Search results for ""Author Kimiko Hahn""

A unique anthology of poems from around the world and through the ages that celebrate magic and magiciansNo matter how modern or scientifically advanced our societies become, human beings remain perpetually enthralled by the idea of magic, from our daily superstitions to our choices of entertainment. Magic has long been a central subject of poetry, and the poems in this collection are evocative evidence that the poet’s art depends on a form of wizardry—the ability to conjure enchantment from a particular combination of words.Venerable literary wizards such as Shakespeare's Prospero, Tennyson's Merlin, and T. S. Eliot's Mr. Mistoffelees make appearances here alongside illusionists and prestidigitators in Kay Ryan's Houdini, Ted Kooser's Card Trick, Charles Simic's My Magician, and Richard Wilbur's The Mind-Reader. Here is a treasury of poetic spells, charms, and incantations, from Elise Paschen's Love Spell, Robert Graves's Love and Black Magic, a

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Inspired by her encounter with Dr Chevalier Jackson’s collection of ingested curiosities at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, Kimiko Hahn’s tenth collection investigates the grip that seemingly insignificant objects exert on our lives. Itself a cabinet of curiosities, the collection provokes the same surprise, wonder and pangs of recognition Hahn felt upon opening drawer after drawer of these swallowed and retrieved, objects—a radiator key, a child’s perfect attendance pin, a mother-of-pearl button. The speaker of these moving poems sees reflections of these items in the heartbreaking detritus of her family home and in her long-dead mother’s Japanese jewellery. As Hahn remakes the lyric sequence in chains reminiscent of the Japanese tanka, the foreign bodies of the title expand to include the immigrant woman’s trafficked body, fossilised remains, a grandmother’s Japanese body. She explores the relationship between our innermost selves and the relics of our vanished past, making room for meditation on grief and the ephemeral nature of the material world, for the account of a nineteenth-century female fossil hunter, and for a celebration of the nautilus. Foreign Bodies investigates the power of possession, replete with Hahn’s electric originality and thrilling mastery of ever-changing forms.

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Acclaimed as "one of the most fascinating female poets of our time" (BOMB), Kimiko Hahn is a shape-shifter, a poet who seeks novel forms for her utterly original subject matter and "stands as a welcome voice of experimentation and passion" (Bloomsbury Review). In Brain Fever, Hahn integrates the recent findings of science, ancient Japanese aesthetics and observations from her life as a woman, wife, mother, daughter and artist. Rooted in meditations on contemporary neuroscience, Brain Fever takes as its subject the mysteries of the human mind—the nature of dreams and memories, the possibly illusory nature of linear time and the complexity of conveying love to a child. In one poem, "A Bowl of Spaghetti", she cites a comparison that researchers draw between unravelling "the millions of miles of wires in the [human] brain" and "untangling a bowl of spaghetti", and thus she untangles a memory of her own: "I have an old photo: Rei in her high chair intently / picking out each strand to mash in her mouth. // Was she two? Was that sailor dress from mother? / Did I cook that sauce from scratch? If so, there was a carrot in the pot." Equally inspired by Sei Shonagon's tenth-century Pillow Book and the latest findings of cognitive research, Brain Fever is a thrilling blend of the timely and the timeless.

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Kimiko Hahn's poetry explores the interplay—and tensions—among her various identities: mother, lover, wife, poet, and daughter of both the Midwest and Asia. However astonishing her subjects—from sideshow freaks to sadomasochistic fantasy—they ultimately emerge in this startling collection as moving images of the deepest levels of our shared humanity.

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Inspired by her encounter with Dr. Chevalier Jackson’s collection of ingested curiosities at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, Kimiko Hahn’s tenth collection investigates the grip that seemingly insignificant objects exert on our lives. Itself a cabinet of curiosities, the collection provokes the same surprise, wonder, and pangs of recognition Hahn felt upon opening drawer after drawer of these swallowed, and retrieved, objects—a radiator key, a child’s perfect attendance pin, a mother-of-pearl button. The speaker of these moving poems sees reflections of these items in the heartbreaking detritus of her family home, and in her long-dead mother’s Japanese jewelry. As Hahn remakes the lyric sequence in chains reminiscent of the Japanese tanka, the foreign bodies of the title expand to include the immigrant woman’s trafficked body, fossilized remains, a grandmother’s Japanese body. She explores the relationship between our innermost selves and the relics of our vanished past, making room for meditation on grief and the ephemeral nature of the material world, for the account of a nineteenth-century female fossil hunter, and for a celebration of the nautilus. Foreign Bodies investigates the power of possession, replete with Hahn’s electric originality and thrilling mastery of ever-changing forms.

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In a stunning cycle of persona poems, Daneen Wardrop offers us a panoramic view of the inner lives of those forgotten among the violence and strife of the American Civil War: the nurse and the woman soldier, the child and the draftee, the prostitute, the black slave, and the Native American soldier. Each one speaks out to be seen and heard, bearing witness to the mundanity of suffering experienced by those whose presence was ubiquitous yet erased in the official histories of the War Between the States. Cyclorama takes its name from the theater-sized, in-the-round oil paintings popular in the late nineteenth century, and with each poem, Wardrop adds a panel to her expansive, engrossing portrait of the bloodshed and tears, the tedium and fear experienced by the Civil War living and the dying. With pathos and lyric force, she brings sharply into focus perspectives on an unfathomable experience we thought we already knew and understood. from "Women's Sanitary Corps" Sister, I link arms with you as we enter this log-steepled tent, white on the outside, but on the inside the deep maroon of thick-spackled, internal things. How can it be so simple here? Bed, man-- bed, man-- where the pain leaves no room for anything else. My mouth is dry. No, stay with me, these sheet-smoothed boys need us with their nocturnal eyes, not predatory but grieving, as good animals the body, not ready, not able to be ready. La, where did they put their good body?

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In Brood, Kimiko Hahn trains her eye on the commonplace—clothespins, bees, papaya, perfume, poached eggs, a sponge, fire, sand dollars—and reveals their very essence in concise evocative language. Underlying these little gems is a sense of loss, a mother's death or a longing for childhood. "Brood" connotes the bundling of family or beasts, but also dark thinking, and both are at play here where the less said, the better. Kimiko Hahn is the author of ten books of poetry, including most recently, Brain Fever (Norton, 2014). She has received numerous honors, including the PSA's Shelley Memorial Prize, the PEN/Voelcker Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a distinguished professor in creative writing at Queens College (CUNY) and lives in Forest Hills, New York.

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Given that insects vastly outnumber us (there are approximately 200 million insects for every human) it is no surprise that there is a rich body of verse on the creeping, scuttling, flitting, stinging things with which we share our planet. Many cultures have centuries-old traditions of insect poetry. In China,where noblewomen of the Tang dynasty kept crickets in gold cages-countless songs were written in praise of these 'insect musicians'. The haiku masters of Japan were similarly inspired, though spread their net wider to include less prepossessing bugs such as houseflies, fleas and mosquitoes. In the West, poems about insects date back to the ancient Greeks, and insects feature frequently in European literature from the 16th century onwards. The poets collected here range from Donne, Marvell, Keats and Wordsworth; Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Christina Rossetti, to Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Ted Hughes, Paul Muldoon and Alice Oswald. In translation there is verse by - amongst others - Meleager and Tu Fu, Ivan Turgenev, Victor Hugo, Paul Valéry, Pablo Neruda, Antonio Machado and Xi Chuan. Bees, butterflies and beetles, cockroaches and caterpillars, fireflies and dragonflies, ladybirds and glowworms--the miniature creatures that adorn these pages are as varied as the poetic talents that celebrate them.

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Jessica Fisher's second book of poems brings lyric's intensity of perception to an era of global war while chronicling the everyday motions of new motherhood. In this elegant and elusive work, the inmost moves outward, like sight or voice, into the external world.

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In a stunning cycle of persona poems, Daneen Wardrop offers us a panoramic view of the inner lives of those forgotten among the violence and strife of the American Civil War: the nurse and the woman soldier, the child and the draftee, the prostitute, the black slave, and the Native American soldier. Each one speaks out to be seen and heard, bearing witness to the mundanity of suffering experienced by those whose presence was ubiquitous yet erased in the official histories of the War Between the States. Cyclorama takes its name from the theater-sized, in-the-round oil paintings popular in the late nineteenth century, and with each poem, Wardrop adds a panel to her expansive, engrossing portrait of the bloodshed and tears, the tedium and fear experienced by the Civil War living and the dying. With pathos and lyric force, she brings sharply into focus perspectives on an unfathomable experience we thought we already knew and understood. from "Women's Sanitary Corps" Sister, I link arms with you as we enter this log-steepled tent, white on the outside, but on the inside the deep maroon of thick-spackled, internal things. How can it be so simple here? Bed, man-- bed, man-- where the pain leaves no room for anything else. My mouth is dry. No, stay with me, these sheet-smoothed boys need us with their nocturnal eyes, not predatory but grieving, as good animals the body, not ready, not able to be ready. La, where did they put their good body?

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A petite, beautifully packaged collection of poems about motherhood, this is the perfect gift for mothers of all ages. This beautifully illustrated, empowering collection features more than 25 poignant poems about the incredible experience of being a mother. Filled with inspiring and moving poetry exploring motherhood in all its dimensions-from pregnancy and birth to the countless joys, struggles, and hilarious moments that come with raising children—this book is a perfect gift for mothers at every stage, whether they're expecting or empty nesting. Presented in a petite, eye-catching package with contemporary illustrations throughout, this is a lovely, arresting tribute to the life-altering journey of motherhood. • PERFECT GIFT: Whether you're attending a friend's baby shower or you're looking for something for your own mother on Mother's Day, this petite, affordable, and charmingly packaged celebration of motherhood is just the thing. • POETRY TREND: Featuring young, contemporary voices beside beloved, time-tested poets, this pretty, slim volume will appeal to poetry lovers and mothers of all ages. • CELEBRATES DIVERSE VOICES: The range of poets included in this collection is wide and diverse. With poems by up-and-comers, classic poets, women, and men, of all ages and ethnicities, this book captures a broad, representative spectrum of the experience of motherhood. Consumer: • Mothers of all ages • Shoppers looking for a gift for a mother—whether for a baby shower, Mother's Day, or another occasion • Poetry lovers

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