Review by Jami Macarty
Susan Hahn’s Corner Office features the dramatis personae: Earth, Man, and Woman. Each character “pines” for what has been lost. For Earth, that’s “pastures” and “seasons.” For Man, it’s his corner office and the status it conferred. For Woman, who once had a corner office that was later “sliced in half, it’s more complicated.
It may be troubling to a feminist, but for a while in the unfolding drama, Woman “pines” for Man, “pray[ing] each night that he’ll change— / spin only around [her].” Eventually, Woman decides “not / to call him, or anyone, but to exist / not inside the clutter of others’ thoughts, / or corner offices and those who mourn them.” Phew!
Hahn presses her Man and Woman against the thin wall between gender stereotypes and archetypes, highlighting tensions between capitalism’s professional hierarchy and the patriarchy’s gender roles. His office furniture “bubble-wrapped,” Man soothes himself with the idea of having “seven different pairs / of breasts in one week—new moons / circling [his] face.” Man views women primarily as sexual objects, a “substitute” mother, or a therapist. That artistic choice carries ethical risks; stereotypical portrayals of men and women in society and art can perpetuate misogyny.
Hahn takes another artistic and ethical risk in having Earth speak in first person: “I cannot seem to stop / the injuries inflicted upon my surface.” While this utterance is moving, anthropomorphizing Earth risks reducing the planet to a vessel filled with human rationality. Early in the book, Earth asks, “How did it come to this?” A reader could argue that the human perception of Earth as a metonymic and metaphoric figure underlies climate crises.
Hahn’s Man and Earth lose power. But Hahn’s Woman emerges as the most nuanced, sympathetic character, ultimately finding freedom in the metaphorical “open field / of a poem.” The corner office is hers!
Corner Office by Susan Hahn. Word Poetry, April 2024.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.