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 which set Korean poetry in Chinese apart from traditional poetry from China. His elegant versions – here accompanied by the original poems – will appeal to anyone with a taste for the cool wit and refined pathos of Chinese poetry, with the added attraction of its fresh setting in Korea.