Brain Fever: Poems

by Kimiko Hahn

Overview

Rooted in traditional Japanese aesthetics and meditations on contemporary neuroscience, a stunning new volume from an essential American poet.

Acclaimed as "one of the most fascinating female poets of our time" (BOMB), Kimiko Hahn is a shape-shifter, a poet who seeks novel forms for her utterly original subject matter and "stands as a welcome voice of experimentation and passion" (Bloomsbury Review). In Brain Fever, Hahn integrates the recent findings of science, ancient Japanese aesthetics, and observations from her life as a woman, wife, mother, daughter, and artist.

Rooted in meditations on contemporary neuroscience, Brain Fever takes as its subject the mysteries of the human mind—the nature of dreams and memories, the possibly illusory nature of linear time, the complexity of conveying love to a child. In one poem, "A Bowl of Spaghetti," she cites a comparison that researchers draw between unraveling "the millions of miles of wires in the [human] brain" and "untangling a bowl of spaghetti," and thus she untangles a memory of her own: "I have an old photo: Rei in her high chair intently / picking out each strand to mash in her mouth. // Was she two? Was that sailor dress from mother? / Did I cook that sauce from scratch? If so, there was a carrot in the pot."

Equally inspired by Sei Shonagon's tenth-century Pillow Book and the latest findings of cognitive research, Brain Fever is a thrilling blend of the timely and the timeless.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393243369
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/29/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	670 KB

About the Author

A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Kimiko Hahn has published more than ten collections on subjects ranging from Asian American identity and zuihitsu to rarified fields of science. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, and, most recently, the 2023 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She teaches in the MFA program for Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.

Table of Contents

[Kimiko's Clipping Morgue: BRAIN file] 5

Consciousness

Alarm 9

Wake 10

Figure 11

The What-Have-You 12

Porch Light 13

Skull 14

The Dream of a Little Occupied Japan Doll 15

Tiny Wheels 16

Safe 17

Gag 18

A Bowl of Spaghetti 19

Turns of Mind 20

Dream

The Dream of Parsnips 23

The Dream of Bubbles 24

The Dream of a Pillow 25

The Dream of a Letter Opener in the Shape of a Mermaid 26

The Dream of Knife, Fork, and Spoon 27

The Dream of Shoji 28

The Dream of a Lacquer Box 29

The Dream of a Fire Engine 30

The Terrible-Headed-Lizard-from-the-Orient 31

Ode to Home 32

Time

"A French explorer …" 35

"[Some psychologists say] …" 36

"Bur the way [the brain] …" 37

"Yet the sensation …" 38

The Solitary Adelie 40

The Secret Lives of Planets 41

Puzzles

Giraffes 45

Fiero 47

Riddle 48

Mapping 49

Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches 50

The teenage brain

"Dopamine …" 53

"Mark Twain …" 54

"In a baby …" 55

"Synaptic pruning …" 56

"This huge surge …" 57

Resilience 58

Black Kite, White Plastic 60

Circle

Circling a Sphere 63

Circling a Nest 65

Encircling a Snail 67

Balls 68

The Compass 69

Circling an Eye 70

The Dream of a Raindrop 71

The Dream of Toast 72

Circles and Breasts 73

Frank? 74

Plagued 75

The Top Hit 76

Conveying love

"… the brain is constantly rewiring …" 81

"Thanks to advances in neuroimaging …" 82

"It isn't that caregiving …" 83

The Dream of Shells, Cocoons, Pods, and Even Husks 84

"Breaking old habits …" 85

"Dr. Siegel …" 86

"… Wedded hearts …" 87

"… we learn …" 88

Things That Make One's Stomach Chum 89

Erasing "The Aging Brain" 90

Erasing "Host Manipulation" 92

Brain Implant #3: Patterns 94

The Problem with Dwarfs 96

Cherry Stems 98

The Morphology of Flowers 100

Memory

Erasing The Biology of Memory 102

The Dream of Leaves 108

Luminous Vapours, an essay 109

Notes 113

Acknowledgments 121

Editorial Reviews

08/01/2014
Made out of homonyms, puns, and free association, the difficult, Zenlike poetry found here shows the influence of Japanese poetic devices, especially those found in tanka and haiku. The poems achieve their effect through lists, understatement, and innuendo and mix concepts from neuroscience with everyday happenings, from awakening and sounds to a porch light, giving birth, and a mother's death. Many poems seem like a collage of items taken from books and articles that American Book Award winner Hahn (The Unbearable Heart) combines with her own observations. The poems may or may not lead to ideas, and any connections are made by the reader. One poem, for example, quotes from Diane Ackerman's "The Brain on Love"—"the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life"—followed by Hahn's line of free association: "Stuck smacks of 'duck' or masking tape. Mud, tar,…," which suggests that poems do have a role in rewiring the brain and that rewiring is happening as one reads the line. VERDICT Ultimately, these poems don't move so much as they burrow deeper into consciousness…but slowly. For discriminating readers.—C. Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD

Library Journal

"Hahn’s poems glow with concentrated energy."

Boston Review

"The poems’ brevity, precise imagery, and echoing of that imagery will make readers return to the collections, finding new connections each time."

Moon City Review

"In Brain Fever, Kimiko Hahn moves through the rooms of the mind with an oneiric weightlessness. She also touches concrete ground in the realm of neuroscience, and in the world outside the mind, where love, betrayal, regret, and debilitating loss reside. This is a beautiful and troubling book, a marriage of what matters most: the mysteries buried at our very core and the world that cradles and cuts into us at every turn."

Tracy K. Smith

"A juxtaposition of current scientific research on brain function and cognition with . . . a lyrical daydream of loss and resilience. . . . Outstanding."

Pleiades

A juxtaposition of current scientific research on brain function and cognition with . . . a lyrical daydream of loss and resilience. . . . Outstanding.-- "Pleiades"

Hahn's poems glow with concentrated energy.-- "Boston Review"

In Brain Fever, Kimiko Hahn moves through the rooms of the mind with an oneiric weightlessness. She also touches concrete ground in the realm of neuroscience, and in the world outside the mind, where love, betrayal, regret, and debilitating loss reside. This is a beautiful and troubling book, a marriage of what matters most: the mysteries buried at our very core and the world that cradles and cuts into us at every turn.--Tracy K. Smith

The poems' brevity, precise imagery, and echoing of that imagery will make readers return to the collections, finding new connections each time.-- "Moon City Review"

From the Publisher