Brain Fever: Poems

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 and the complexity of conveying love to a child. In one poem, A Bowl of Spaghetti , she cites a comparison that researchers draw between unravelling 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.