5.1 Paul Franz & Ryan Hintzman on the Literary Imagination in Waka Bay & Traditional Japanese Verse

Today’s episode features a conversation between Literary Imagination editor Paul Franz, and Ryan Hintzman, Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature at Indiana University Bloomington. He recently received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale. Ryan HIntzman has an article in the new issue of Literary Imagination called “Distant Views of Waka Bay: Traditional Japanese Verse and the Question of Lyric” which centers on the real and imaginary Waka Bay in Japan. Hintzman says “Waka Bay (Waka no ura) is a pliable poetic place name (utamakura) whose name suggests the “Bay of Japanese Poetry” (waka). The real Waka Bay is a picturesque salt marsh located down the coastline from modern Osaka, but over centuries of poetic practice the physical landscape became entangled with an idealized site for the exercise of the literary imagination.” We’ve made “Distant Views of Waka Bay: Traditional Japanese Verse and the Question of Lyric” available free to read via Project MUSE for the month of April. The image in the podcast icon is a view of Mount Nagusa from Mount Tengu in Wakayama, Wakayama prefecture, Japan. Photo by 663 Highlands; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.