Hearing other writers speak about their craft classes and mentors, I sometimes wish I'd had such experiences. But those decades ago, I'd decided not to apply to an MFA program. Having graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor’s degree in English and East Asian studies, I knew that the writers with whom I'd studied would have a lasting effect. Louise Glück, Charles Wright, Marvin Bell, and then-graduate student Rita Dove had opened windows into how to think about writing. I felt full. And then, back in New York City, I expanded my thinking while wandering off from the more workshop-informed scenes. The bit of distance suited me. This was Manhattan, late '70s/early '80s, and I got to hang out with Jessica Hagedorn, Sekou Sundiata, Patricia Jones, Bob Holman. I also became politically active alongside Jack Hirshman, Luis Rodriguez, and Michael Warr. My incipient poetics became a little roughed up. In a beneficial way. Name-dropping aside, all these voices became a peculiar mix of influences. 

In those years after college, I increasingly turned to "tap the unconscious" (to quote Dorthea Brande). I was attempting to access raw material. Not first-draft/best-draft. More, allowing a measure of ambiguity for the sake of discovery. On the one hand, Marvin had said, "You can't fool the unconscious." On the other hand, Louis Reyes Rivera at an outdoor benefit called on me to "take it off the page." Further, Japanese aesthetics foregrounded word play. I felt richer for overlapping college workshop and streetwise experiences. Given revision choices, I would err on the side of not making perfect sense. What resulted was a poetics of recklessness. 

Fast forward to 2022: while gathering poems for a new and selected, I decided I would revise some early work, not a lot, and not to correct.  There were poems that I, as a professor, would have suggested a student to revise. Any changes would be in the light of mentoring my younger self.

And here is where patience steps in.

I wanted to honor the young woman’s spirit, her recklessness. I also wanted to be patient and guide her, as I would guide a student or daughter. 

First, I had to listen to that younger self. This was the woman in her twenties who was bound to write on the theme of jealousy, envy, and betrayal--so much so I actually bought Nancy Friday's Jealousy from a Port Authority Bus kiosk. And from there--Freud and Klein. This was the young woman who researched obsessions and deepen those abiding themes. This was the young woman who was studying Japanese in grad school and became equally obsessed with The Tale of Genji, a text written around the year 1000 by lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu and purported to be the world's first psychological novel. By working Genji into the poems, I brought to the page what I've come to call my identity themes. And, of course, I also brought my recklessness. 

One of those Genji poems was a quirky piece titled “Comp. Lit.” that spread over nine sections. I was prompted by the two full translations of The Tale of Genji, both by white men and both translations differently beautiful. Arthur Waley's Genji, published in 1925, was rendered in a lyrical style, including his poetic license.  Subscribing to the dominant practice of the day, he translated the culture. An article of clothing became a waistcoat. A shoji screen, a lattice. He even deleted sections that he felt were not necessary. Edward Seidensticker, whose edition was published in 1976 was praised for accuracy and a simplicity that evoked Japanese aesthetics. As a Japanese American woman who was not fluent in the language--even less in the Japanese of the Heian period--it felt ironic to be so dependent on their choices. A woman writer translated by men for a woman reader. 

In "Comp. Lit.," I quote same passages by Waley and Seidensticker in part because "What happens when there are two texts / in translation? / Who can we trust ..." Here is a moment where Genji approaches his young ward:

The little girl was at first terribly frightened. She did not know what he was going to do with her and shuddered violently. Even the feel of his delicate, cool skin when he drew her to him gave her gooseflesh.

         AW, 100

Genji pulled a singlet over the girl, who was trembling like a leaf.

         ES, 104

In my twenties, I did not have the vocabulary to think in terms of sexual abuse and the abuse of trust, but the latter was precisely why I returned to that narrative of over one-thousand translated pages. And, in this narrative in which karma often rose from incestuous situations, how is the reader to view the Genji?  If not outright taboo, the relationship with the girl was discomforting. And, for the girl, would she recall adoring her adoptive father and, after the fact of sex, arrive at a mature desire? Further, the speaker--me--questions why a woman would write a novel that glorified his so-called escapades. (Or did she?)  For the speaker--me--I also loved wandering in and out of those screened rooms in the dead of night. I loved exploring my own reactions to the narrative, the author, the translators, and of course the themes. 

 I was pleased with the poem. But, when the time came to publish the poem in Earshot, I knew that the closure was a bit off. I would not listen to myself. Some poet friends had even remarked on it. I would not budge. Here is the original ending: 

ix. 

The translator puts the pen down
and stretches his arms and neck.
Genji is complete.
He's completed the text
in time for the fall semester.
The students call him professor and bore him
but bring a salary, medical benefits, an office.
The volumes of translation are exact.
Exactly right.
He walks into the bathroom,
turns off the light and sits down.

 Why did I insist on being reckless? On not listening to my sense that the closure did not resonate?  Sure I had mixed feelings about the field and my World War II era professors. Edward Said’s work Orientalism (1978) was still the rage. Translators and father figures played key roles in this and other poems. At the time of publication, I wanted the last image to be the white male translator, having completed the 1,000-plus page translation, seated on the toilet. This was not to humiliate the man (well, maybe a little), but to give the sense of his utter relief. Utter physical evacuation. When I submitted the manuscript to Hanging Loose Press in 1992, I just would not give up this image.

Moving from the IBM-Selectic to the Apple-laptop era, I knew I wanted to include "Comp. Lit." in The Ghost Forest but I finally admitted that I needed to rethink the closure. Here, the patient mentor nudged the younger reckless Kimiko to admit that the original ending was not a resonating closure. I had liked the image of the translator's total exhaustion. But more than being cheeky (though I truly admired Seidensticker), the ending was thematically off. Ending on the theme of completion was not in keeping with the currents of the poem. I had intuited the misstep in 1992 although not in so many words. 

Decades later, the patient mentor had taught craft classes on closure. The patient mentor told the younger reckless Kimiko that she could hold on to that irreverence, just not land on it. And so, I reversed the two final sections. This is how it was published in the new-and-selected: 

viii. 

The translator puts the pen down
and stretches his arms and neck.
Genji is complete.
He's completed the text
in time for the fall semester.
The students call him professor and bore him
but bring a salary, medical benefits, an office.
The volumes of translation are exact.
Exactly right.
He walks into the bathroom,
turns off the light and sits down.

‍

ix. [previously section viii.]

A screen. To screen.
Genji looked behind every screen
for the one who resembled his mother,
for his mother,
‍yet did not understand that the mother
would always be dead
and always be someone he'd adore
with a passion reserved for lovers;
that he would annotate each woman
like a chapter returned to again and again;
that each scene
‍would be an attempt to reach out of infancy
because the breast is always a breast.
Indeed, his second wife, Murasaki,
resembled his stepmother who he loved
and who it is said resembled his real mother.
Women surrounded him like a nest
with their bodies, fragrances,
spirits—
‍but could not complete his search.

This closure resonated by landing on the theme of searching. Genji's literal search and my many faceted psychological searchings. 

I am—I hope—still reckless. But at this stage of my writing life, I like to think that I have a more dialectical approach. Recklessness and patience can move together as a powerful dynamic.