Title: The History of Rain
Author: Tomoyuki Iino
Publisher: The Groundwater Press, Hudson, New York

Iino learned English from Jesuits in a Kamakura, Japan, junior high and wrote his first poem in the language when he was a college sophomore. He remembers that it parodied Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a crowd. It does not seem far from that crowd to the clouds that bring rain. Does Iino write poems in his native Japanese? Rarely. His muse prefers his adopted tongue.

There are six poems in this book by a poet who claims his ambition is to write but a dozen poems in his life. Clearly, the lessons of that California workshop did not take and Iino's modesty emerged intact. Yet he is no delicate plant, no minimalist who seeks to ostentatiously place an orchid and a worn-out sneaker just so in an empty room. He has a big appetite for things of this world, as befits the Japanese translator of John Ashbery.
Iino has also translated Paul Auster's poetry and written a reader's guide to Auster's work. Thus his imagination-and his American-have spent time with two of America's more remarkable writers. Iino made good use of that time and let his tiger pounce when they were ready.

William Corbett