As noted in the introduction, in contemporary Korea, "poems are found on mountain boulders, on café walls, on placemats, T-shirts, and television game shows." And though Americans may know something of Korea’s modern history of tumult—division and repression—little of the country’s rich and varied poetry has been available to the English-speaking public.
In Three Poets of Modern Korea, American poet James Kimbrell, and his wife, translator and native speaker Yu Jung-yul, have gathered and translated 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 ending with the brilliant sensuality of Choi Young-mi, whose work also asserts a determination to be both a woman and a free individual, this is a superb introduction to the largely undiscovered treasures of contemporary Korean poetry.
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Yu Jung-yul holds degrees in French Literature from Pusan National University, and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Kenyon College. A freelance photographer and translator, she is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Studio Art at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
James Kimbrell is the author of The Gatehouse Heaven (Sarabande, 1998) and is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Award, and a Whiting Writer's Award. He teaches in the Creative Writing program at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
Also available: by James Kimbrell
The Gatehouse Heaven,
Winner of the 1997 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, Selected by Charles Wright
TC $20.95, 1-889330-13-2 CUSA
TP $12.95, 1-889330-14-0 CUSA