Moon's poems contain global appeal
By Choi Yearn-hong
.jpg?w=728)
Moon Chung-hee
Moon Chung-hee is one of Korea’s well known and recognized poets. While there are many female poets in Korea, her lyrical poems have been challenging traditional vocabularies from a male-dominant Confucian society with her unique boldness and beauty. Her vocabularies are bravely bold as a middle-aged woman in Korean society. She maintains quality of poetry with erotic themes.
This is my second review of her poetry book in English. My first review of her first poetry book in English was “Woman on Terrace” for The Korea Times several years ago.
She has published more than tenpoetry books in Korean language and her poems have been translated into nine languages, including English, German, Spanish, French and Japanese. For her international an appeal, she recently received Cikada Award from Sweden. The award was established to honor the Swedish Nobel Prize Laureate in literature in 1974, Harry Martinson. Cikada was his publication in 1953. While literature has its nationality, it can also be an international appeal. Her two translators, Clare You and Richard Silberg, professional translator and San Francisco-based poet ad editor of “Poetry Flash “ respectively, made a good team to produce her second poetry book.
Cover for “I Must Be the Wind”
Translation is an art or creative writing of its own.
I could find and compare a couple of poems appeared in the Woman on Terrace and “I must be the Wind.” One is “Husband”and the other is “Reasons to Love.”
Husband from “I must be the Wind”
Neither father nor brother,
But somewhere between the two,
When restless love keeps me awake,
I yearn to talk to him, alas
I can bare everything to him
But this: I spin
In bed
The closet, the farthest man on Earth.
I’m amazed at times what a foe he is,
Yet he could be the one
Who loves my babies best.
I cook dinner for him.
He, I realize, is the one I shared
Most meals with who taught me
How to fight.
Husband in “Woman on Terrace”
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 enjoyed two versions of the translation from the same poem in Korean into English. I enjoyed Moon’s wit and intelligence with honest feelings towardsthe husband. Her feeling could represent many women’s perception of their husbands.
In Moon’s most recent poems, I found Rainer Maria Rilke and Van Gogh inspiring as her inspiration. Rilke inspired her to write poetry when she was 17. Van Gogh inspired her to love art.
Choi Yearn-hong is a poet and writer based in Washington.