"Glyph is a wonder. Wholly original, it's visually dazzling and textually poignant. A stunner!" - Ralph Hamilton, author of Teaching a Man to Unstick His Tail
A Review of Naoko Fujimoto’s Glyph - LIT PUB - Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
"The full-color production of the book is beautiful, and because it's at a magazine-size of 8.5" x 11," the words are readable and the mixed media details are clearly discernible. Whether or not you have ever entered the world of the graphic poem, Naoko Fujimoto's Glyph is an essential addition to your poetry collection." - Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, author of Ubasute
"How do you explain how these blurred text-worlds/world-texts make room for the smallest voice—a snail's—at the same time that they accordion-pleat long histories of war and radioactive fallout?" - Luisa A. Igloria, Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia 2020-22
Review - Anthony Madrid - Matter
"This kind of poetry has a hard time in the world. The ideal thing would be to have pieces like this hanging on the wall in your apartment, where you could see 'em, day after day, for a long time. If they were hanging in a gallery, you'd miss everything. - Anthony Madrid, author of Try Never
"The fragmentary scraps of words and art on its textured pages marry in the most astounding ways." - Nancy Botkin, author of Parts That Were Once Whole
"I am enthralled and yes--trans.ported-- as I continue to leaf through "Glyph." The book is so rich, exquisitely so; revelatory about poetry-making/art-making, and groundbreaking (good word because of the unearthing of history aspect): It breaks the mold of language-based collage." - Carol Eding
"I am enthralled and yes--trans.ported-- as I continue to leaf through "Glyph." The book is so rich, exquisitely so; revelatory about poetry-making/art-making, and groundbreaking (good word because of the unearthing of history aspect): It breaks the mold of language-based collage." - Carol Eding
"While reading the book, I felt shocked by the experience, as if I couldn’t compare it to another collection of poems."
"GLYPH: A VERBO-VISUAL EXPERIENCE: Naoko Fujimoto’s GLYPH has taught me to read with all my senses, each visual poem an invitation to reach deep into its depth and swim in the language of its making. It took me weeks to get through this book because I wanted to make sure that none of the beauty each poem held escaped me. In these pages, Fujimoto writes her thinking and draws and collages her emotions. The more we “see” what’s on the page, the more we want to touch it; the more we read the words, the more we remember how to feel. Open this book and begin a visual/textual journey you’ll never want to end." - Octavio Quintanilla, San Antonio Poet Laureate 2018 - 2020
"This is a reading experience like no other. Poetry in the language of color, line, and shape. Poetry in the language of comics and collage. I just keep looking and re-looking, reading and re-reading." - Kelcey Parker Ervick, author of The Bitter Life of Božena Němcová
"Wow! Glyph is a singular achievement that defines genre categorization." - Anne McGrath, Best American Essays 2020 Notable
"Wow! Glyph is a singular achievement that defines genre categorization." - Anne McGrath, Best American Essays 2020 Notable
Natalie Solmer, Editor at The Indianapolis Review
#1 New Release in Asian American Poetry
"This playful assortment of materials offers a dramatic juxtaposition between the bright, colorful compositions and the dark, somber, thought-provoking lines of poetry which dance across each page." - Frances Cannon, author of Walter Benjamin: Reimagined
"Beautifully disorienting and transformative. I'm astonished at this book." - Ann Hudson, author of The Armillary Sphere
"This is clearly a masterful blend of text and image! Naoko's instincts are amazing." - Gail Goepfert, author of Tapping Roots
And more editorial reviews from Virginia Bell, Jacob Saenz, and Dara Yen Elerath!
"Beautifully disorienting and transformative. I'm astonished at this book." - Ann Hudson, author of The Armillary Sphere
"This is clearly a masterful blend of text and image! Naoko's instincts are amazing." - Gail Goepfert, author of Tapping Roots
And more editorial reviews from Virginia Bell, Jacob Saenz, and Dara Yen Elerath!
With GLYPYs
"This book is a tour de force of artistry, so inspiring." - Beth McDermott, author of How to Leave a Farmhouse
"Naoko Fujimoto's Glyph is the first book of visual poetry that I've read that doesn't follow a narrative. The poems follow certain themes -- the poet's grandfather's experience during the war, her life in the Philippines, and in the US." - Celia Bland, author of Cherokee Road Kill
"Naoko is an incredibly talented and generous artist." - Elizabeth O’Connell-Thompson, the Media Associate for Poetry Foundation.
"Naoko Fujimoto's Glyph is the first book of visual poetry that I've read that doesn't follow a narrative. The poems follow certain themes -- the poet's grandfather's experience during the war, her life in the Philippines, and in the US." - Celia Bland, author of Cherokee Road Kill
"Naoko is an incredibly talented and generous artist." - Elizabeth O’Connell-Thompson, the Media Associate for Poetry Foundation.
Brevity (the magazine) , Meg Reynolds, author of "A Comic Year"
"So excited to receive Naoko Fujimoto's graphic poetry collection Glyph from Tupelo Press! I'm already lost in the pages..." - Donna Vorreyer, author of To Everything There Is
"Each page is like a little treasure map." - John McCarthy, author of Scared Violent Like Horses
"Fujimoto is so highly skilled at both the art and the writing that each of them would work on their own here, but together--magic!" - Gretchen Primack, author of Kind
"Each page is like a little treasure map." - John McCarthy, author of Scared Violent Like Horses
"Fujimoto is so highly skilled at both the art and the writing that each of them would work on their own here, but together--magic!" - Gretchen Primack, author of Kind
Photo by Angela Narciso Torres, author of "What Happens Is Neither"
"Every time I turn to it, I notice something I did not see before." - Sherry Smith
Open Books @openpoetrybooks
“I was wandering around the house of poetry and this book showed me to a door I didn’t know existed. Now, on the other side, nothing is the same. By layering and arranging found art, original drawings, washi, photos, paint, and bits of leaf, Naoko Fujimoto has created a stunning contemporary emaki engaged with Japanese heritage, the horrors of war, and daughterhood, offering us a dynamic accumulation on the page that feels as delightful and devastating as life itself.” --Gabrielle Bates, a finalist for the Bergman Prize, judged by Louise Glück
“Naoko’s poetry is ‘trans. sensory.’ It relays the work of translating sources, events, emotional revelations, and emotional search parties into text. It is the very demonstration of the pluralizing experience of poetry itself. Where distinct ‘graphic’ practices meet, at the edges of one material and another, a thin veil of blur where one material gives way to the surface of another, we are presented with a strand to sit on and ponder a detail of poetry related to voice: voice demonstrates in registers. Those registers are the coordinates of a geography we often assume to a composed poetic speaker, a composed, dispositive emotional face to accompany the text. The joy of walking inside a kaleidoscope and touching the surfaces we witness only in two dimension reveals emotional disposition to be a process of stages and witnessed events threaded-through by string, paper, color, and breath— all of it mapped together. All of it a living process of the poet, who is no less heroic if not heroically more honest. Why would we seek to simplify poetry’s beauty and complexity and richness into a plain white page and marginalized text? I’d rather smell the vision of ‘trembling camphor trees,’ let them haunt me, and share the work of making poetic sense of human sinew, mnemonic echoes, and textural gestures. I am comforted by the face of poems like ‘Drinking Poem’ or ‘Foreign / Grey’ in this collection, which console my efforts at hearing poetry with the reminder that a poet must too also work, and care, and persuade the poem from a four-dimensional world, and from all those marvelously experiential, sensory hiding places. What Naoko works when they hold, turn, and consider the personal before handing it back transformed into the world from which it came is what we see and hear in these poems, these trans. sensory dioramas that are more than simply pages of a book, but environments of a memory translated from a historical world, and given back to our minds to consider, to turn, to feel.” -- José Felipe Alvergue, author of scenery.
“Naoko’s poetry is ‘trans. sensory.’ It relays the work of translating sources, events, emotional revelations, and emotional search parties into text. It is the very demonstration of the pluralizing experience of poetry itself. Where distinct ‘graphic’ practices meet, at the edges of one material and another, a thin veil of blur where one material gives way to the surface of another, we are presented with a strand to sit on and ponder a detail of poetry related to voice: voice demonstrates in registers. Those registers are the coordinates of a geography we often assume to a composed poetic speaker, a composed, dispositive emotional face to accompany the text. The joy of walking inside a kaleidoscope and touching the surfaces we witness only in two dimension reveals emotional disposition to be a process of stages and witnessed events threaded-through by string, paper, color, and breath— all of it mapped together. All of it a living process of the poet, who is no less heroic if not heroically more honest. Why would we seek to simplify poetry’s beauty and complexity and richness into a plain white page and marginalized text? I’d rather smell the vision of ‘trembling camphor trees,’ let them haunt me, and share the work of making poetic sense of human sinew, mnemonic echoes, and textural gestures. I am comforted by the face of poems like ‘Drinking Poem’ or ‘Foreign / Grey’ in this collection, which console my efforts at hearing poetry with the reminder that a poet must too also work, and care, and persuade the poem from a four-dimensional world, and from all those marvelously experiential, sensory hiding places. What Naoko works when they hold, turn, and consider the personal before handing it back transformed into the world from which it came is what we see and hear in these poems, these trans. sensory dioramas that are more than simply pages of a book, but environments of a memory translated from a historical world, and given back to our minds to consider, to turn, to feel.” -- José Felipe Alvergue, author of scenery.
