Tangled Hair

Poetry. Translated from the Japanese by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. Midaregami (TANGLED HAIR, from which these poems were taken) was an immediate success when it was published in 1901. Akiko infused the poems with an erotic and imaginative passion at a time when traditional tanka poetry had grown lifeless and conventional. This sequence of poems reveals the tempestuous, ecstatic, and sometimes agonizing love between Akiko and Yosano Tekkan, whom she later married.