Silent Whistle-Blowers

Each text in Goro Takano's second poetry collection published by BlazeVOX is a delicate labyrinth, each line leading to an unexpected place, and once we think we know where we are, the line leads us to another startling place as we turn the corner. Everyday gestures, in Takano's world, become something threatening, something incomprehensible, undecipherable yet wholly familiar at the same time. I admire his poems. I admire how tenderness is folded in the moments of violence, laughter enfolded in despair, the grotesque becomes beautiful. I admire that this collection is neither poetry nor prose but a creature of its own: majestic and magical and beautiful, defying categorization. It is an unnamed beast - and the name is not important.

—Mariko Nagai

Goro Takano's restless, deadpan, corkscrew imagination conjures prose poems, quatrains and stories that celebrate the life force and, if you believe his unreliable narrator, promote peace. I can't help thinking what this writer's "self-dramatizing practice" aims to unleash are not "silent whistle-blowers" so much as audible mind-blowers. Readers, be warned.

—Alan Botsford