Chong, one of South Korea’s most famous poets, has received all the major literary awards of his country. Take two newly-wed Koreans surprised by war, carried off, one as a comfort woman, one as a factory slave. Let them find each other in Hiroshima just before the bomb drops. Let the man devote himself to … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 104)
A Hundred Love Poems from Old Korea
From the publisher’s website: Korea’s traditional love poetry is little known in the West. This anthology contains examples of all genres: vernacular to long lyrical poems. A witty informative commentary links the poems and sets them in context. [Read More]
The Book of Korean Shijo
From the publisher’s website: The Korean genre known as shijo is short song lyrics. Originally meant to be sung rather than recited, these short poems are light, personal, and very often conversational. The language is simple, direct, and devoid of elaboration or ornamentation. The shijo poet gives a firsthand account of his personal experience of … [Read More]
Selected Poems of Pak Mogwol
No information available. [Read More]
The Wind and the Waves: Four Modern Korean Poets
No information available [Read More]
Distant Valleys
From the LTI Korea website, which is just about the only place where you can buy this book: The poems of the early twentieth-century poet Chong Chi-yong breathe the air of the village, sea and mountains of the Korean peninsula. Fresh, concise, and rich in subtle, down-to-earth imagery, they brim with human affection and love … [Read More]
Meditative Poems by Korean Monks
From the publisher’s website: Introduced and Translated by Jaihiun Kim This work is a chronological anthology of Zen poetry spanning the 6th through the 20th centuries. In his introduction the translator distinguishes Zen from other forms of Buddhism, and places it in its historical context. These intuitive poems chronicle the spiritual search as well as … [Read More]
Even the Knots on Quince Trees Tell Tales
From Ku Sang’s obituary in The Independent: The volume Mogwa ongduriedo sayeoni itta (1984, translated as Even the Knots on Quince Trees Tell Tales, 2004) contains 100 poems evoking his life’s stumbling progress through the agonies of modern Korean history. LKL note: the volume is pretty impossible to find in hard copy. It looks like … [Read More]
Unforgettable Things
No information available [Read More]
River of Life, River of Hope
River of Life, River of Hope is the first substantial survey in English of the work of one of Korea’s most revered and influential modern poets, Pak Tu-jin. Pak helped free modern Korean literature in the 1940s from its preoccupation with decadence and fashionable literary trends, finding a new voice rooted in nature and Korean … [Read More]
Slow Chrysanthemums: Classical Korean Poems in Chinese
Kim Jong-gil’s personal anthology of one hundred Korean poems written in Chinese covers a period of over a thousand years, from the late ninth century to the beginning of the twentieth. In his introduction to this fascinating poetry, Kim Jong-gil traces the background to the literary use of Chinese in Korea, and discusses the features … [Read More]
Love in mid-winter night: Korean sijo poetry
No information available [Read More]
The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry
From the publisher’s website: This groundbreaking anthology, edited by the veteran scholar who founded the field of Korean literature in the West, offers a representative selection from the four major genres of native Korean poetry: the Silla songs known as hyangga, Koryo songs, sijo, and kasa. The performance of oral songs was central to the … [Read More]
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry
From the publisher’s website: Korea’s modern poetry is filled with many different voices and styles, subjects and views, moves and countermoves, yet it still remains relatively unknown outside of Korea itself. This is in part because the Korean language, a rich medium for poetry, has been ranked among the most difficult for English speakers to … [Read More]
Three Poets of Modern Korea: Yi Sang, Hahm Dong-seon, and Choi Young-mi
From the publisher’s website: A superb introduction to the undiscovered treasures of contemporary Korean poetry. American poet James Kimbrell and translator/native speaker Yu Jung-yul have gathered leading representatives of three generations of Korean poets, from the Dada and surrealist influenced work of Yi Sang, to the colloquial, affirming poems of Hahm Dong-seon, and the brilliant … [Read More]
Songs of the Kisaeng
Original Korean poems, written during the 16th and 17th centuries, and contemporary English translations. The original BOA Editions publication is now hard to find. Apparently however it is available as an eBook from LTI Korea. According to their website: This e-book was made by scanning and converting the original book using OCR software. We have … [Read More]