Misuzu kaneko biography of abraham

WITS Voices: The Inspiration of Misuzu Kaneko

March 28, 2018

By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence

This fall, I’ve been teaching poetry to fourth graders at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle.

Each week before I share the poem that will be our mentor text, I show my students a photograph of the poet and offer a few words about the poet’s concerns, life, and times.

In the case of Misuzu Kaneko, her very moving biography became part of our inspiration.

I discovered a book published by Chin Music Press in 2016 called Are You an Echo: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko, with a narrative by David Jacobson, translation by Sally Ito and Michiko Tsuboi, and illustrations by Toshikado Hajiri.

The lovingly-illustrated book is divided into a sensitively-told biography and a collection of Misuzu’s poems.

The biography takes about 15 minutes to read and follows Misuzu through her short, tragic, inspiring life, but also tells the story of how her poem