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Robin D. Gill

Forfatter af Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!

13 Works 87 Members 16 Reviews

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Includes the name: robin d gill

Omfatter også: Robin Gill (3)

Disambiguation Notice:

(eng) The author does not write under Robin Giru, but someone who did not know his English name back-englished it from the Japanese katakana syllabets. It is also sometimes given as Giru Robin. With Robin Gill or Gill, Robin the author encouraged libraries to add his birth-year 1951 to disambiguate him from the theologian of the same name. In English his middle initial should be included.

Image credit: i drew it on 6/29 1986 looking in the mirror -- hair is tied up to be cool but not washed in 8 days and the person i lived w/ said my eyes are gentler

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Fødselsdato
1951
Køn
male
Bopæl
Florida, USA
Japan
Oplysning om flertydighed
The author does not write under Robin Giru, but someone who did not know his English name back-englished it from the Japanese katakana syllabets. It is also sometimes given as Giru Robin. With Robin Gill or Gill, Robin the author encouraged libraries to add his birth-year 1951 to disambiguate him from the theologian of the same name. In English his middle initial should be included.

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This review was written for LibraryThing Member Giveaways.
I had to look the work SENRYU up in the dictionary, just to be sure what I was reading. I was thrown off by the title and found that senryu is a 3 line unrhymed Japense poem structurally similar to haiku that highlights the foibles of human nature, usually in a humorous or satiric way. It is apparent that the author prepared herself by reading background materials and translating the poems with a freedom that allowed her to be as accurate as possible without her being able to read Japenese. This is a must-read book for Japenese students, even while they are hiding the title until they are so mesmerized by the contents that it no longer matters what the title(s) are. 3 days into reading the book, I stopped explaining what I was reading and just shared what I was reading with others; all were impressed with the translations, the content and most importantly, the author's hard work. I have read some reviews that were unkind, and I simply ask you to put those aside, read the book, and make your own decisions. You will find 18-19c Japenese poems with dirty themes, and examples of senryu such as: " time-as-for-wife-dissatisfied face" translated for you, which meant " coming before his wife she looks far from satisfied." Amusing, yes, but pages upon pages will make you smile, educate you on the genre of senryu and keep you entertained while giving you a new appreciation of their importance in history and philosophy. Buy this English anthology of Senryu for a friend, but also buy one for your own library. It is one book that you will come back to over and over again, not for the title, but for the wonderful translations done by Ms Gill. .… (mere)
 
Markeret
bakersfieldbarbara | 1 anden anmeldelse | Aug 11, 2010 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Member Giveaways.
I got this book a while back as part of the Early Reviewers program.

I was half-expecting a cute little book with a few fly-themed haikus. What I got was a 225-page book packed with haikus (not only in English but also in their original Japanese), unbelievably detailed essays on topics such as "The Paradox of Fly-Swatting in Japan," as well as in-depth commentary on the haiku themselves. It might be easy to poke fun at a book that takes such a thorough look at a topic as specific as fly-themed haiku were it not for the fact the book is so darned entertaining.

The few faults with the book lie almost solely in layout and design decisions. The distracting horizontal rules and odd choice of TOC and header fonts lend a feeling of informality that I find distracting given the almost academic approach to the subject. Another example of the distracting informality: random comments like "I wanted to use a Zig-Zag 'wave' suitable for flies but this so-called 'border' failed to PDF. Unfortunately, WYSInotWYG! Damn." What is commentary on the book's design doing as part of the book itself? Just weird.

Nevertheless, the minor annoyances aside, Fly-Ku! is certainly worth checking out. There are few things more enjoyable than reading a book about an obscure topic by someone with an almost obsessive passion for that topic, and with Fly-Ku!, that's what Robin D. Gill give us.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
laze | 1 anden anmeldelse | Jan 14, 2010 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Member Giveaways.
Wisdom comes in many shapes and sizes. These are tiny little tidbits, that keep you wondering. Less is more, so to speak. Sitting at my dinner table with these short poems does wonders to your constitution. I loved them. Luckily, the book is large, with more than 400 pages of poetry. The foreign influence brings the person who is new to Japanese poetry one step close to the foreign traditions that we share this planet with.
"it's the new year
our hearts beautifully round
with keen corners"… (mere)
 
Markeret
lorespar | 1 anden anmeldelse | Aug 10, 2009 |
Excellent Entry in an Overlooked Genre, December 12, 2007
As its (quite clever) Japanese title suggests, this book may come as a shock to readers more familiar with the overly reverent tone and bland presentation in many volumes of Japanese poetry. In fact, from choice of subject onwards, this book flouts pretty much all of the established conventions, which is, in my opinion, a breath of fresh air.

"The Woman Without a Hole..." eschews the devotion to the Empty White Page found in so many similar poetry collections. No, a full page of text isn't as pretty as that single little verse floating all by itself in the middle of the page, but readers receive a lot more poetry with the former than they do with the latter, and if you're buying the book to read (as opposed to sticking it on a coffee table), I don't see how that can possibly be a bad thing.

The content is excellent, as well. Gill is certainly an expert on the form; the extensive essays and historical notes included with the verses provide valuable explication of and context for the verses--both of which readers will need to understand a form so predicated on allusion and brevity. But Gill also departs from convention in this as well--far from being just so much dry explication, punning, wordplay, and even unexpected font changes abound throughout the text. (The last, incidentally, is a technique used in some Japanese writing that I've always felt would make English writing much more interesting).

As for the poems themselves, Gill earns major points for including the Japanese originals, which would seem like the obvious thing to do in any serious book of translated poetry, but is something far too few authors actually make the effort to include. He also includes a transliteration beneath the Japanese text--another nice touch that allows readers to familiarize themselves with unusual characters or readings. Best yet, he keeps the untranslated verses in their original format instead of arbitrarily breaking them into three "stanzas," as so often happens in English language collections. This is, in my opinion, much preferable to imposing arbitrary breaks to facilitate "ease of reading." While most translators willingly admit that most verses contain ambiguous wording open to a variety of different readings, arbitrary formatting automatically prejudices readers toward one specific reading over the others, instead of allowing them to draw conclusions on their own.

Although Gill does break his translations of the verses into multiple lines, he more than compensates for the concerns I raised above by providing multiple translations of each verse--some intentionally more grammatically or nuance-faithful than others--thus conveying to readers without any knowledge of Japanese the multiplicity of interpretations possible for each poem. Yes, many of the translations are merely so-so, some downright groan-inducing, but a surprising number are transcendently clever and had me laughing as much, if not more, than did the Japanese originals.

The only complaint I can raise is that the book desperately wants for a good editor; it suffers from a lack of formatting consistency and the overuse of the hyphens, but these are small issues in an otherwise excellent volume dealing with a much overlooked genre. This book will appeal to students of Japanese culture and language just as much as to hardcore fans of the form, and is definitely worth the reader's time and money.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
Trismegistus | 1 anden anmeldelse | Dec 20, 2007 |

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Medlemmer
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Vurdering
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ISBN
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