Once in a while it happens that, when you haven't seen an old friend for a long time, you come upon something that reminds you of them and suddenly realize what it was that made you friends in the first place. There is a sense of opening a window into someone else's heart, and realizing that you understand them quite well after all.
This is the feeling you get reading "Not A Metaphor," a collection of Kazue Shinkawa's poems that spans a lifetime of engagement with poetry. This elegantly presented selection of one of Japan's foremost modern poets has been arranged and translated by Hiroaki Sato, himself a gifted poet as well as acclaimed translator.
There have been numerous reworkings of "waka" and their younger, shorter descendants, haiku, in the 20th century, but these variations usually work by treating unorthodox subjects in the traditional metered syllables of those forms -- new sake in old cups, as it were.