Anonymous Landscape

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. In a country renowned to be possessive of its language--France--Yuko Otomo composed her manifesto ANONYMOUS LANDSCAPE. There are no raised fists, no resentments, no confrontations, and only a modicum of regret. Released rather than frustrated by her inability to name things in that proud tongue, she leads the reader to understand her reunification with all creation, as if returned to the Garden prior to the delegation of appellation. An act of reverse alienation. Her immodest proposition is rendered in the most modest of dictions. There are 200, call them sub-poems, each with an integrity of sometimes aphorism, imagery, irony, or moving simplicity. Their austerities match the austerity of her persuasion. Their gem-likeness has the credibility of lived thought. Her sensitivity to words and the demands of craft, not by chance, renders us an implausible beauty.