Author: Kim Hyesoon
Translated by: Cindy Juyoung Ok
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2026
Original title: 어느 별의 지옥, 2017
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Singular poetry made through censorship, elusion, and language renewal
The astonishing poetry collection The Hell of That Star enlivens the horror of Korean life under U.S.-backed authoritarianism. Poems of blows and vomit, births and coffins alternate blithe confidence and trembling terror. When slapped seven times by a government censor, Kim responded with defiant poems. The death of language becomes a death of the writer; within death, Kim finds new life in fragmentation and reorientation. This singular volume provides a wild and rigorous study of the words of the nation-state and the self, as well as the deprivations, detainments, and surprises in between. In evading censorship, Kim’s poems question, twist, and transmute; language is a site where the personal and political meet to escape containment, emptiness, and domestication. The book includes essays by the author and translator.
[sample poem]
The tough after all
we still remain
and just in gathering it is lovingly
even while building each other’s tombs
while patting each other’s backs
But when each bird turns around
their arms flung! open
embracing tightly what
they do not even recognize as their grave
and they hug and hold harder and harder
stretching four limbs out over the laid sleeping mat and blanket
saying I love you I love you even in their sleep
In this world from which crying birds have disappeared
only I am left