The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems

“One of the most fascinating female poets of our time.” —Bomb

“Borrowing from [such writers as] 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.”—Nicole Sealey, Poetry magazine

Opening with forty-three new formally inventive poems and leading the reader back in time through selections from her ten previous volumes, The Ghost Forest offers a contemplative and haunting narrative of a writer’s artistic journey through craft and form while illuminating her personal history. Exploring the mysteries of science, nature, and the experiences of contemporary womanhood, Hahn both reinvents classic Japanese forms and experiments with traditional Western ones. Braided into the poems and narrative thread, a series of photos transforms the new-and-selected into a hybrid autobiography. This arresting collection derives new beauty from long-gone remnants.

A Riotous Disorder

She mistakes one word for another—

Something her brain naturally concocts.

Her unruly gray matter and her heart

Mistake one word for an other—

Razor for river, cistern for sister.

Even cock for clock.

She mistakes one word for a mother—

A safe her brain naturally unlocks.—