Book excerpt: Poetry. East Asia Studies. Finalist for the 2011 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu. Cover art by Mauro Zamora. TIME OF SKY & CASTLES IN THE AIR is the first full-length translation of Ayane Kawata's poetry to be published in English. This single volume contains Kawata's first book of poems, Time of Sky (first published in Japanese by Kumo Publishers, 1969), and her sixth, Castles in the Air: A Dream Journal (first published in Japanese by Shoshi Yamada, 1991). "In TIME OF SKY we find terse lines that are unresolved--the tension is neither built nor released, but exists as if in its natural state, a note of music forever in suspension. It never arrives--it is and never was home.... Its poems are derived from a notebook the author kept for 15 years, in which she recorded her dreams every morning upon waking...The logic in these prose poems may feel familiar to us as dream logic, but we also find in them the complexity and anxiety attendant to of a lifetime spent living in a culture not one's own, an ongoing reckoning with one's dangers and desires, and the difficulty (and absurdity) of trying to communicate with others."--Sawako Nakayasu from the Afterword "In Japan, Kawata's work is noted primarily for its stark, vivid depictions of life--not so much life as lived by a specific person, but more the sense of 'living-ness.' To the Japanese eye and ear, Kawata's poetry cuts through to the 'overwhelming mysteries' that lie beneath everyday activities, and it does so with necessity. Hers are aggressive poems that look frankly at what it means to be a Japanese woman both inside Japan and away."--Melinda Markham