This Is How the Bone Sings

The best books about history are those that are also about the future. W. Todd Kaneko’ s marvelous This is How the Bone Sings is more than a mere song— it is a singing across time and distance. In lyrics both personal and political, Kaneko composes a score that spans four generations, connecting his grandparents, who were prisoners in the unfathomable Minidoka concentration camps, to his young son and this unfathomable era in which he was born. One of the many things I love about this book is Kaneko’ s willingness to ask big questions: what lessons about the present can we learn from the past? What is the inheritance of trauma? Can anything not be repeated? Ultimately, though, it is the craft of these poems that converts the experiences of history into the experience of art. This is a must read. – Dean Rader
In Kaneko’ s highly-anticipated This Is How the Bone Sings, we are introduced to characters mythical and marvelous in landscapes where “ … hands can be stealthy, lovesick foxes or tiny owls who doubt the night.” These are much-needed poems of unapologetic tenderness and talent— in other words, this collection does the near-impossible: it points us towards love even if what we know of this world doesn’ t. – Aimee Nezhukumatathil