The Narrow Road to the Interior: Poems [Hardcover]

Kimiko Hahn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0393061892 | ISBN-13: 978-0393061895 | Edition: 1

An expansive new work from a poet of "rigorous intelligence, fierce anger, and deep vulnerability" (Mark Doty).

Kimiko Hahn, "a welcome voice of experimentation and passion" (Bloomsbury Review), takes up the Japanese prose-poetry genre zuihitsu literally "running brush," which utilizes tactics such as juxtaposition, contradiction, and broad topical variety in exploring her various identities as mother and lover, wife and poet, daughter of varied traditions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A kind of poet's journal or miscellany, mixing verse with prose, considered ideas with spontaneous exclamations, notes to friends and even e-mails, Hahn's seventh book adapts the traditional Japanese prose poetry genre zuihitsu to modern American aims. The notebook form allows room for scenes in Brooklyn and on Cape Cod; the poet's feelings about her preteen daughter and her former husband; her thoughts on academia and on Asian-Americanness; her experience of her own body, in youth, in sex and in middle age; and her reactions to 9/11. Honesty has long stood among Hahn's strengths: "I want hands on my face the way no husband or woman has ever held me." Childhood recollections are also movingly evoked: "I need not write about those snow forts where I lay on my back looking up at the ceiling turning into twilight, my mother calling from the trite threshold." Hahn's self-consciousness about this cross-cultural form—a recurring theme—can become self-indulgent, and the development comes not from a change in Hahn, but from the terrorist attack on her city. No revelation emerges at notebook's end. And yet her individual musings retain their force, even in a form Hahn (The Artist's Daughter, 2004) calls "a kind of fragmented anything." (July)
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About the Author

Kimiko Hahn is the author of several books of poetry, including The Narrow Road to the Interior, The Artist's Daughter, Mosquito and Ant, and Toxic Flora. Her many honors include the American Book Award. She lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (July 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061892
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061895
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 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: #1,655,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deftly and expertly written, May 5, 2008

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Narrow Road to the Interior: Poems (Paperback)

Accomplished, award-winning and prolific poet Kimiko Hahn is back once more with her seventh and anticipated fine volume of poetry, "The Narrow Road to The Interior." Using a new technique for her but will known to others, a free-form style native to Japan called zuihitsu, her poetry retains the same charm that was loved in her previous anthologies, covering her experiences as lover, mother, and a mixed child of eastern and western traditions, "The Narrow Road to The Interior" is deftly and expertly written, making it highly recommended to community library poetry collections and a must have for her fans of her previous books alongside readers new to Hahn's work.