Goddard MFA faculty member Kenny Fries‘s In the Gardens of Japan was published by Garden Oak Press. The book includes drawings by Ian Jehle. In the Gardens of Japan is a companion to In the Province of the Gods, which will be published by University of Wisconsin Press in September. You can buy In the Gardens of Japan here.
In an eight-poem sequence, each a garden, Kenny Fries leads us into and through another, giving us an understanding not only of what constitutes a Japanese garden, but also how a Japanese garden encapsulates an entire world. Dynamic, like breath, the sequence is set within drawings of unpredictable landscapes. Kenny Fries’s visits to eight famous Japanese gardens is an exploration of how much we can make of and find in the world around us, a world in which we are but a part.
Chase Twichell, author of Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been, says, “These elegant poems give us intimate and profound glimpses into Japanese gardens. Neither haiku nor tanka, they nevertheless have about them the compression, lucidity, and complexity of ancient Japanese forms. As a student of Zen, I delight in their clear-seeing. This little book is a treasure.”
Kenny Fries is the author of The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory and Body, Remember: A Memoir. His other books of poems include Anesthesia and Desert Walking.
