Jane Joritz-Nakagawa's Skin Museum, a collection of postmodern poetry, is reviewed by Hillel Wright in the hip Tokyo free magazine Metropolis. The poet is based in Aichi, which is the prefecture where Toyota has its headquarters. Largely agricultural and located a couple of hours by bullet train from the capital, Aichi is unspectacular if frequently picturesque.

Joritz-Nakagawa's poems are superb, however. Wright scrambles to do some research on postmodernism, an admitted influence on the poet's work.

I found it interesting that on the acknowledgements page, Joritz-Nakagawa cites as a source Postmodern Literary Theory, a book by Niall Lucy. Any mention of the word “postmodernism” is like opening a literary can of worms, and I hurried to Wikipedia to double-check my rather vague understanding of this controversial theory.

If you google Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, you'll find plenty of little online magazines featuring her poems. I urge you to do it. There is a lot to admire in these gamey verses which flow and thrust from so many different angles, deconstructing themselves while they turn a curious mirror onto a familiar world.