Foreign Bodies by Kimiko Hahn

Abstract

Reviewed by: Foreign Bodies by Kimiko Hahn Alicia Ostriker (bio) foreign bodies Kimiko Hahn W. W. Norton https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005216/about-the-book/product-details 128 pages; Print, $16.95 The center of this book of crisp-edged poems is a wild array of objects that people—mostly children—have swallowed, as cataloged by the nineteenth-century [End Page 151] collector Dr. Chevalier Jackson, a specialist in problems of the larynx. Examples for starters in the first two pages of the opening extended poem, "Object Lessons," are "a chess piece," "a kewpie doll whole," a sucked-on pencil eraser, as well as "nails and bolts, radiator key, / a child's perfect attendance pin, / a Carry-Me-For-Luck medallion." No, wait, the center of this book turns out to be the death of the poet's mother in a car crash, obliquely approached by way of the dust that the poet's mother has become, in a multistanza poem whose title "A Dusting," invites the pun "adjusting": However Mother has reappeared—say, as motes on a feather duster—scientists say the galaxywas thus created. This daybreakshe seeds a cumulous cloud. Coolly continuing through "Rukeyser's silica, Whitman's boot-soles / and Dunbar's What of his love, what of his lust?," the poem surveys the poet and her sister sweeping dust crumbs under a rug, scribbling "on the dust-bins of history" (the poet) or dusting "for fingerprints" (the detective sister) while "mother lived in a vacuum." Ultimately, Hahn arrives at a moving (in two senses) resting place: Nowadays, I lie down in the sunlightto see my mamamoting around as sympathetic ash.Yes, one morning whether misty or yellowI'll be soot with her—Elegiac and original. Last things are first, in this final line, which seems to refer to the self, the mother, the soot, and the poem itself. Oh, I see then, the center of this book is both the random swallowed things and the dead woman. The swallowed items and "my other's body, I mean my mother's body" are the foreign bodies of the title. Hahn loves catching herself in catchy Freudian slips like this one, just as she loves catching hold of miscellaneous scientific factoids. The book is whimsical. No, the book is serious. No, the book is serially and seriously whimsical, as a way (incidentally) of telling us a thing or two [End Page 152] about our lives, about love and loss, and about language. Before reading "Object Lessons," check out Hahn's brilliant essay on Japanese poetics tucked sneakily at the back of the book, where it will alert you to the multiple meanings of the word "object." As a noun, an "object" is a material thing, a piece of grammar (direct or indirect object), a lesson with a moral, a hope or purpose or intention, something you possess or want to possess, or a love object; as a verb, switching accents from óbjects to objécts, it complains, it resists. You need to be holding these meanings in mind as you begin this intricate long poem, and also as you read the book's final section. Nobody nowadays reads William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, but Hahn is mistress of all seven and more. A word for Hahn need not simply encompass two meanings; it can bloom into a many-petalled thing. I used to tell students that Emily Dickinson's verses were like hand grenades—small but explosive. This is why Dickinson called herself "volcano," "bomb," and "gun." The same is true of Kimiko Hahn's wry verses. The closer you get to them, the more they are likely to blow you away. There is also the physical effect of structure and sound. You will have a sense of hard edges. The bricolage fragments may tickle as well as disconcert you. You might become physically aware of your mouth's motions at work as soon as you begin to say lines like How to extract an open safety pin without scarring?How to save the object without anesthesia?How to preserve all two thousand foreign bodies? * A child crawls on the treacherous...