Customer Reviews

Mosquito and Ant: Poems

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Sly wit and biting observations on contemporary womanhood couched in the context of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book and ancient Chinese and Japanese poets. I loved these poems, the adventurous avenues, the casual everyday activities juxtaposed with the startling image and wrenching confessions.

I loved this book by Kimiko Hahn--the range, the inventivenss, the sense of play. I appreciate how her writing is enlivened by contemporary criticism and cultural studies while still being grounded in history and literature and apt observations of the world and its inhabitants.

Those familiar with Kimiko Hahn's previous collection, The Unbearable Heart, will find the same deeply personal quality but slightly brighter; no longer only on the subject of grief, Hahn shares other longings and speculations. These works are beautiful language without any of the unnecessary; simple and meaningful images, and direct ponderings.