The Breadth of Our Existence: On Kimiko Hahn

In the closing couplet of Kimiko Hahn’s wondrous poem “The Dream of a Fire Engine,” the speaker notes, “the scientist of sleep has claimed/that without warm blood a creature cannot dream.” What precedes that claim is an expanded, anaphoric list of disparate items and attributes all alluding to the color red—“the sun filtered through closed eyelids,” “Mother’s lipstick,” “Mao’s favorite novel about a chamber”—without which dreaming is further rendered impossible. The tangled mass of associative images lends credibility to, and culminates in, the scientific truth at the poem’s end. It is this tangled mass that makes the poem possible. Many of Hahn’s poems work like this, using a dense weave of images and ideas to form a critical mass that catalyzes the poem.

To great effect, Hahn’s poetry welcomes miscellany and disorder. It is said that a clean house is a sign of a wasted life and mess a sign of a life well-lived. Among her poetry students, Kimiko Hahn has been known to advise: “Make a mess.” She encourages them to get their hands dirty, to jump into (not over) puddles, to play with their food. This, Hahn insists as poetry teacher and practitioner, is how we come to know ourselves and the world we share.

Life is a messy matter. We wail as we enter and, likely, as we exit. Hahn’s poems, thankfully, respond in kind, reminding us that we are not alone. That we exist side by side. That our existence is profound, no matter how seemingly prosaic. Like a whole-animal butcher, she engages the breadth of our existence, from nose to tail. From Basho to neuroscience. From motherhood to entomology. Nothing goes to waste. Everything is sourced for meat. She brings in all the senses, along with the mechanical, natural, and linguistic elements of our world: “the whir from a live wire,” “the sun in the suburbs,” “iambic lines drafted in silt.” All of it. Borrowing from Elizabeth Bishop and Chimako Tada, featuring ghosts and geoglyphs, writing in form and free verse, Kimiko Hahn’s broad and eclectic approach reveals a mind as vast as the terrains it traverses.