A Long Rainy Season: Haiku and Tanka (Contemporary Japanese Women's Poetry, Vol 1)

A thousand years ago women poets at the Japanese imperial court created a written aesthetic of unmatched elegance and technical skill. Today, Japanese women poets write with equal sophistication about romance, family life, and sexuality, and about divorce, loneliness, feminism, politics, and the West. In this landmark anthology of traditional short verse (the haiku and the slightly longer tanka) fifteen contemporary Japanese women poets reveal the changing society that is Japan today. Winner of the 1995 Benjamin Franklin Award.