Poetry. Translated from the Japanese by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura. Poet, dramatist, and translator Tanikawa Shuntaro's more than sixty volumes of poetry have brought him the major Japanese literary prizes and (in translation by Elliott and Kawamura) the American Book Award. He has read his work in Moscow, Leningrad, Berlin, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, London, the Academy of American Poets, and the Library of Congress.

Shuntaro Tanikawa was born in 1931 in Tokyo, the son of a philosopher. His first book of poems was published in 1952. His poetry has been collected in more than sixty books and translated into fifteen languages. In addition, he has translated Mother Goose rhymes and Charles Schultz's Peanuts into Japanese. He has earned a reputation as one of Japan's most inventive masters of form and language. In 1989 he received the American Book Award for Floating the River in Melancholy.