In his poetry collection, Flatfish, Moon Tae-jun offers an aesthetic that emphasizes the authors exploration of the inner self. At times sparse and allusive, his poems use blank space and other stylistic considerations to convey a voice and thought that ranges from the contemplative to the surreal and absurd. Moons poems suggest Buddhist ideologies, natural images, and Korean temples, as the collection explores individual experiences within the context of a search for understanding a greater whole.
While Korea is certainly the setting of these poems, the works remain largely free of cultural-specific imagery and are, instead, naturalistic or universal. This first bilingual edition is a critical resource for students, poets, translators, and general readers alike.
In his poetry collection, Flatfish, Moon Tae-jun offers an aesthetic that emphasizes the authors exploration of the inner self. At times sparse and allusive, his poems use blank space and other stylistic considerations to convey a voice and thought that ranges from the contemplative to the surreal and absurd. Moons poems suggest Buddhist ideologies, natural images, and Korean temples.
Recenzijos
"From a wild persimmon tree next to a tin-roofed house to a waning crescent moon being filled like well water, Flatfish transports us into an irresistible world. Park's translation captures a shifting landscape and the poetic voice that asks and answers the question, where will we go from here?" - Su Cho (author of The Symmetry of Fish) "In these illuminating translations, Moon's vision penetrates human and nonhuman nature alike, simultaneously. In poem after poem, as the distinctions typically required to organize and navigate our world fall away, a singular, wildly fresh experience of being opens, as if our individual skins were not skin, but humanity's collective eyelid." - Ed Bok Lee (American Book Awardwinning author of Whorled and Mitochondrial Night)
Contents
Foreword: Slow, quiet, and flat: Moon Tae-juns anti-speed lyric by Jae Won
Edward Chung
Translators Note
Words from the Poet
Part I
Longing
Water Lily
Floor
Someone Cries and Goes
Back like a Rascal
Old Mother
Horizontal
The Outside
Destitution
Destitution 2
Bugs, Poems, & Co.
Frost
One Evening
Sack
Fading
About that Time
The Stones Stomach
Part II
Path
Flatfish
Flatfish 2
Flatfish 3
Nursing Dog
Stars Sprout in the Winter Sky
School
Spread, Disease, Spread!
Oh My God!
Looking at SmallMums
Singing of the Tree Standing Dead
What to do, What to do
Metaphor of the Vine
Thicket
One Sad Spring
The Bottom
Part III
The Smell of Rice I Miss
Dream
Mysterious Flower Vase
The Noodle Shop with a Wooden Deck
Allegory of the Day Moon
The Marking Does Not Last Long
The Gingko Tree Behind Unmun Temple
Surprised by the Color
The Flower Blooms
I Walk A Long While
One Meadow Bunting
At the Sound of Mountain Rain
Empty Chair
Reservoir
The Crow and the Dog
There is No Cypress
In October
When I Turn Away
Part IV
The Wild Goose Laughs
Small Bird
The Promise of an Empty House
Ah, Twenty-Four Days
Oh, Thorn Lantern!
Like My Mothers Family Home, Visited Again
The One Cicada into the Persimmon Tree
A Day, Here, like the Autumn River
Another Door Outside the Door
Birthing of the Plum Blossom
Jade Cicada
Wooden Block
Winter Night
Molding Clay
Go into the Ksana
The Wind, To Me
Original Korean Text:
1
2
2
2
3
!
,
3
4
, 24
, !
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
An emerging voice in South Korean literature, MOON TAE-JUN has published a number of poetry collections in Korean (Crowded Backyard, Barefeet, A Shadows Development, and more). In poems that range from short, broken lines to longer prose-like forms, Moon Tae-jun evokes a sense of longing, as if searching for moments in the past that help inform the present.
BRANDON JOSEPH PARK is a lecturer in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at Rutgers University - New Brunswick, and in the Writing Program at Rutgers University - Newark. He is the co-translator of You Call That Music?!: Korean Popular Music Through the Generations.
