AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: Save Everything

 

 

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off the Shelf. I’m Helena de Groot. Today, Save Everything.

 

There’s a museum in Philadelphia with drawers of almost 2,500 objects, all swallowed by kids—buttons, small toys, a school pin for “perfect attendance.” The objects were retrieved by a doctor, Dr. Chevalier Quixote Jackson, and put on display so others could learn how you best remove a potentially deadly foreign body. In Foreign Bodies, her latest poetry collection, Kimiko Hahn takes this story of objects lost and recovered to tell her own.

 

Kimiko Hahn grew up in Pleasantville, New York, in a household that revolved around art. Her parents were artists, who enrolled both Hahn and her sister in lots of different classes, from painting to dance to music, and her childhood home was filled with art catalogs and paint supplies.

 

But after the sudden death of her mother, almost 30 years ago, their home changed. Her father had a hard time throwing things away. At some point, he wouldn’t let his daughters come inside anymore. They only entered the house after he died, three and a half years ago, to try and pick through the stuff that was covering the floors. Hahn says about that process that it was “a kind of recovery … an excavation of things from our childhood.”

 

I recently talked to Kimiko Hahn about her new collection. Here’s our conversation.

 

Helena de Groot: I wanted to ask you about Foreign Bodies, but I also wanted to go back a little bit further first, because, Foreign Bodies is so full with objects. And so, the first thing I wanted to know was, is there is there an object from your childhood that had a powerful hold on you? Something almost, you know, talismanic for you?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Huh, wow. I’d really have to think of that for a while. I mean, there were objects that were important to me. And of course, I had various junk drawers where these objects lived. The first thing that came to mind, though, was one Christmas, I got a little children’s safe with an actual combination lock. I don’t know how old I was, maybe eight or nine, seven or eight, I don’t know. Old enough to use a combination lock.

 

Helena de Groot: Right.

 

Kimiko Hahn: And I can’t remember what I put in it, but there were probably talismanic important objects. (LAUGHS) But in Japan—we lived in Japan for a year. And there’s a game, they look like flat marbles. They’re like, little flat round shapes of glass, with almost like a flume of paint. And some friends there taught me how to play with them. And it is like marbles. You sort of drop them down and shoot them through. And they seemed so important that when I bought some for myself, I didn’t even take them out of the bag. (LAUGHS) They’re probably somewhere around, or maybe they just, maybe they’re still in my father’s house somewhere buried.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Whoever bought that house. I don’t know what they did with it, but, all of the leftover stuff. But maybe that comes close.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. And why do you think your parents gave you a little safe?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because—I mean, my sister got one, too, my younger sister, she’s younger than I am. And I don’t know, maybe we were squabbling too much or something. (LAUGHS) Let’s just keep these things separate. There are some things that only belong to you. I don’t know.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. But I love that idea. I mean, it’s so fantastic because I think—I don’t have kids, but just from sort of observing my friend’s kids, this development of, you know, marking your territory and being like, “This is mine,” you know, no one else can touch that. It’s so strong.

 

Kimiko Hahn: It’s so strong.

 

Helena de Groot: And so it’s funny that your parents sort of took it to the next level and were like, “Fine, you can lock it up in a safe.”

 

Kimiko Hahn: (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

 

Kimiko Hahn: I guess. Who knows what they were thinking. Maybe they just happened to be on sale. I don’t know. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. (LAUGHS) And did you spend a lot of time alone as a kid, just sort of doing or thinking your own thing?

 

Kimiko Hahn: I did, mostly because the house we lived in was on the outskirts of town. I had a good friend who lived next door, a year older. So I played with her a lot as a child. But we also fought like two little kittens. We were just always squabbling. And she moved away. And as I got older, I did spend more and more time by myself, because everybody else was, lived far away, half a mile, a mile away. And it was not a convenient walk to get anywhere. A little treacherous walking or even riding a bike. And I didn’t want to ask my parents to drive me around everywhere. And then by the time I got to high school, I kind of took myself out of, pretty much took myself out of socializing. So I really did spend a lot of time by myself, except for a boyfriend in New York City. (LAUGHS) So a little precocious there. Yeah, but not so much school friends. I was a little … I felt vulnerable. I probably looked like I was conceited or something.

 

Helena de Groot: What does that mean again?

 

Kimiko Hahn: You know, that I was kind of full of myself, that I thought I was better than everybody else, but that wasn’t it at all. I actually felt very vulnerable. So I would eat lunch alone and stuff like that.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. And did you have something, you know, something you liked to do where you could express yourself and bloom instead of feel vulnerable?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Well, listen to music.

 

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Let’s see, I went to high school in the early ’70s, so there was plenty of terrific Rock & Roll. Listen to music, read and write. And also, I grew up in a family of visual artists. So my sister and I were always doing sort of crafty things. So, you know, tie dying t-shirts, because I was a hippie. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: Yes! (LAUGHS)

 

Kimiko Hahn: Making love beads because I was a hippie. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Wait and tie dyeing, that was like in the bathtub, or where did you do that?

 

Kimiko Hahn: On the stove. On the stove.

 

Helena de Groot: Ohh.

 

Kimiko Hahn: It was boiling water and then putting the dye in. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: Wow. Yeah. What were you tie dyeing? Was that shirts or was that things to hang on the wall?

 

Kimiko Hahn: No, outfits. Yes. Shirts and skirts and, yeah. And I would either use rubber bands or I would stitch and pull and then wind the thread, thick thread around the pulled fabric.

 

Helena de Groot: And was this whole hippie thing, was that aesthetic for you or did you also have an inkling about the politics of it?

 

Kimiko Hahn: It was aesthetic. It was a social statement. My boyfriend in the city—my sister and I took Japanese language and dance from the time we were fairly young. And so I met my boyfriend because he is Japanese American and he was also in Japanese language class with me. He was a real radical, though. I mean, he—so I was introduced to politics, grassroots organizing, and the movement, and Marxism and all that stuff in high school, and it was pretty heady. Pretty attractive. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah!

 

Kimiko Hahn: My parents couldn’t believe it. Like, “Oh, my god, we just wanted you to learn Japanese.” (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

 

Kimiko Hahn: Oh, dear.

 

Helena de Groot: And what did you do with that newfound domain of life, you know? What was that, like, discussion groups? Did you read a lot? Was it just sitting around and listening to other people debate the future of the world, or like, you know, what shape did it take?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Well, I really only saw him on Saturdays when I was taking Japanese language class and dance. But I would read things that he recommended. I recently thought of reading Sartre’s, Existentialism, and really not understanding a word of it. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

 

Kimiko Hahn: So, you know, just trying to understand what was going on. And I did go to some of his meetings and listen to people hold forth and organize. And that was very exciting. One of the people I met during that period, too, was—her name was Aichi Kochiyama. And her mother, Yuri Kochiyama, was a very, very big deal in the movement.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: And in fact, when Malcolm X was assassinated, she was there in the Audubon Ballroom with him, and held him as he lay dying. So there are some extraordinary people who I met when I was quite young.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. And did you—I mean, since you didn’t grow up with that kind of discourse at home or even the practice of debating, you know, yeah, the state of the country or something, that it was more focused on art and crafts, did you feel intimidated by it at all?

 

Kimiko Hahn: I’m sure I did. But I was also, at that point in my life, with feminism and so forth, and the original edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves and really coming into my own, I was feeling pretty assertive. So I did feel intimidated. But also, sort of—and I think my boyfriend at the time was also very good in including and encouraging me. I feel that in high school, or for most of my K through 12, that I really wasn’t—I think in the town I grew up in, we weren’t encouraged to think analytically. Not deeply. We were really encouraged to think enough to take and pass tests and to get into college, if that’s what we wanted.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: But it wasn’t until I really went to Marxist study groups after college that I began to think more analytically for myself and also, that I realized I was required to have an opinion as part of this group. And I was being asked for my opinion. And that was very powerful, actually. To have to have to speak up. I had to speak up.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. I’m so intrigued by that. I mean, one of the reasons I’m intrigued by that is, I come from a family that seems, in that regard at least, very similar. There was only art at home. That was the only real reality. Everything else was just sort of not worthy of conversation.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Absolutely.

 

Helena de Groot: You know?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: So this thing that you said about analytical thinking, I feel to a certain degree, like I still don’t know how to do that. And I don’t know how to—if it can be taught to think analytically. Do you feel like you got to a place where you actually could? Is that something that can be learned?

 

Kimiko Hahn: I feel I did. I mean, I really was in study groups where we studied dialectics. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: Okay.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Marxist dialectics. And to look at what sort of contradictions come up and what does that mean, both in a discussion, but also in looking just around us. And so, I was given a tool, which I could use and then later accept or develop or reject. But just being given a tool to use was tremendous, tremendously powerful for me. And I use it to this day.

 

Helena de Groot: It’s still a little abstract to me. Can you give me an example of like, what was the thing, for instance, that you would look at in the real world and what would it mean to look at it through a dialectic lens?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Oh, huh, okay. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: Sorry. (LAUGHS)

 

Kimiko Hahn: Wow. Well, I mean, even if you look at the police today.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: So dialectical thinking might be to see something objectively, right. The police are being paid by taxpayers to protect people and property. Subjectively, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes they are outside the law, even. But that’s what I mean. I look at things objectively, what is supposed to happen, and then look at the reality, what does happen? And where does that happen? Why this contradiction? I mean, you can see the incredible contradiction in the attack on the Capitol, where you had some people who were part of that sedition crowd. They were actually—some were police officers, some were army or ex-army, and they were attacking people who were there to protect and trying to protect. They were there trying to do their job. So, that’s a very interesting contradiction.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: But that’s how I look at things.

 

Helena de Groot: That’s very interesting. I love that, I mean, it sounds very simple when you describe it. Just state how, you know, what it’s supposed to be, objectively, and then see how reality deviates. That seems very manageable. You know?

 

Kimiko Hahn: It is very simple. And I’m actually teaching a craft class right now at Queens College. A graduate class on poetic closure. It’s a theory that Barbara Herrnstein Smith wrote about in 1964. And when I read it as a graduate student, it completely impacted and has influenced the way I read, write, and at least revise. I wouldn’t say, write, I’d say revise. Read, revise, and also teach. And one thing I love about it—well, a number of things I love about it. One is that it’s a theory that’s very experientially bound. It’s a theory that has all sorts of psychological and emotional dimensions, which I think is important to art. I mean, it’s not just a cerebral exercise, right?

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: And basically, it’s looking at repetition, what kind of repetition do you see being launched by the title and the beginning of the poem and throughout. And then where is the deviation that might signal the closure?

 

Helena de Groot: Hmm.

 

Kimiko Hahn: So, again, it’s repetition and deviation. That’s a contradiction.

 

Helena de Groot: Wow, that is incredible, how similar they are. And how, again, it allows you—what is so pleasing about this is that it is a very simple tool that allows you to see complexity.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yes. Yeah. It completely does. This theory is just brilliant.

 

Helena de Groot: Well, would you be open to reading one of your poems and then talk me through it, you know, how this theory of closure comes up in this particular poem? Is that something that you’d want to do?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Sure … (LAUGHS) I’m trying to think, which one.

 

Helena de Groot: I mean, there’s one that I was thinking of, because actually the closure really intrigued me. And so I wanted to ask you about that.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Okay.

 

Helena de Groot: It’s the one called “Foreign Body,” on page 55. Before you read it, though, there was also a version on the Poetry Foundation website, but it was a little bit different.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yes.

 

Helena de Groot: And so I don’t know which one you prefer.

 

Kimiko Hahn: I’ll read the one since I have my book in front of me.

 

Helena de Groot: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And is there anything you want to say before you read it?

 

Kimiko Hahn: I would just say that, although the story of Chevalier Quixote Jackson and the objects that he took out of children’s upper respiratory system, those foreign bodies, although that initiated for me the phrase in what would become a collection, I at some point realized that I wanted to explore the phrase in other areas. Immigration, the immigrant body, and also my grandmother, my mother, and my body. So my mother and I were born here in the United States, but, visually, people have mistaken us for being foreign. So.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn:

 

(READS POEM)

 

Foreign Body

 

This is a poem on my other’s body,

I mean, my mother’s body, I mean the one

 

who saved her braid of blue-black hair

in a drawer, I mean the one

 

I could lean against—

against as in insistence. Fuzzy-dress-of-wuzzy

 

one. Red-lipstick one.

Rubber-gloves one. Her one to me,

 

bad-ger bad-ger

 

or so I heard. The one body I write on—

her sun-flecked body

 

as she bathed in the afternoon.

Was I five? It was Summer.

 

Then Winter—where today

I call the unlocked bathroom to mind.

 

I cannot leave her body alone.

 

Which is how I found Mother

escaping the heat of a 1950s house,

 

Father on a ladder with a blowtorch

to scrape the paint off the outside.

 

 

badger badger

 

 

The sun in those suburbs

simmered the tar roof over our rooms

 

in the town where the wasps lived

inside paper cells beneath both eaves and roots.

 

They sing—

I mean—sting very much, the wasps.

 

 

Now, I’m sixty. Sweet as dried papaya.

 

My hair, a bit tarnished,

my inmost, null.

 

Memory is falling away

as if an image shattered to shards then

 

re-collected for a kaleidoscope:

 

I click the pieces into sharp arrangement—

bad bad girl girl

In turn, a daughter turns sovereign.

 

* * *

 

Helena de Groot: Thank you.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Thanks. Well, what can I say about this?

 

Helena de Groot: Do you want to first talk about the repetitions?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Sure, yeah, I mean that—I mean, one repetition is very directly about language. And making mistakes and speaking sort of what I guess what we call Freudian slips, right? “My other’s body,” where I say, “I mean, my mother’s body” and that happens again. “They sing— / I mean—sting very much.” So there are mishearings in the poem. But then the biggest mishearing is by the child who hears “badger.” She thinks she hears the mother saying, “badger,” the animal, but in fact it’s “bad girl.”

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Which she resolves in the end by saying, “bad bad girl girl.” I’d say the dominant repetition is expression, misunderstanding, I suppose, and coming to some kind of resolution. Huh, the ending.

 

 

(EXCERPT PLAYS)

 

Memory is falling away

as if an image shattered to shards then

 

re-collected for a kaleidoscope:

 

I click the pieces into sharp arrangement—

bad bad girl girl

In turn, a daughter turned sovereign.

 

 

You know, I like my endings lately, although they don’t all do this, to have some element of sound, kind of a constellation of sounds. And so I think one thing about “sovereign” that I liked is that the n repeats: turn, turn sovereign. That the next generation will be more powerful. Or more empowered, more empowered, let me say. That’s where I wanted it to land, I suppose. 

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah, I was intrigued by that ending also because I first read the version that was on the Poetry website. And in that version, that last sentence is a little bit different.

 

Kimiko Hahn: I can’t remember. What is it? (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: I’ll read it for you. So, you know, I’ll start from the top of that verse. “I click the pieces into sharp arrangements— / grouse, crow, craven / —no, now, my own daughter turns sovereign.” So in, in this version, there’s no crow.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah. Yeah.

//

Helena de Groot: And then that end all of a sudden turns, it’s almost as if a car has been sort of turning around this roundabout and all of sudden, it goes into a road, you know? “In turn, a daughter turns sovereign.” And so, can you talk about, like, that theory of closure, sort of how how those repetitions can lead you to that turn?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Well, the mother, the repetition of mother and then the relationship and then coming to realize that “badger” was “bad girl.” But in that realization, feeling empowered, I guess. I’m not necessarily the most reliable person to speak about my own poems.

 

Helena de Groot and Kimiko Hahn: (LAUGH)
 

Kimiko Hahn: Hopefully, I’m not the most reliable.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: So, I guess in terms of closure, I realized that the animals that I had in the penultimate line, although I like playing with the word “craven” because it is not an animal, it just sounds like an animal—

 

Helena de Groot: It does, yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: I wanted to hold on to that, but I realized that that’s not where the poem was going. That I had to bring the badger some kind of resolution with that.

 

Helena de Groot: That you had to bring the badger back because, you, that was where the poem was pushing you.

 

Kimiko Hahn: That’s where the poem was going, yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. That is so interesting. And I love that you also make the distinction between the writing phase and the revision phase. That this theory of closure is something you only use when revising, so that you don’t let it guide you while you’re writing. I think that’s really interesting.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: How do you separate those? Because how can you separate things in your own mind that are already there?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah, it is hard. I think one has to trick oneself into getting into your own raw material. But it’s tricking, right? You have to trick yourself into it, I think.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: I had a student who was way overthinking her drafts. She actually was revising as she wrote. And I said, “Oh, no, no, no, don’t do that for your early drafts, please.”

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Because her work was interesting, but just really too tight. So she came up with writing on her cell phone in the subway. And it really changed, just sort of blew open.

 

Helena de Groot: Oh, so the cell phone is just to make it seem as if it’s no big deal.

 

Kimiko Hahn: No big deal.

 

(MUSIC PLAYS)

 

Helena de Groot: Well, I thought we could just go back to a poem. It’s the one called “A Dusting.” It’s on page 15. And I don’t know if you want to say something about it before you read it.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Well, I don’t believe that there is a heaven or there is any life after death, but I remember once, in one of my first teaching gigs, I had a student whose friend had just died. And he said he felt that one day, wherever his friend is, he’ll be with him, too. And that was very comforting to hear. My mother had recently died, and that was very comforting. And when I said that to my husband a few years ago, he said, “What does that even mean?” He couldn’t understand what I was trying to express. And for me, it’s very clear. My mother may be nothing and I’ll be nothing with her. And he said, “Well, if you’re nothing, you can’t be nothing with her.” I said, “Well. But I will be. If she’s dust, then I’m also dust.” So that’s where—that’s sort of the long explanation of where this poem came from.

 

Helena de Groot: That’s a beautiful.

 

Kimiko Hahn:

 

(READS POEM)

 

A Dusting

 

However Mother has reappeared

—say, as much on a feather duster—

scientists say the galaxy

was thus created. This daybreak

she sees a cumulus cloud.

 

 

Wherever mother is bound

she’s joined ashes ashes

or dirt underfoot or bits

off Tower North and Tower South.

Repurpose does not arrive whole cloth.

* * *

 

Helena de Groot: Thank you. I was struck by the number of references to dust and to clouds that dotted your collection. And, yeah, in this poem, of course, it’s obvious that there is a connection with grief and with where the people we lose go, and how we find them again.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: But I was also struck by—I mean, this is so playful, right?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Mm-hmm.

 

Helena de Groot: Like the, “however Mother has reappeared, say, as motes on a feather duster. Only you can say that, right. Like no one else could say that about your mother.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Right. Right.

 

Helena de Groot: That would be horribly insulting, right?

 

Kimiko Hahn: (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: And I’m just so struck by the way that you bring play into grief. And I was wondering if you want to talk about that.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Well, for this poem, I actually did some research on different kinds of dust, even other poems where dust appears. And so, it—the poem almost functions as a list of where we find dust. And if you think of the poem as having a kind of list element to it, then some of those elements are bound to be humorous or sad or maybe even upsetting.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: With a list structure, you can hit different notes.

 

Helena de Groot: Aha.

 

Kimiko Hahn: And that’s what I like. I like to hit those different notes in a single piece.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: But the language play is very important to my poetics. It comes in part from Japanese aesthetics and the value that Japanese put on multiple meanings. You know, we think of puns as being humorous or witty, but in fact, they’re very sophisticated. It’s a very sophisticated way to play and also to have a poem move more spatially as opposed to a more linear meaning.

 

Helena de Groot: Aha.

 

Kimiko Hahn: So when I’m looking at a draft, I want to be able to see if I can explode the language open a little bit with wordplay.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. I’m just so interested in the poetics of punning or playing, and sort of almost purposely send the reader in the—I want to say wrong direction, of course it isn’t. It’s just another direction, you know, but of course, if you’re going in one direction, it will feel wrong for a second.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: And I’m just wondering, like, is this something you have to do on purpose to sort of get yourself out of the rails that you’re on? Or is that something that just happens automatically? If it is something you do on purpose, how do you do that?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Part of it is an awareness. Just because I’ve written—(LAUGHS) because I’ve written so much over the years.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Part of it is an awareness, you know, that I love language play. And so I’m very open to it, I guess the answer would be. I’m very open to that kind of language play. I mean, honestly, it’s like flirting, right? In high school or college, whenever I would watch Mae West movies, she was very coy and sometimes even vulgar in the way she’d flirt with men, her come-ons were incredible. And that is so much fun. And that is the same part of the brain (LAUGHS)—

 

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

 

Kimiko Hahn: —that one uses, you know, to sort of tease, if you will. Tease and flirt and have that double entendre, you know. Leaving things open. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: I love this metaphor, by the way. And so, to push it a little further, who are you flirting with? Is it with the words or is it with the reader?

 

Kimiko Hahn: I’d say it’s with … I’d say it’s with the reader. Ultimately, it’s with the reader. It’s first just playing and having fun. But ultimately, it’s with the reader. It’s an invitation.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah, I was wondering if we can get to one last poem. It’s the one called “Unearthly Delights.” And it’s the one that opens your book, Foreign Bodies.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Sure, yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: And yeah, again, if you if you want to say something before you start.

 

Kimiko Hahn: I wrote this poem because a poet and editor was putting together a collection that responded to Bosch and Bruegel, I believe. Unfortunately, he never found a publisher, but I did write this poem. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: Good for us.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah. So I was lucky he gave me that assignment. I love assignments. So I was lucky for that.

 

(READS POEM)

 

Unearthly Delights

 

After you ripped the screen—

 

Excuse me, I’m going to start again.

 

Helena de Groot: Maybe before you start again then, can I ask you to say maybe a little bit about your father in the context in which this was written?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Sure. My father was a hoarder. Growing up, my sister and I thought, “Oh, it’s because, you know, he grew up in the Depression and you want to save everything.” But, in fact, after my mother died, he began to accumulate more and more things. And soon it was just literally junk, junk mail. And the house was a mess and he wouldn’t let us in to help him with anything. So when he died, we had to go in there and deal with both the junk, but also his artwork, his things that he had collected, real treasures.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: So that’s where the speaker is.

 

(READS POEM)

 

Unearthly Delights

 

After you rip through the screen

and wedge yourself into Father’s bedroom,

you find a pile of art supply catalogs,

from scraps of bedspread,

cotton batting, a rodent body, rodent turds,

and tiny white naked human creatures

flipped topsy-turvy to skewer

down the ass and out the mouth

in the primordial ooze that is manifestly

the brimstone and bile of this book left open

to Bossh’s realm beneath the left hand of God,

my foxed legacy of human bonfire.

 

* * *

 

Helena de Groot: Thank you. Yeah, again, there’s this incredible turn in this poem. From the things you’ve—the speaker finds in the house, you know, “brown scraps of bedspread, / cotton batting, a rodent body, rodent turds.” And then all of a sudden, oop!

 

Kimiko Hahn: (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: Another thing the speaker finds out, you know? Sure, it’s something probably opened in an art catalog or in an art book.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Right.

 

Helena de Groot: You know, in a book of paintings.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah. Right

 

Helena de Groot: “Tiny white naked human creatures / flipped topsy-turvy to skewer / down the ass and out the mouth / in the primordial ooze that is manifestly / the brimstone and bile of this book left open / to Bosch’s realm beneath the left hand of God.” And we all have seen these Bosch’s paintings, I suppose. But just for those of us who have not, could you just—I mean, I guess you already did.

 

Kimiko Hahn: (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) But could you describe a little bit what kind of paintings he makes?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Well, there are books—he has paintings of heaven, and everybody’s having a grand old time.

 

Helena de Groot: (SMILING) Right.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Everyone’s having a delightful, heavenly time, right.

 

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

 

Kimiko Hahn: His paintings of hell are really ones where people are being tortured in horrible ways. So this is literally a description of at least one, if not more, of the poor creatures that end up in hell.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah, okay, so that turn, right, from the things in the room to the things in the book—okay, just walk me through sort of how that happened.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Right, well, after the literal stuff, yeah, to open the book and to see this painting, see an illustration of this painting … but to also view this book that is foxed, right, that has mold on it or what have you—

 

Helena de Groot: Oh, that’s what that means.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah, yeah. It’s when a book is moldy or has damage. So my legacy is the sort of damaged book or damaged article. It’s a damaged legacy really.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Well, I found it also really—and maybe this is a really wrong interpretation, so you tell me. But I found that that turn, you know, where the Bosch painting gets sort of connected to this mess in the room, that it brought in a lot of tenderness for the speaker’s father’s situation. Because it sort of shows, in a way, the human condition, to me at least. I felt like, oh, wow, human beings have just sort of been creating a mess for themselves since, you know, time immemorial.

 

Kimiko Hahn: (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: We just can’t help ourselves. You know?

 

Kimiko Hahn: Mm-hmm. I like that. I like that suggestion, so I’ll take it. (LAUGHS)

 

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

 

Kimiko Hahn: I don’t know if you noticed, but I decided to put the dedication page at the end of the book. And the book is dedicated to my father. I did not want it in the beginning to color the poems I have about him. (LAUGHS) I wanted the reader to know, if they end up hitting that page that, when all is said and done, he was a difficult man, but when all was said and done, he’s very important to me and I loved him dearly.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Yeah.

 

Helena de Groot: Yeah. When did you—I mean, how long ago did you write that last sentence, “my foxed legacy of human bonfire”?

 

Kimiko Hahn: I think I wrote it before he died, actually. He died only three and a half years ago.

 

Helena de Groot: And so do you feel like this sentence has become more true since he died.

 

Kimiko Hahn: Oh yes, absolutely. Yeah, because my sister and I have gone through the house and we sold the house. So, uh, and I have things of his in storage. (LAUGHS) I don’t know. And my poor daughters have already told me, “Mom, we don’t want it.”

 

(MUSIC PLAYS)

 

Helena de Groot: Kimiko Hahn is the author of almost 15 collections of poetry, including The Unbearable Heart, which won an American Book Award, The Artist’s Daughter, The Narrow Road to the Interior, Toxic Flora, Brain Fever, and Foreign Bodies, which came out just last year. Hahn is the winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the American Book Award, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She’s also won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s taught workshops at organizations like Cave Canem and Kundiman, and is a distinguished professor in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College. She lives in Queens with her husband and their terrier. To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Todd Sickafoose. I’m Helena de Groot, and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.