Ganbatte is a Japanese word that means "do your best." In this vivid debut collection, Sarah Kortemeier wrestles with striving to meet this goal. Shifting between continents, languages, and remembered violences, she explores what it means to experience history as a tourist. She also asks how the grandchildren of those who fought in World War II move forward with the burdens of the past. Refusing to offer easy answers, Ganbatte reveals life overseas in flashes and jagged bursts of memory, minute collages observing moments of humor, loneliness, friendship, and grief from the mundane (how to distinguish parsley from cilantro in a Japanese grocery store) to the existentially overwhelming (how do we, as a species, cope with global trauma?). These formally diverse poems advocate for openness and curiosity as habits of mind when confronting personal and collective struggle.

Sarah Kortemeier is library director at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Feminist Wire, and Ploughshares.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi

Preface 3
ὁδός [hodos] 5
Gretel 6
Hansel 7
秋 [aki] 8
Poem 9
Objectives 11
First Week 13
Stimmtausch 19
Surveillance 20
Tourist 21
The Grail 23
冬 [fuyu] 25
Home 26
The First House 27

β
Expatriate 31
需 [ju] 32
Poem 33
Mount Fuji Is Still Active 34
Inheritance 35
いただきます [itadakimasu] 36
Fleißig 37
Day Trip 39

口
[I visited] 43
[We can’t refuse] 44
語 [go] 45
For Emphasis 46
[There is a Gucci] 47
訛る [namaru] 48
Poem 49
[They seem] 51
[In 2002, the mark] 53
時 [ji] 55
[She becomes] 56

って
Kyoto 59
Amsterdam 60
平安 [heian] 62
Stone with Nineteen Corners 63
頑張って [ganbatte] 64
春 [haru] 67
Princess Moon 68
The Dark Constellations 69
Endurance 70
The Holdout 71

Notes 73