Harriet Rubin's Mother's Wooden Hand (Phoenix Poets) [Hardcover]

Susan Hahn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0226312992 | ISBN-13: 978-0226312996 | Edition: 1

Redolent of Chicago's ethnic culture, Susan Hahn's intensely personal lyrics emerge from the world of an extended Jewish family and its neighbors. The voices of these immigrants are imbued with the profound effects and memories of the journey "From a patrolled town in the Ukraine/to Baltimore on a boat, then a train to Chicago." Hahn's poetry is about love and the lack of love, about rejection, and about other forces—generational, political, social, and sexual—that overwhelm individuals and cause them to limit themselves both physically and psychologically.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her first book of poetry, Hahn explores the origins of the imperfect psyche and the lifelong effects of traumatic childhood events upon the adult emotional life. For the character in "Claustrophobia," the feeling of being unwanted "started in the womb"; "Voices from the other side / spoke of how they hoped / it was a boy. / She wanted to run, / unravel from the fetal knot." In "Looking Out on Africa," the speaker remembers watching from her crib as her parents made love, an experience that has greatly influenced her own sexual behavior: "Memory merges with my own / geometry, becomes part of how / I dance /the foreign dance, / sing / the strange sounds." Hahn's Freudian interpretations of her speakers' actions are often witty and provocative, but much of this poetry is too straightforwardly narrative, lacking acute insight and inventive wordplay. Only when the story Hahn is telling is shocking by its very nature does the reader really sit up and take notice:ital correct/pk "I've never felt my father's / love, but when I was six / we took a bath together. / Curious, I moved toward him and he jumped, / slapped my fingers; the water / stung my wide open / eyes."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Hahn is a storyteller who uses her milieu, the immigrant Jewish culture of Chicago, to evoke a child's mystified grasp of family and neighborhood lore as well as an adult's trying to "understand who we are to each other,/ wake up the living, wake the dead." There are many fine stories here; the neuroses, secrets, good humor, defeats, and triumphs of three generations. The fact that the stories the poetry tells are often better than the poetry itself--consisting of awkwardly broken lines of blank verse--might not matter much to readers interested in the material. Libraries with collections of Jewish literature will be particularly interested.
-Kathleen Norris, Lemmon
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 89 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (June 18, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226312992
• ISBN-13: 978-0226312996
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

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