Books by Yone Noguchi

The American Diary of a Japanese Girl (1901) is a novel by Yone Noguchi. Published in New York alongside illustrations by Genjiro Yeto, the novel was styled as a fascinating tell-all written by a young Japanese tourist. Composed with the assistance of Léonie Gilmour and Blanche Partington, The American Diary of a Japanese Girl was Noguchi¿s first novel and a major departure from his poetry at the time. An 18-year-old Japanese woman going by the name Miss Morning Glory embarks on a journey from her native country to the United States. Accompanied by her uncle, a wealthy industrialist, Morning Glory arrives in San Francisco via steamship. She soon befriends the American wife of a Japanese diplomat, who introduces her to minstrel shows and vaudeville. Left to her own devices, Morning Glory takes over a local cigar shop in Chinatown and begins to assimilate into American life and culture. When she meets Heine, an older poet from Oakland, Morning Glory is inspired to pursue a career as a writer. As she travels across the expansive American landscape with her uncle, she comments on the people and places she encounters along the way. Through her eyes we see the country in a strange new light, perhaps more truth than fiction. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Yone Noguchi¿s The American Diary of a Japanese Girl is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

With a beautifully redesigned cover, The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor Maid is a classic novel that captures a young immigrant's transition to life in the United States - its traditions, quirks, frustrations, and glorious delusions.Accompanied by her uncle, a wealthy industrialist, Morning Glory arrives in San Francisco via steamship. She eventually makes her way to New York City, where she becomes interested in the lives of the working class and decides to test the waters of the American Dream for herself.Despite her fortunate background, she settles for a role as a parlor maid. With her abundant wit and humorous outlook, Morning Glory records in her letters a foreigner's view of American life. Through her eyes we see the country in a strange new light, perhaps more truth than fiction.

Seen and Unseen: Or, Monologues of a Homeless Snail (1897) is a collection of poems by Yone Noguchi. Written only three years after his arrival in San Francisco, these poems capture the emotions of a young man far from home. Fluent in English and adept with the open, flowing style of free verse, Noguchi remains unique in his vision of earthly life.Noguchi¿s poems are songs of light and shadow, in tune with animals, seasons, spirits, and complex emotions. His words are leaves, his thoughts are curtains knocking ¿with their shadowy hands¿ upon his door. His ¿[p]oetry begins with the tireless songs of the cricket, on the lean gray haired hill, in sober-faced evening. / And the next page is Stillness.¿ Alone in a foreign country, he finds solace in the strange music of nature, hope in the words he can make of it. He envisions himself asleep in the depths of a canyon, writing letters that will never arrive, longing for the crickets to sing. ¿The homeless snail climbing up the pillow, stares upon the silvered star-tears on my eyes! [¿] Oh, I am alone! Who knows my to-night¿s feeling!¿ He asks, the homeless snail asks, and his reader longs to answer.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Yone Noguchi¿s Seen and Unseen: Or, Monologues of a Homeless Snail is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (1914) is a collection of essays by Yone Noguchi. Although he is widely recognized as a leading poet in English and Japanese of the modernist period, Noguchi was also a dedicated literary critic who advocated for the cross-pollination of national poetries. His essays on the Noh drama and Hokku poems influenced Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and countless other artists from the West. ¿Not only the English poetry, but any poetry of any country, is bound to become stale and stupid if it shuts itself up for too long a time; it must sooner or later be rejuvenated and enlivened with some new force.¿ For Noguchi, it is not only educational to immerse oneself in the art of other cultures, but vital for those cultures to flourish. As a Japanese poet who excelled with a modern, free verse style of English poetry, Noguchi advocated for his contemporaries to attempt a similar radical openness¿to possibility, uncertainty, and change. In these brilliant, instructive essays, he provides his understanding of the spiritual, otherworldly nature of Japanese poetry, reflects on the function of silence in the traditional Noh drama, and praises the lyric essence of Hokku poems.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Yone Noguchi¿s The Spirit of Japanese Poetry is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

The Story of Yone Noguchi (1914) is a memoir by Yone Noguchi. Both a leading modernist poet in English and Japanese and a dedicated literary critic who advocated for the cross-pollination of national poetries, Yone Noguchi lived an extraordinary life. In clear prose and with a confidence earned through decades of dedication to literature, he tells his own story and reflects on his unique experiences while illuminating the influential people and places that shaped him.Noguchi began studying English as a child, and soon fell in love with the language and its literature. For years, he dreams of leaving Japan to experience life in the West, and as a teenager takes the opportunity to move to California. In San Francisco and Oakland, he encounters a vibrant community of artists who welcome him into their midst. Under the tutelage of Joaquin Miller, an older poet and adventurer, he begins to believe in his own poetic voice, and soon publishes two collections of verse in English. Over the next several years, he moves to Chicago, New York, and London, each time increasing his professional connections and growing surer as a poet. Eventually, he returns to Japan, where he looks to his roots and becomes a well-regarded critic of poetry and the dramatic arts.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Yone Noguchi¿s The Story of Yone Noguchi is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi (1921) is a collection of poems by Yone Noguchi. Although he is widely recognizing as a leading poet in English and Japanese of the modernist period, Noguchi was also a dedicated literary critic who advocated for the cross-pollination of national poetries. Alongside a brilliant introduction, in which he addresses the collective power of world literature, he provides a selection of his best poems from a quarter century of work.¿The time is coming when, as with international politics where the understanding of the East with the West is already an unmistakable fact, the poetries of these two different worlds will approach of one another and exchange their cordial greetings.¿ A firm believer in plainspoken language and a practitioner of free verse, Noguchi envisioned his art as a humble contribution to the union of East and West. In his early poems written in California, he reflects on loneliness and the natural world while reveling in the extended lines and celebratory phrases made popular by Whitman. In his third collection, From the Eastern Sea (1903) he settles into a more reserved prosody, characterized by stillness and vibrant imagery. Included in this collection are his prose poems and a series of Japanese Hokkus, whose minimalism and spiritual clarity continue to captivate readers and poets of all languages and nations. ¿Is there anything new under the sun? / Certainly there is. / See how a bird flies, how flowers smile!¿ These poems not only teach us to look, but to see the world anew.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Yone Noguchi¿s Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Describes the turn-of-the-century adventures of Tokyo belle Miss Morning Glory in a first-person narrative. With the addition of critical commentary and comprehensive notes, this annotated edition sheds light on the creative inventiveness of an important modernist writer.