Mosquito and Ant: Poems

by Kimiko Hahn

This breakthrough volume by award-winning poet Kimiko Hahn is her most rigorously "female" work to date as she reclaims the female body and reinvents an ancient Chinese correspondence. Mosquito and Ant refers to the style in which nu shu--a nearly extinct script used by Chinese women to correspond with one another--is written. Here in this exciting and totally original book of poems the narrator corresponds with L. about her hidden passions, her relationship with her husband and adolescent daughters, lost loves, and erotic fantasies. Kimiko Hahn's collection takes shape as a series of wide-ranging correspondences that are in turn precocious and wise, angry and wistful. Borrowing from both Japanese and Chinese traditions, Hahn offers us an authentic and complex narrator struggling with the sorrows and pleasures of being a woman against the backdrop of her Japanese-American roots.

Genres: Poetry, Womens, Literary Fiction, Asian American

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 1999

About the author

Kimiko Hahn is the author of seven poetry collections. The Unbearable Heart won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award. She has received numerous grants, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award. She teaches at Queens College/The City University of New York.

Reviews

[Marne Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are sensual poems, some in the sexual meaning of the term but most celebrating the other kind of sensuality: the touch of fabric on the skin, the smell of brewing tea, the sound of a calling bird. The book I was reminded most of while reading this was A Tale for the Time Being, partly because of the Japanese connection, but mostly because, as in that novel, I was reading the private diary of a woman meant only for another woman to read. I feel I'll have to come back to this one again and give it more attention. I probably waited too long to read it as it is, but I finally got there, and I'm glad I did.

[Lenora Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my introduction to the poetry of Kimiko Hahn, and I predict a long friendship between her writing and myself. These are strong poems about modern woman, set against a background of the Ancient Japanese and Chinese women written in the form of an old pillow book.

The title of this small book with huge poems, Mosquito & Ant, refers to the style nu shu (ancient and secret Chinese women's writing) is written—like the loops of a buzzing mosquito and the tracks of an ant.

These poems are passionate, cover a variety of topics, and beg to be read several times for both their beauty and message. The Notes at the end of the book are also worth reading.

Excellent book. Highly recommend it.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this, beautiful language and an exploration of family, love and self.

[Margarete Maneker · Rating 4 out of 5]

i have a certain fondness for vexatious women, those that are “haughty and self-effacing./Always wanting./Always evasive.” this collection really spoke to that character quality; it walked the most delicious line between the personal-confessional and that of targeted inquiry into a certain phenomenon—an obsession, perhaps. i will come back to this again and again, many poems to be written

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I was unable to do a mentorship with Kimiko Hahn, I thought I'd do the next best thing and really look at her work. She's thoughtful, emotionally expressive, and her interests often parallel mine, in that she draws from Japanese culture and literature. I expect to spend much more time in her poems.

[ryo narasaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this again and focused on the relationships between the mother and the kids, the mother and the poet, the poet and the spouse, the poet and X. Not so much X as the poet and herself.

How enviously well read.

[Gerald So · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a two-year dry spell, tt was Kimiko Hahn's graduate poetry workshop at Queens College/CUNY that rekindled my interest in poetry.