Quake Notes

US: Country Valley Press, 2012. Paperback. Fine. On March 11, 2011 at 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a giant tsunami d evastated parts of Japan's Tohoku and Kanto regions. Quake Notes is a journ al of poet Scott Watson's experience in Sendai. Originally appearing as ema ils to friends/relatives around the world, these notes helped to sooth and focus Watson while surviving with no electricity and water, scarce food and supplies, and frequent after shocks. He writes: "We sleep, but it is a ver y light sleep and we are startled throughout by more rumbling and shaking. We have socks on too and are ready to run out of our house should the shaki ng get too violent. How does one tell? How does one know when to ride it ou t or when to get out?" And then there is the looming situation in Fukushima , along with Watson's wife's radiation treatments. "I'm planning our escape . The roads North are clear. Winter snows are melting. Morie's radiation se ssions: ten days more. Will Fukushima's nukes hold off until then, or will the danger zone expand?" Not just a survival diary, Quake Notes is a cultur al critique and a poetic meditation that culminates into a political song a gainst the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. From the forword by John Martone: "Watson's Quake Notes would translate well into Japanese. The diary, from Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, through Basho and Issa to Kenzaburo Oe's Hiroshima Notes, has been a prized Japanese art form, and readers familiar with those writers will see how clearly Watson's work stands in their light. Watson is never explicit about this heritage; there is nothing self-consciously literary about this little book, but like its antecedents, Quak.