|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
An iconic figure in the emergence of feminist poetry in South Korea
and now internationally renowned, Kim Hyesoon pushes the poetic
envelope into the farthest reaches of the lyric universe. In her
new collection, Kim depicts the memory of war trauma and the
collective grief of parting through what she calls an
“I-do-bird-sequence,” where “Bird-human is the ‘I.’”
Her remarkable essay “Bird Rider” explains: “I came to write
Phantom Pain Wings after Daddy passed away. I called out for birds
endlessly. I wanted to become a translator of bird language. Bird
language that flies to places I’ve never been.” What unfolds is
an epic sequence of bird ventriloquy exploring the relentless
physical and existential struggles against power and gendered
violence in “the eternal void of grief” (Victoria Chang, The
New York Times Magazine). Through intensely rhythmic lines marked
by visual puns and words that crash together and then fly away as
one, Kim mixes traditional folklore and mythology with contemporary
psychodramatic realities as she taps into a cremation ceremony, the
legacies of Rimbaud and Yi Sang, a film by Agnes Varda, Francis
Bacon’s portrait of Pope Innocent X, cyclones, a princess trapped
in a hospital, and more. A simultaneity of voices and identities
rises and falls, existing and exiting on their delayed wings of
pain.
*Winner of The Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Lucien
Stryk Asian Translation Award* The title section of Kim Hyesoon's
powerful new book, Autobiography of Death, consists of forty-nine
poems, each poem representing a single day during which the spirit
roams after death before it enters the cycle of reincarnation. The
poems not only give voice to those who met unjust deaths during
Korea's violent contemporary history, but also unveil what Kim
calls "the structure of death, that we remain living in."
Autobiography of Death, Kim's most compelling work to date, at once
reenacts trauma and narrates our historical death-how we have died
and how we survive within this cyclical structure. In this sea of
mirrors, the plural "you" speaks as a body of multitudes that has
been beaten, bombed, and buried many times over by history. The
volume concludes on the other side of the mirror with "Face of
Rhythm," a poem about individual pain, illness, and meditation.
|
I'm Ok, I'm Pig! (Paperback)
Kim Hyesoon; Translated by Don Mee Choi
|
R378
R309
Discovery Miles 3 090
Save R69 (18%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
Kim Hyesoon is one of South Korea's most important contemporary
poets. She began publishing in 1979 and was one of the first few
women in South Korea to be published in Munhak kwa jisong
(Literature and Intellect), one of two key journals which
championed the intellectual and literary movement against the
US-backed military dictatorships of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo
Hwan in the 1970s and 80s. Don Mee Choi writes: 'Kim's poetry goes
beyond the expectations of established aesthetics and traditional
"female poetry" (yoryusi), which is characterised by its passive,
refined language. In her experimental work she explores women's
multiple and simultaneous existence as grandmothers, mothers, and
daughters in the context of Korea's highly patriarchal society, a
nation that is still under neo-colonial rule by the US. Kim's
poetics are rooted in her attempt to resist conventional literary
forms and language long defined by men in Korea. According to Kim,
"women poets oppose and resist their conditions, using
unconventional forms of language because their resistance has led
them to a language that is unreal, surreal, and even fantastical.
The language of women's poetry is internal, yet defiant and
revolutionary".'
|
|