Editor: Yearn Hong Choi
Author: Various
Publisher: Homa + Sekey, 2005
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From the publisher’s website:
Fragrance of Poetry contains seventy-five poems by fifteen Korean-American poets. These poets are all first-generation immigrants from Korea whose primary language is Korean. Naturally, the poems in this book show the Korean immigrants’ solitude, nostalgia, pathos, anger, laughter, and love. They are cross-cultural communications from Korea to America, with the themes of longing and displacement in the two cultures.
This book aims to serve as a rainbow bridging the Koreans to the Americans, the first-generation Koreans to the second and the third-generation Koreans, and the Koreans in Korea to the Koreans in America. The poems in the book can be pearls in the mud or fragrant flowers in the wilderness. Fragrance of Poetry, the heart of Korean-American literature, is a metaphor that maps the terrain of humanity.
THE EDITOR
Dr. Yearn Hong Choi has published four poetry books in both English and Korean. His poems have appeared in Poetry USA, PEN International, dIS*orient, Mildred, Wyoming, Washington Post, World & I, among others, and have been translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. He edited Mother and Dove, Korean-American Poetry Anthology (Institute for Korean-American Culture, 1997) and Surfacing Sadness: A Centennial of Korean-American Literature (Homa & Sekey Books, 2003) with Haeng Ja Kim.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
Poetry that crosses cultures. The words of these 15 Korean poets will … open cracks in the walls that surround us. That is no mean achievement.
— Washington Times
First-generation Korean immigrants sing solitude, nostalgia & love.
— The Korean Times