Toxic Flora
by Kimiko Hahn
2010
Toxic Flora is another poetry collection by Kimiko Hahn. This time each poem is inspired by a specific article from the New York Times' science section. There's even a bibliographic key at the end, to link each poem to its inspiration.
I thought I was going to really like this one based on the premise, but it didn't do much for me. I have a sense that I'd rather have read the original articles, or prose essays inspired by them, instead.
Hahn writes about the relationships between plants and insects, about space including exoplanets and dwarf planets in our own system, about extinct birds, and about fish.
Each poem also links each topic to human relationships - her dates, her divorces, her fraught connection to her newly adult daughter. Often this link appears only in the final line, attempting to recontextualize what had appeared to be a simple description as a metaphor.
I'll probably wait a bit before reading more poetry.
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