Poems of a Penisist

by Mutsuo Takahashi, Hiroaki Sato (Translator)

Overview

“In the name of / Man, member, / and the holy fluid, / Amen,” begins Mutsuo Takahashi’s epic one-thousand-line erotic fantasy poem, “Ode,” the centerpiece of his groundbreaking collection of queer poetry, Poems of a Penisist. Takahashi’s work, reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s, is a celebration of the male body, treating homosexual desire as something sacred. Stunningly beautiful and passionate, Poems of a Penisist is one of the most important compilations of homoerotic poetry written in the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816679720
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	11/29/2012
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Mutsuo Takahashi is one of Japan’s leading living poets. He has published more than three dozen anthologies of poetry and is a prolific essayist, literary historian, and critic.

Hiroaki Sato is a Japanese poet and prolific translator who writes frequently for the Japan Times. 

Burton Watson is an award-winning translator of Chinese and Japanese poetry and literature.

Editorial Reviews

"Mr. Takahashi was exempted from the human principle that every young boy grows up to be a young man. . . . He did not have to go down to the bottom of the sea, down to the bottom of the female genitalia, which many a young man mistakes for a philosophy, mistakes for profundity." —Yukio Mishima

From the Publisher