From the back cover:
Some years ago Shin Chang-ho gave me two clay figurines he made himself. I always keep them in front of me. The figurines, with their lovely quizzical expressions, seem to carry on an endless dialogue on the things nearest to Shin Chang-ho’s heart: poetry, pottery, painting.
What is a poet? Someone, I suppose, with an eye, an ear, and a heart. And if you really want to raise standards, you might add a sense of form, and throw in wit and humor as savories. Some are born poets, others find themselves poets, almost by accident. Some poets burn themselves out in youth, others do their best work in old age. Some poets are mean and crotchety; others are loving and transcendent. Shin Chang-ho’s poems bear the stamp of the man: they are simple, unpretentious, funny, gentle, wise and transcendent; an eloquent testimony to the life and times of a man who says, with a typical twinkle in his eye, that when finally he joins his ancestors in modest repose, he will remember himself.
Kevin O’Rourke
Available from LTI Korea, but very difficult to find elsewhere.