GARY SNYDER ALBERT SAIJO NANAO SAKAKI
Gary Snyder: After Work:
Albert Saijo: Turkey Vulture
Nanao Sakaki: Ten Years Ago
Elepaio Press and Hawaii Dub Machine, with Lima Kokua Productions, announce their sixth CD release, Jan Ken Po, Live in Honolulu, with Gary Snyder, Albert Saijo and Nanao Sakaki. The CD features 72 minutes of live poetry in a standing-room-only audience at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Art Building auditorium on Thursday, March 2, 2000. This one-of-kind literary event with long-time friends Gary Snyder, Albert Saijo and Nanao Sakaki has been described as "provoking thought, laughter, applause, wonder and delight." Three sage voices engage in a masterful Honolulu poetry reading that echoes Beat-generation attitudes, Buddha-mind consciousness, rugged and witty travel memoirs, outbursts of song, and previously published as well as recent poems.
The poets played “rock, paper, scissors,” Jan Ken Po, to determine in what order they would read. Snyder's first poem takes the audience back to 1959 with "Oil," composed when he found himself shipping out of Yokohama, Japan for the Persian Gulf on a tanker that he "could not get off of for nine months." After a brief pause, Saijo launches into a short, characteristically wry evocation, "Yes, I believe in the Muse...." Nanao then sweeps in with the first of many, merry poetic epiphanies of the evening: "If you have time to chatter...." and on through the evening, the poets read, laugh and sing for 72 engaging and historical minutes of pure poetry.
Photographer and author Tom Levy writes in the CD liner notes:
The evening featured Gary Snyder, 71, of northern California, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his poetry collection Turtle Island; Big Island resident Albert Saijo, 76, whose collection Outspeaks A Rhapsody was published by the local Bamboo Ridge Press in 1997 (his Spatio Temporal Follies published by City Lights Books is forthcoming), and Nanao Sakaki, 79, of Japan, whose volume Break the Mirror (North Point Press) was first published in English in 1987 (and reprinted by Blackberry Books, 1996). Blackberry Press also published Sakaki’s Let’s Eat Stars in 1997.
The CD Jan Ken Po, Live in Honolulu, with Gary Snyder, Albert Saijo and Nanao Sakaki captures this seminal reading, an informal, playful evening for listeners....
These poets have known each other for a long time. Snyder and Saijo were both living in northern California during the late ‘50s, and met when the Beat-era renaissance was in full flower....Snyder’s interest in Asian philosophy, poetry, and art led him to Japan where he ended up living for nearly a decade. He studied Zen Buddhism, and wrote poems. It was there in the mid-‘60s that he met Sakaki, a poet known for his rambling gypsy-like way of life and his profoundly simple poems. All three poets are known for the influence Buddhism, nature, and attention to the commonplace have had on their work. That influence was in evidence Thursday night.
The CD Jan Ken Po, Live in Honolulu, with Gary Snyder, Albert Saijo and Nanao Sakaki is available for $9.95 and is distributed by Native Books Inc. (www.nativebookshawaii.com). Contact redflea@hawaii.rr.com for more information.
Contact Information:
red flea, redflea@hawaii.rr.com
Available: Native Books Inc. (nativebk@lava.net)
Native Books Inc. website: www.nativebookshawaii.com
Native Books Inc. phone numbers: 1-800-887-7751
on Oahu: 808-845-8949