The Narrow Road to the Interior
Place on List:
III. Period: 1960 - 2009
3. Primary Texts: Poetry
Kimiko
Hahn. The
Narrow Road to the Interior.
(2008)
Supporting References:
- Not about the text but perhaps a reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow_Road_to_the_Interior
Synopses &
Reviews
Publisher Comments:
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.
Review:
"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)"
Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information,
Inc.)
Synopsis:
An expansive new work from a poet of
"rigorous intelligence, fierce anger, and deep vulnerability"
(Mark Doty).
Synopsis:
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.
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.
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Comments