Lobster Palaces (Paperback)

"In Lobster Palaces, Ann Kim works, for the most part, in very abbreviated forms, resembling, more than anything else, Japanese tanka or haiku, with which they share other affinities, such as glancing perception, but have nothing of the flavor of japonaiserie that afflicts almost all English-language poetry written in that vein. Ms. Kim's poetry is unlike that of any other poet, consistently startling and, in remarkably few words, exactly right. How she brings it off is somewhat mysterious, in the way that art often seems to us. Our intelligence, instinct, and range of experience get brought into the mix on their own and instantaneously, a neural event: intuition speaking to us. Likewise, what we think of as the imaginative faculty is merely perception operating at warp speed, i.e. the 'flights of imagination' are, in fact, 'arrows of perception.' Accuracy = Beauty. The delight to be found in the imaginative act is surprise, followed by satisfaction. 'Gosh, that's so right. How did she do that?' From Qian Xu's 'Furled Plantains': Green wax candles that put forth no flames."—August Kleinzahler