Korean Voices – serie

The poems of Heeduck Ra are charged with a friction between image and idea, sound and sense. She glimpses an arc, which may light a path from the visible world to the invisible. Her work occupies the ever-shifting border region between what we know and what we do not know, a zone in which to apprehend the world anew. Heeduk Ra has published five books of poetry and two of prose, for which she has received many honors. She teaches creative writing at Chosun University and is regarded as one of the best poets in Korea.

This first comprehensive anthology of modern Korean women's poetry in English demonstrates the originality and variety of the twenty poets whose work is presented. Each poet is represented with a group of poems that reflects her poetic development, and most have written a brief statement expressing her reasons for writing poetry. The anthology follows the changes that occurred in women's poetry through the years.

Kim Kwang-Kyu was born in Seoul in 1941 and is a professor in the German language and literature department at Hanyang University. He has written poetry sharply critical of the abuses of human dignity caused by corrupt politics and the structural contradictions brought about by the industrialisation of society.

Ji-Woo Hwang's poems describe a life governed by the inescapable reality that all hell may break loose at any time, a reality that now permeates our own culture. His poems mix lyrical intensity with an acute political sensibility, creating an uneasy tension that makes them by turns moving, humorous, and unnerving.

Up until the 17th century, the bulk of Korean poetry was written in Chinese, the language of poets, scholars and monks. This anthology includes 100 poems spanning over 1000 years. Lovers of Chinese and Japanese poetry will delight in these translations, which capture both the elegant simplicity and emotional complexities of the originals.

Chonggi Mah represents a unique figure in Korean poetry similar to that of William Carlos Williams, but with a twist. While he is recognized as an award-winning poet in Korea, he has worked in the United States as a doctor and professor. Many of his poems reflect his work as a doctor and concerns with people and humanity.

Moon Chung-hee's lyrical poems represent poignant self-examination, evoking moments of bewilderment and hopeful resignation to the passage of time and imprisoning conditions of her life. Her work explores the desire to escape the fetters of domesticity as a vehicle for understanding a woman's journey and her negotiations between the desire for freedom and domestic reality.

The devastating hold the Korean War still has on the ordinary citizens of South Korea is revealed here in a novella and four short stories. Although the war happened many years ago, old animosities remain, and elderly nursing home residents are traumatized by their belief that the new resident was a collaborator. A child is made a laughing stock when she thinks the condoms tossed aside on the beach by American GIs are balloons. Chung Yeon-hee has published several novels and numerous short stories and essays. Hyun-jae Yee Sallee has translated Korean literature for nearly twenty-five years.

"Ho Kyun's poetry is in the tradition of his master, the incomparable Tu Fu, while remaining fully his own. Writing nine centuries later, Ho's poetry strikes many parallels-the experiences of war and exile and constant struggle-and his voice is similarly humane. This is rich and enlightening reading."-Sam Hamill Borderland Roads is a selection of poems from the writer Ho Kyun, one of Korea's literary elite in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book catalogs the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597-the only record of its kind of these events in poetry.

Korea's Zen tradition has always been vibrant and continues to thrive today. This book gives voice to the "Zen mind" of Korea's contemporary Zen Masters, articulated through koans and excerpts of conversations in the form of brief questions and answers with students and other teachers.

"Hyesim's poems: transformative as walking high granite mountains by moonlight, with fragrant herbs underfoot and a thermos of clear tea in the backpack. Their bedrock is thusness, their images' beauty is pellucid and new, their view without limit. The shelf of essential Zen poets for American readers grows larger with this immediately indispensable collection."--Jane Hirshfield "His poems speak softly and clearly, like hearing a temple bell that was struck a thousand years ago."--Sam Hamill Chin'gak Kuksa Hyesim (1178--1234) was the first Zen master dedicated to poetry in Korea. Ian Haight's books of translations include Borderland Roads: Selected Poems of Ho Kyun and Garden Chrysanthemums and First Mountain Snow: Zen Questions and Answers from Korea.

These poems give voice to the voiceless. His poetic task is to find a way to honor the weak and disenfranchised through small cautious steps into the cracks of this hidden world. Kim Kwang-Kyu most recent translation in English is The Depth of a Clam. He lives in Seoul, Korea.

"'Dazzling strokes of falling stars in falling water. I want to write poems like that,' writes Moon Chung-hee. Thanks to Silberg and You, these poems dazzle bright in English. Here love is violent and 'suffered, an encysted stone ...wedged' in the heart, and defiance trembles the soul: 'Dress up for men, you say? / Nonsense / I stripped / for them ...the world's women / root on earth, naked.' Chung-hee casts off 'the watch and mink stole,' and exclaims: 'I want to be a free dancer from now on.'"--Sholeh Wolpe Moon Chung-hee's poetry is passionate, impetuous, a poetry of love, epiphany, feminist assertion, even rebellion. Richard Silberg co-translated, with Clare You, The Three Way Tavern and This Side of Time, by Ko Un. He is author of The Horses: New and Selected Poems. Clare You is the Chair of the Center for Korean Studies at USC Berkeley, and has co-translated modern Korean poetry and fiction into English.

Forty-year-old In-mo, a movie director who's been jobless for the past decade decides to move in with his widowed mother. His older brother, with five criminal convictions, has already moved back. Then younger sister Mi-yeon arrives with her bratty, rebellious fifteen-year-old daughter. Mom is delighted to have her entire dysfunctional family back again, but what ensues is both comic and frightening. Fast-paced and imaginative, Modern Family introduces English-speaking readers to a bright new voice in world literature. Cheon Myeong-Kwan won the Tenth Munhakdongne Novel Award for The Queen of Red Bricks. Modern Family has been made into a movie in Korea.

"HeeDuk Ra's poems evoke thoughts about time and language ...Through her work, time does not glide nor stand on the edge. It crumbles."-SeokJo Gang, literary critic Wild Apple takes the reader to cultural and intellectual experiences: Native American burial mounds, cremations at the Ganges River, the Paris morgue of the 19th century, the movie Being John Malkovich, and the pointillism of Georges Seurat. Ra also brings Korean culture to the American audience, from the female clam divers to Buddhist temples. HeeDuk Ra has published seven books of poetry. In 2007 she participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

A Korean voice from a new generation of cutting-edge poets that will appeal to younger writers and readers. Shim includes deeply personal poems, lyric experiments, and strong social statements that reflects the voices of a community. His grandiose illusions and underprivileged whispers challenge us to consider our relationships.

“Written in a beautifully rendered, nuanced language, Wolves is a window into a little-known world.”—Krys Lee - Author of How I Became a North KoreanSungtae’s short stories build a unique world through their consummate construction and firm roots in reality. With Mongolia as the physical background and through the perspectives of outsiders, Jeon’s imaginative tales mercilessly expose the hypocrisy and duality that lie within all of us. The stories address important issues including North-South Korean relations, migrant workers, capitalism in an era of neo-liberalism, and racially mixed families.Sora Kim-Russell, a Korean-American poet and translator originally from California, now lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.