The Artist's Daughter: Poems [Paperback]

Kimiko Hahn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2004

"Kimiko Hahn stands as a welcome voice of experimentation and passion."—Bloomsbury Review

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The titular poet-daughter of this sixth volume dwells in a dark, sexually fervent, phantasmagoric world inspired by Germanic fairy tales. Oozing rivers, bloody cages and the artist's studio decorated "in half a dozen versions of black" are ruled over by the precepts of Freud and Jung via modern sadomasochistic imagery: "if he turns his gaze, she will beat him bloody until there is nothing left but a pile of teeth. She will hold a mirror in front of herself so all he can see are her fingertips and crown." Notes on dismemberment and bits from Gray's Anatomy are the basis for mordant rewritings of classic tales from the Brothers Grimm; in a daughter's hands, Freud's unheimlich is the slip between an ideal of motherhood, and the reality: "I understand... the stepmother in the cross-hatched woods/ abandoning the children." An odd poem-by-poem reclamation of power takes place via the recitation of sexual taboos from incest to necrophilia, and (as in Hahn's previous collection, Mosquito and Ant) poems that linger over the death of the poet's mother. Much of the book's descriptive vocabulary deploys post-structuralist theoretical constructs: the other, mirroring, "Unbecoming, a desperate homesickness/ even at home. " Self-conscious, grave and saturated with anger, this book tracks a distinctly gendered attempt to break through the emotional tether of bereavement and the irritant of social mores. If it doesn't quite succeed, it is nevertheless a primal scene of familial power.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Necrophilia, cannibalism, vivisection, and dismemberment dominate Hahn's sixth collection (after Mosquito & Ant), whose references include an abnormal psychology text and Gray's Anatomy. Almost as an aside, the title poem takes place not in the graveyard or the pervert's study but in the artist's studio, another place where the libido and the mind intersect. Here, a woman who associates the smell of paint solvents with her childhood is turned on during sex by the smell of turpentine: "She knows the truth about history/ is not some fact but an image/ teased from nerve endings." Hahn's attempts to evoke the primal period of childhood are apt to end in choppy, fragmented lines. But she is also capable of music and the shapely statement: "Once in its life the yucca moth alights/ on the yucca flower which blooms a single evening." The poems move from Asia to the U.S. Midwest (where Hahn grew up) to grungy, pregentrified New York, expressing the unease of a woman frustrated and confined by categories. And if there is something forced in the poet's attempt to connect her love relationships with the obsessions of Jeffery Dahmer & Co., there are also some telling parallels. Recommended.
Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine LLP Law Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039332558X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393325584
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #746,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and Chilling, April 25, 2004

By 

Megan A. Burns "meganaburns" (new orleans, louisiana United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Artist's Daughter: Poems (Paperback)

From the beginning, this book of poems captures your attention by demanding that the reader glimpse not only the beautiful, but also the repulsive and disturbing sides of life. The poet does an amazing job of working on the edges of her form to include email junkets, encyclopedic info, notes and stories to explore not only her subject matter, but also how the poet approaches the subject and makes it art. Her fairy tales connect her to the past, and her personal imagey keeps the tale contemporary. All of this dwells between the pages, the mother and the artist struggling with the words.