Poetry & Sex in Public Places: A Celebration of Mutsuo Takahashi’s “Ode”

San Francisco poets Randall Mann and D. A. Powell will be reading selections from contemporary Japanese poet Mutsuo Takahashi, whose one-thousand line “Ode” is an erotic and devotional masterpiece of queer literature that has been furtively shared among gay poets for decades. The poem takes as its central occasion felatio in liminal spaces where the possibility of discovery quickens the heart. Powell and Mann will read selections from the long poem in Jack Kerouac Alley (and invite guest readers to participate in the divine verses.)

D.A. Powell’s books include Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys and Repast, both from Graywolf Press. He teaches at University of San Francisco.

Randall Mann is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Deal: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2023). He lives in San Francisco.

Mutsuo Takahashi is one of Japan’s most prominent living poets, having won almost every major poetry prize in the nation. Takahashi has published forty-eight books of poetry and countless volumes of poetry, essays, and literary criticism. Five collections of his poetry are available in English translation: Poem of a Penisist (Chicago Review Press, 1975, reprinted University of Minnesota Press, 2012), A Bunch of Keys (The Crossing Press, 1984), Sleeping, Sinning, Falling (City Lights, 1992), Two Shores (Dedalus, 2006), and We of Zipangu (Arc Publication, 2007). His memoir Twelve Views from the Distance (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), translated by Jeffrey Angles, was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. Takahashi presently lives in the seaside city of Zushi, ten kilometers to the south of Yokohama.

Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation