This Is How the Bone Sings

by W Todd Kaneko

Overview

The best books about history are those that are also about the future. W. Todd Kaneko’s marvelous This is How the Bone Sings is more than a mere song— it is a singing across time and distance. In lyrics both personal and political, Kaneko composes a score that spans four generations, connecting his grandparents, who were prisoners in the unfathomable Minidoka concentration camps, to his young son and this unfathomable era in which he was born. One of the many things I love about this book is Kaneko’s willingness to ask big questions: what lessons about the present can we learn from the past? What is the inheritance of trauma? Can anything not be repeated? Ultimately, though, it is the craft of these poems that converts the experiences of history into the experience of art. This is a must read. – Dean Rader
In Kaneko’s highly-anticipated This Is How the Bone Sings, we are introduced to characters mythical and marvelous in landscapes where “… hands can be stealthy, lovesick foxes or tiny owls who doubt the night.” These are much-needed poems of unapologetic tenderness and talent— in other words, this collection does the near-impossible: it points us towards love even if what we know of this world doesn’ t. – Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625578181
Publisher:	Black Lawrence Press
Publication date:	08/01/2020
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of the poetry books This is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence Press 2020) and The Dead Wrestler Elegies, Championship Edition (New Michigan Press 2023). He is co-author of Poetry: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), and Slash / Slash (Diode Editions 2021). A Kundiman Fellow, he teaches at Grand Valley State University and lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Table of Contents

Silence

The Birds Know What They Mean 2

Minidoka was a Concentration Camp in Idaho 3

American Sentences 4

When We Talk About Camp 7

They Say This Is How the Ogres Were Invented 8

Where the Ogres Lived

They Say This Is How Fire Was Invented 10

They Say This Is How the Ogres Lived 11

The Ogre's Love Song 12

They Say This Is How the Ogre Lost His Heart 13

The Ogre's Physique 14

Reading Comprehension 16: Horses' Mouths 15

The Witch's Love Song 16

The Ogre's Love Song 17

Hogs in the Mud, Sheep in the Sky 18

American Children 19

Different Sorts of Trees 20

Reading Comprehension 25: Children of Minidoka 22

The Witch's Love Song 23

Hauntings

Cattle Mutilation 26

Remembering Minidoka 27

Dawn's Early Light 29

Reading Comprehension 30: The Crane Wife 32

They Say This Is How the Ghosts Feel 33

The Wind Has Always Been Full of Arrows 35

Year of the Monkey 36

We Sleep Like Horses 38

Homeland 39

All the Things That Make Heaven and Earth 40

Ancestral Memory 41

Twilight's Last Gleaming 43

Reading Comprehension 44: The Hungry Ghosts 45

Ghost Story 46

Pilgrims 48

American Hecatomb 49

Where We Live Now

Oh, Say Can You See 52

Idaho 54

Birthright 55

All of This Will Be Yours One Day 56

The Origami Puzzle 58

Reading Comprehension 53: The Peach Boy 62

Love Song 63

Fish Are Jumping 64

When I Ask My Son to Speak 65

They Say This Is How the Bone Sings 66

They Say This Is How the Heart Works 67

Loyalty Questionnaire 69

Legacies of Camp 73

Looking Outside Airplane Windows 76

Rocket's Red Glare 77

Notes 80

Acknowledgements 82