The Unbearable Heart - Softcover

Hahn, Kimiko

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1885030010 ISBN 13: 9781885030016

Publisher: Kaya/Muae, 1996

Synopsis

From Kimiko Hahn, the celebrated poet of Earshot, The Unbearable Heart is a superbly composed and passionate book on grief and mourning. The poems are both formally innovative and openly cathartic, individually and collectively compelling, turning on their own axis as they revolve around one another. They span languages, landscapes cultures and perspectives. In The Unbearable Heart, Hahn examines the everchanging meaning of surviving the death of a loved one. This collection is a palpable moving mediation on life, death and their aftermath.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Hahn (Earshot, winner of 1995 Theodore Roethke Award) finds opportunity in her mother's sudden, accidental death to explain sex, and later cremation, to her young daughters. A marked achievement in Hahn's writing is that these exchanges possess an unexpected lyricism and gentility. "I feel a passion for mother I thought I reserved for lovers," she confesses. Paramount in this volume are two lengthy works. "The Hemisphere: Kuchuk Hanem," a prose piece, begins with the image of the poet as a four-year-old seeing her mother naked in the tub, and moves on to explore issues of budding femininity, adult erotica and prostitution; quotes from studies of Flaubert are ingeniously interspersed with Hahn's memories. "Wisteria" is a three-part sequence built around random words, quotations from Roland Barthes, the messages on sympathy cards and meditations on the Tale of Genji. Here, as in several shorter poems that capture unanalyzed moments, the merging of Eastern and Western cultures provides a distinctive, almost child-like undertone.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Hahn offers a series of elegies for her mother, killed in a car accident at 68, and instead of a string of introspective musings or sentimental broodings, produces work of absolute, dark beauty. From the very first poem, we are in the hands of a sufferer whose mother meant more to her than this collection can capture. The poignancy and depth of feeling in these poems are startling and graceful; virtually every line contains a breathtaking disclosure. Hahn describes the usual bits of memory hitting the mind like shrapnel ("what hell is this where each article/emits the fragrance of mother's cold cream" ), the writers of condolence cards who say only that they cannot find the right words, and even the toll attendant who must give them directions to the hospital where her mother's body lies. A raw, powerful, utterly radiant collection that should not be missed. Elizabeth Millard

Edition details

• Publisher: Kaya/Muae
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1885030010
• ISBN 13: 9781885030016
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80