Poetess Moon Chung-hee |
By Choi Yearn-hong
Moon Chung-hee is one of Korea's most well known and most recognized poets. While there are many female poets in Korea, her lyrical poems from a woman's perspective on life and things show boldness and beauty, and have made her a favorite of Korean poetry lovers. So it is an honor to introduce and review her new book of poems, ``Woman on Terrace,'' for The Korea Times.
She has published 11 books of poems in the Korean language and her poems have been translated into nine languages, including English, German, Spanish and Japanese. Perhaps reflecting her international popularity and appeal, her latest book of poems was published in the United States in English.
Moon is well aware of the internationalization of Korean literature. While literature has its nationality it can also have international appeal. Her two translators, Seong-Kon Kim and Alec Gordon, make her poetry readable and understandable, and sometimes even make the poetry better in a foreign language than in the original. The two were responsible for translating ``Woman on Terrace'' from Korean to English.
Kim and Gordon are professors of literature at Seoul National University and Hankook University of Foreign Studies in Korea and have accumulated their technical know-how over the years through their partnership. With their translation, Moon's poems are likable and readable by Western readers who do not have a deep knowledge on Korean poetry and literature. I admire their translation skill and competence.
While Moon has written many well-known poems, I most enjoy her feminine poems. Allow me to quote from her poem, "Husband." (p.37)
Neither my father nor my brother,
He's the man standing somewhere in between.
Someone who is closest, yet so remote.
When I'm suffering from insomnia
I'm inclined to ask for his advice-
Oops! Anything but that!
So I silently turn away from him in bed.
Sometimes my enemy,
Other times, the only man on earth
Who holds my children so dear.
So I make dinner for him again,
This man I've dined with so many times,
This man who taught me how to fight.
I appreciate this poem for its wit and sensuality. I smiled when I read, "Oops! Anything but that!" However, when I read this line in the Korean version, I did not. This kind of poem will make all husbands in the world smile or laugh. Poetry should be witty and can be sensual. This is the point of attraction. Korean poems tend be serious and melancholic, or even obtuse but they don't need to be that way. I'd like to introduce another short poem, "Why We must Love." (p.49)
We must love each other
Because we share the earth's water,
We share the vegetation of the earth.
Under the same sun and moon,
We all wrinkle and grow old.
And we should love each other
Because we all cry while throwing time's stones
Into the rivers of the earth.
We tumble in the wind
Without knowing one another.
Like falling leaves or scuttling beetles,
We all separated and dispersed.
I have not read this poem in Korean, so I cannot fully understand such lines as "Because we all cry while throwing time's stones into the rivers of the earth." But she is trying to build on the common bonds that link all mankind. In enhancing international and intercultural communication, poetry can encourage peaceful coexistence and common prosperity between and among the nations, while rejecting conflict and war. The role of poetry in promoting international peace is something that Moon is mindful of.
Some of Moon's poetry is based on her social consciousness. For example, "Forgive Me, Daughter" is a poem for the so-called comfort women who were sex slaves to the Japanese imperial army during the Pacific War in Manchuria, China, and the Southeast Asian jungle. What makes a poet most respectable and admirable is his or her sense of social justice and public spirit. I can see her social consciousness in her other poems such as "Where is My Home?" and "Apartment Cave." From her poems, Korean readers can detect her discontent for the urbanized hometown and Seoul, where she currently lives. Her poems show a resistance for city life, which is losing the sense of aesthetics and nostalgia.
She often writes about her views on poetry in her poems, such as in "The Rose": (p. 71)
Is a poet beautiful,
An existence who gives life
To the roses that bloom upon time?
Does she have a life or only words?
In her prison, she sees only a hand
Writing a poem as she sits alone.
Blind as an owl,
Her eyes open to poetry.
For her reality is always a curse,
Love is always a parting.
From her solitary cell, she sets words free
To fall in love with one another, lay a golden egg.
Poetry, child not of silence
But of words-
Love never spoken
Blooms in her poems
Like a fresh rose.
Her poems are sophisticated, bold and beautiful. I congratulate her on the release of her book in the United States and send her my best wishes.
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경찰, 이태원 등 외국인 밀집지역 특별관리
