48 Pages
©2012
Publisher: Sixteen Rivers Press
Purchase includes: EPUB, MOBI & PDF

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The poems in Judy Halebsky’s Space/Gap/Interval/Distance, winner of the Sixteen Rivers Press 2011 Poets-Under-Forty Chapbook Contest, combine memory and depth of feeling with luminous observation and precision of craft. In a voice utterly and breathtakingly her own, Halebsky translates her experience of living in Japan into poems influenced by butoh dance, haiku, and, momentously, the Japanese language itself, finding in kanji, the basic written characters of Japanese, a rich source of insight, metaphor, and fresh associative power.

Space/Gap/Interval/Distance engages the reader in rapt translation—between languages, among the visual, the semantic, and the kinesthetic—by way of a poet’s journey of return and what remains unsaid. What singles this work out is that after reading each poem, we are left with evocative images that initiate journeys of translation continuing long after we leave the page.—Forrest Hamer

Entering Judy Halebsky’s Space/Gap/Interval/Distance is like stepping into a world you know must exist but have yet to experience. Influenced by Japanese kanji characters and the haiku tradition, this beautiful book locates the big in the small. Magic, memory, and mutability drive these poems through fabulous places. You have no idea how lucky you are to be in the passenger seat.—Dean Rader

Halebsky brings charm, humor, and depth of feeling to the art of translation. Her poems have a fourth dimension as well, putting us into new bodily forms through a physical experience of the words.—June Watanabe