Volatile

Author: Kimiko Hahn

Publisher: Hanging Loose Press (1999)

In Volatile, Hahn's lyrical voice maintains its course through narratives ranging from quiet recollections of childhood to the sometimes unbearable horrors of the modern world: She watched her child starve. Watched her neighbor get clubbed to death. Watched another disappear.

"In this book, Kimiko Hahn manages to take the air of atrocity we breathe in daily and turn it into fierce political/lyrical poetry, in the tradition of Shelley's The Masque of Anarchy. Current events ripped open and the entrails exposed in living color. She is one of our strongest poets."

–Harvey Shapiro