Mosquito and Ant refers to the style in which nu shu--a nearly extinct script used by Chinese women to correspond with one another--is written. Here in this exciting and totally original book of poems the narrator corresponds with L. about her hidden passions, her relationship with her husband and adolescent daughters, lost loves, and erotic fantasies. Kimiko Hahn's collection takes shape as a series of wide-ranging correspondences that are in turn precocious and wise, angry and wistful. Borrowing from both Japanese and Chinese traditions, Hahn offers us an authentic and complex...

Kimiko Hahn's poetry explores the interplay--and tensions--among her various identities: mother, lover, wife, poet, and daughter of both the Midwest and Asia. However astonishing her subjects--from sideshow freaks to sadomasochistic fantasy--they ultimately emerge in this startling collection as moving images of the deepest levels of our shared humanity.

Kimiko Hahn, "a welcome voice of experimentation and passion" (Bloomsbury Review), takes up the Japanese prose-poetry genre zuihitsu literally "running brush," which utilizes tactics such as juxtaposition, contradiction, and broad topical variety in exploring her various identities as mother and lover, wife and poet, daughter of varied traditions."

from "On Deceit as Survival Yet another species resembles a female bumble bee ending in frustrated trysts or appears to be two fractious male which also attracts--no surprise a third curious enough to join the fray What to make of highly evolved Beaut bent on deception as survival