Ko Un has long been a living legend in Korea, both as a poet and as a person. Allen Ginsberg once wrote, 'Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.' Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives) is the title of a remarkable collection of poems by Ko Un, filling thirty volumes, a total of 4001 poems containing the names of 5600 people, which took 30 years to complete. Ko Un first conceived the idea while confined in a solitary cell upon his arrest in May 1980, the first volumes appeared in 1986, and the project was completed 25 years after publication began, in 2010. Unsure whether he might be executed or not, he found his mind filling with memories of the people he had met or heard of during his life. Finally, he made a vow that, if he were released from prison, he would write poems about each of them. In part this would be a means of rescuing from oblivion countless lives that would otherwise be lost, and also it would serve to offer a vision of the history of Korea as it has been lived by its entire population through the centuries. A selection from the first 10 volumes of Maninbo relating to Ko Un's village childhood was published in the US in 2006 by Green Integer under the title Ten Thousand Lives. This edition is a selection from volumes 11 to 20, with the last half of the book focused on the sufferings of the Korean people during the Korean War. Essentially narrative, each poem offers a brief glimpse of an individual's life. Some span an entire existence, some relate a brief moment. Some are celebrations of remarkable lives, others recall terrible events and inhuman beings. Some poems are humorous, others are dark commemorations of unthinkable incidents. They span the whole of Korean history, from earliest pre-history to the present time. Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.

Ko Un has long been a living legend in Korea, both as a poet and as a person. Allen Ginsberg once wrote, 'Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscenti, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.' When a writer has published as much as Ko Un has in the course of more than fifty years of writing, it is hard to know where to begin, what to translate. For this collection, his translators have selected a hundred or so poems from the five collections published since the year 2002, collections acclaimed by Korean critics as bringing poetry to a new level of cosmic reference. Nothing shows more clearly his stature as a writer than the variety of themes and emotions found in his most recent work. Readers here have access for the first time to many of the poems Ko Un has produced in the 21st century, as he approaches his eightieth year, his energy and originality unabated. As Michael McLure wrote years ago: 'Ko Un's poetry has the old-fashionedness of a muddy rut on a country road after rain, and yet it is also as state-of-the-art as a DNA micro-chip.' That remains true today. "First Person Sorrowful" is Ko Un's first book to be published in the UK, and has an introduction by Sir Andrew Motion.

So Chong Ju, also known by the penname Midang, was born in Sonum village in the North Cholla Province of Korea, in 1915. His first poems were published in the late 1930s; his first collection of poems dates from 1941. The present volume contains the complete poems of his first four collections, on which his reputation as Korea's leading living poet largely rests. He has published many volumes of poetry, as well as poems published separately. He has edited a number of anthologies and published works on literary history and criticism. He was for many years a professor at the Buddhist University, Dongguk University, in Seoul, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He has been awarded many of Korea's most prestigious literary awards. Translations of selected poems by So Chong Ju have previously been published in France, Spain, Germany and the United States.

Kim Seung-Hee's poetry is usually described in Korea as "feminist," "subversive," and "surrealist." Most important is the way her poetic voices differ radically from any other Korean poet's, male or female. Her work has sometimes found a readier acceptance among readers of the English translations than among Koreans reading the originals, who are often puzzled by the seeming lack of conventional poetic themes and female sensitivity. Bilingual volume in English/Korean.

This book showcases the work of three major Korean poets born at fourteen-year intervals, in 1921, 1935, and 1949. Each has tried to renew Korean poetry by bringing it into closer contact with everyday speech, social issues, and ordinary people's lives. Kim Su-Young was a major pioneer, first developing as a Modernist but then moving toward a poetry that addresses social issues and uses ordinary language. Shin Kyong-Nim spent years living among the simple working people of rural Korea. Today Lee Si-Young writes in a similar spirit about the pain and dignity of humble lives. In this bilingual volume, a wide selection of these three poets' most significant work is made available in English for the first time.

These poems by "the happiest man in the world" are full of light though written in dark times. Ch'on had the art of seeing the beauty of life beyond all the pain, and of putting it into the music of words. Recently, many young Koreans have discovered in these poems and in the poet's life the innocence and honesty they look for in vain in modern society. His poverty and his body broken by torture never made Ch'on bitter or angry; his poems are hymns of joy at the marvels of nature and the simple pleasures of life. His greatest poem sees death, not as the end but as a journey "back to heaven" where he plans to tell the angels how beautiful life in this world can be.

Shin Kyong-Nim's first volume of poems, Farmers' Dance (Nong-mu), marked a major new step in the development of modern Korean poetry when it was published in 1973. The life of Korea's oppressed rural masses had never before been highlighted in such a manner. For years, the poet had shared that life as a laborer and salesman, and the poems reflect a deep identification with classes and situations that were normally not considered suitable subjects for poetry. This volume offers a full translation of the poems of the expanded 1975 edition, making available in English for the first time one of the most influential works of modern Korean poetry.

These poems by "the happiest man in the world" are full of light though written in dark times. Ch'on had the art of seeing the beauty of life beyond all the pain, and of putting it into the music of words. Recently, many young Koreans have discovered in these poems and in the poet's life the innocence and honesty they look for in vain in modern society. His poverty and his body broken by torture never made Ch'on bitter or angry; his poems are hymns of joy at the marvels of nature and the simple pleasures of life. His greatest poem sees death, not as the end but as a journey "back to heaven" where he plans to tell the angels how beautiful life in this world can be.

Faithful to the Future examines the true nature of Christian Tradition and particularly how it implies a fidelity not only to the past but to the future as well - tradition appears to be inseparable from creativity and reform. Congar's sense of the future and his conviction that something very important is happening in history led him to re-emphasize forgotten dimensions of Christian tradition, especially those that value the human person. When Congar reflected on Church authority and how it is best exercised, he was not thinking about a power that curtails freedom. Seeking to rediscover what is specific to Christianity, he described authority as a reality that is at the service of growth, where paying attention to the unknown and the unexpected is of the utmost importance. Congar was one of the greatest artisans of Vatican II and his writings are characterized by the urgent call for the reforms made necessary by a changing world, and by an understanding of catholicity - a sense of the Church that is not sectarian, but that lives and thinks "according to the whole". This volume explores the four themes that are prominent in Congar's writings, namely tradition, reform, catholicity and authority. The book does not assume a detailed knowledge of Congar's writings but addresses a difficulty that is frequently encountered in the present time - no one better than Yves Congar has shown that the Church is not a "system".