Chronicle of Drifting - Paperback

by Yuki Tanaka (Author)

**2025 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD Finalist**

Chronicle of Drifting enacts a restless quest for belonging, interweaving dreamlike imagery and Japanese lyricism

Yuki Tanaka's stunning debut, Chronicle of Drifting, explores rootlessness, its beauty and perils. Tanaka's restless imagination roams among places and personae--a village mermaid, a geisha in the Midwest, a flâneur in Tokyo--searching for a permanent self and a sense of community. In the feverish world of these poems, inspired by the Japanese tradition of tanka and haiku, as well as by timeless surrealism, one meets a light-lashed horse, an imaginary chauffeur, an out-of-business psychic, a girl who skewers a fish with a flower stalk. In poems ranging from lyric to prose, Tanaka creates a poignant dreamlike realm where the inner and outer worlds, the self and others, merge--like the train passenger who, looking out the window and seeing the sky through his reflection, feels "empty, a blue outline."

Author Biography

Yuki Tanaka was born and raised on a small
island in Yamaguchi, Japan. His poems have appeared in The Nation, The
New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has cotranslated,
with Mary Jo Bang, A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo
Takiguchi, published by Princeton University Press. He lives in Tokyo
and teaches at Hosei University.