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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
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Searching... Kashmere Gardens | Adult | Non-fiction | Book | 811 H148 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
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, the complexity of conveying love to a child. In one poem, "A Bowl of Spaghetti," she cites a comparison that researchers draw between unraveling "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.
Author Notes
Kimiko Hahn has published more than ten books and is the 2023 recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She teaches in the MFA program for creative writing and literary translation at Queens College, City University of New York.
Reviews (1)
Library Journal Review
Made out of homonyms, puns, and free association, the difficult, Zenlike poetry found here shows the influence of Japanese poetic devices, especially those found in tanka and haiku. The poems achieve their effect through lists, understatement, and innuendo and mix concepts from neuroscience with everyday happenings, from awakening and sounds to a porch light, giving birth, and a mother's death. Many poems seem like a collage of items taken from books and articles that American Book Award winner Hahn (The Unbearable Heart) combines with her own observations. The poems may or may not lead to ideas, and any connections are made by the reader. One poem, for example, quotes from Diane Ackerman's "The Brain on Love" "the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life" followed by Hahn's line of free association: "Stuck smacks of 'duck' or masking tape. Mud, tar, ," which suggests that poems do have a role in rewiring the brain and that rewiring is happening as one reads the line. VERDICT Ultimately, these poems don't move so much as they burrow deeper into consciousness but slowly. For discriminating readers. C. Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
