POEMS OF A PENISIST

A collection of homoerotic poetry by one of Japan’s most prominent poets

By Mutsuo Takahashi
Translated by Hiroaki Sato, with introduction by Burton Watson
University of Minnesota Press | 128 pages
ISBN 978-0-8166-7972-0 | paperback |

A groundbreaking collection of queer poetry, Mutsuo Takahashi’s Poems of a Penisist is a celebration of the male body, treating homosexual desire as something sacred. Stunningly beautiful and passionate, Poems of a Penisist is one of the most important compilations of homoerotic poetry written in the twentieth century.

PRAISE FOR POEMS OF A PENISIST:

“Mr. Takahashi was exempted from the human principle that every young boy grows up to be a young man. . . . He did not have to go down to the bottom of the sea, down to the bottom of the female genitalia, which many a young man mistakes for a philosophy, mistakes for profundity.” Yukio Mishima

“Takahashi deserves to be known here, and this is a fine introduction.” Library Journal