"What is so arresting here is the casual everydayness that welcomes strangeness as the most matter of fact part of reality. Typical of the book"s achievement, the poem feels as much in the wife"s voice as the husband"s. There is nothing forced or artificial going on. The poem is universal without being in any way universalising; the voice speaking trusts the power of what one sees and feels to carry the poem. Yotsumoto"s achievement appears in the ease with which the everyday, the earthy, the dream-like, and the bizarrely imagined all glide into each other, are there with a careful equality. The calm of the poem, the tone of everyday realism with no craving for effect, makes the image of the last two lines so startling: "silence" this "strange animal" brought so lovingly back from the grave. Part of what is so attractive in Yotsumoto"s poetry is that it bypasses the supposed dichotomy between experimental and traditional poetry, or (the same idea posed more accurately) the false...