/ ordinary life should be boycotted"). Also replete with Japanese words ("momiji/dokudami/ume"), for which a special glossary is included.

Foriegnn Bodie

Literature & Fiction

Gordon, Nada

Poetry

Detour Press

The latter-day romantic heroine of Gordon's book-length series, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker Than Night-Swollen Mushrooms? (title courtesy of Keats), assumes various sub-personas, calling herself "I," "`I'" and "i," speaking variously in all capital letters, all lower-case, and orthographically correct mixes thereof. Our heroine cracks jokes about Victorian constructions of femininity ("Why is an unbound book like a young maiden in bed?"), explores her self-perception ("i don't know why/ i am always wanting you / someone to have my interiority"), tells bald-faced lies, has plenty of sex and continually distracts herself and whoever might try to cut her down to size: "If you are still confused/ by the form, invoke/ its creator, its secret/ prey. Jolly with/ composition, she/ has stretched/ her lower lip/ up over her head."

Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker Than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?

United States

Spuyten Duyvil

Culled from more than 5,000 pages of e-mail, Swoon is a true story of two writers who meet and fall in love over the internet. It is autobiography, poetry, literary essay and erotica all rolled into one. Revealing the tenacity of love, this correspondence takes place between Nada Gordon, an expatriate in Tokyo, and Gary Sullivan in New York, who finally meet in the "real" world with mixed reactions followed by a Hollywood ending. It is Heloise and Abelard without the tragedy, the troubadors without inequality, and the Brownings without euphemisim--all facilitated by the immediate intimacy of cybercommunication.

Swoon (Granary) (GRANARY BOOKS)

Sullivan, Gary

Granary Books

Poetry. "Is poetry alive? It is part of the human body and seems to look like the human mind. But it is almost never as lively, voluptuous, dancing as these poems of Nada Gordon. She seems to be using her own dictionary and idiolect and innocence. Her work is a cadenza ad lib and seems unflawed as a Bollywood movie unfolds with increasing intensity. This is some of the freshest work of her generation: she helps create the new comedy, where jokes are not needed to be happy. She has what a painter once told me was absolutely necessary: shamelessness. This is like rock and roll from another planet for another time"—David Shapiro.

Scented Rushes

Roof Books

Poetry. Nada Gordon's VILE LILT maximizes reader joy. Replete with a thousand new words, outrageous images and ornamental excess, VILE LILT tilts at and topples our literary expectations into a brackish puddle where countless, unfettered beings enter and engage our bodies and minds. Gagging we sit up with the realization that we're in the presence of new poetry; VILE LILT takes the reader elsewhere. "In my mind there's a dream-world where ornament, agon, &amp; lyric have fused to make a wonderland, bristling with intellect, that goes rippling through me like a fetid &amp; brocaded bolt of rainbow silk. Then I remember, oh right, the world that I'm dreaming of is sung into being by Nada Gordon, year by year, &amp; now, with exemplary turbulence, here in this book. As a livid riposte to dry piety, these poems puncture the old stolid habits. As a wild embrace of what's possible in writing, they open an extravagant horizon. For me, when I'm reading these 'versus,' the dreams that I dream really do come true."—Dana Ward

Vile Lilt