The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems

$20.56
by Kimiko Hahn

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“Borrowing from [such writers as] Elizabeth Bishop and Chimako Tada, featuring ghosts and geoglyphs, writing in form and free verse, Kimiko Hahn’s broad and eclectic approach reveals a mind as vast as the terrains it traverses.”―Nicole Sealey, Poetry magazine Opening with forty-three new formally inventive poems and leading the reader back in time through selections from her ten previous volumes, The Ghost Forest offers a contemplative and haunting narrative of a writer’s artistic journey through craft and form while illuminating her personal history. Exploring the mysteries of science, nature, and the experiences of contemporary womanhood, Hahn both reinvents classic Japanese forms and experiments with traditional Western ones. Braided into the poems and narrative thread, a series of photos transforms the new-and-selected into a hybrid autobiography. This arresting collection derives new beauty from long-gone remnants. A Riotous Disorder She mistakes one word for another― Something her brain naturally concocts. Her unruly gray matter and her heart Mistake one word for an other― Razor for river , cistern for sister . Even cock for clock . She mistakes one word for a mother― A safe her brain naturally unlocks.―   26 illustrations "Setting 43 new works alongside poems chosen from Hahn’s 10 previous collections, this volume highlights her formal range and themes informed by her Japanese American heritage." ― Publishers Weekly "A rich primer of formal play and one of 2024’s gems…Hahn’s formal “fooling around,” another phrase from the section notes, thrives from origins in curiosity turned fascination." ― Rebecca Morgan Frank, Literary Hub Praise for the Poetry of Kimiko Hahn “One of the most fascinating female poets of our time.” ― BOMB “A word for Hahn need not simply encompass two meanings; it can bloom into a many-petalled thing. [Like Dickinson’s explosive verses], the closer you get to Hahn’s wry verses, the more they are likely to blow you away.” ― Alicia Ostriker, poet, critic, and activist, from American Book Review “Kimiko Hahn moves through the rooms of the mind with an oneiric weightlessness. . . . [Her work is] is a beautiful and troubling book, a marriage of what matters most: the mysteries buried at our very core and the world that cradles and cuts into us at every turn.” ― Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and memoirist “Rigorous intelligence, fierce anger, and finally a deep vulnerability inform [Kimiko Hahn’s] poems.” ― Mark Doty, National Book Award–winning poet A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Kimiko Hahn has published more than ten collections on subjects ranging from Asian American identity and zuihitsu to rarified fields of science. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, and, most recently, the 2023 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She teaches in the MFA program for Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.

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