Poet Kim Ki-taek lectures in Washington

Kim Ki-taek

By Choi Yearn-hong

Kim Ki-taek is a totally non-sentimental poet, different kind of poet from the Korean poets I know. He is uniquely his own poet. He maintains a reputable name in modern Korean literature.

The Korean Cultural Center invited him to Washington. Last Friday, he read several poems and delivered his speech, “Resilience of human body against the life-long pressures.” It was interesting to hear his poems and his commentary on his poetry. I could understand his poetry better. The American audience must have expanded the knowledge on modern Korean literature with his talk.

He is a poet of precision, with a microscopic, anatomical, and coldly objective vision of the things around him. His keen eyes on human bodies and living things are noticeable with his debutant poem, Hunchback. Below I present his three poems, my humble translation from Korean into English. I served the night as his interpreter and translator.

The Hunchback

In the underground corridor,

the old man was not always seen

under the pressure of bending darkness.

On my way to work,

everyday at the same spot, the same man was there―

one empty hand and a couple of coins,

one small face hidden under a spinal cord,

one pale face under the press of cement-solidifying force.

Even that face was not seen more days than seen.

One hot and humid summer day

amidst the noise of high noon of the Metropolis,

I saw the old man was sleeping on the ground.

Bearing a gigantic egg on his back,

he entered into the egg and slept inside it like a curled up fetus.

Something will come out of the egg after breaking eggshell.

It may soon stand up with yawning that can break steel-like spinal cord.

The egg was very big and risky.

The breathing sound, noisier than the Metropolitan noise,

was heard in low vibration.

All day long, light was coming down on the darkness

Bearing the egg.

The old man disappeared the following day.

Kim’s observation of an old, hunchback beggar in a Seoul metro subway station on his way to the work and on his way to home made his poetry a success. The hunchback disappeared from the spot. Then, he tried to find a big egg from his abnormal hump on his back, in which he was dreaming to be a new birth of one healthy normal baby.

Behind his non-sentimental poem, I touched his humanitarian warmth inside.

He has been a street poet or a road poet. In his speech, he confessed that he found the street was open, dynamic and vital, whereas the office was closed, static and lifeless. After college, he worked 20 years or so in offices of the private sector under constant stressful pressure. He did not have time to compose his poems in office. Under the circumstances, he found street as his playground of poetry. The first playground was the Hunchback.

He wanted to convert pain, suffering, humiliation, and sorrows into poetry of hope, joy, and happiness. That was why his poetry was a conversion success.

He read another street poem, “For a girl who became a middle-aged woman,” that is somewhat easy, but still painful for the readers to read and comprehend.

For a girl who became a middle-aged woman

A woman over 40 still called me “Brother!”

“Brother, you are the same as in the olden days!”

“Brother, I saw you in the newspaper!”

“Brother, I read your poetry book; the second one, too!”

Her face was not familiar, but her smile was familiar.

Whenever she smiled, the girl I met earlier jumped out of

the middle-aged face.

The small and young girl,

having hair in between her two legs and

wearing a brazier,

has grown to be big and sad,

to become a mother who has a high school girl

and a middle school boy taller than she is,

Long years have brought her a husband and two children

who sap her energy and strength

leaving her deprived, scratched, and scattered.

Before I recalled her face that

I saw 30 years or more ago,

The girl returned to a middle-aged aunt’s face

After stopping her laughing and at the moment

When someone called her a mother or wife.

“Brother, I have to go, goodbye!” she waved.

Immediately after she turned back from me,

she became talkative, reprimanding her grown-up children.

The girl suddenly became a common middle-aged aunt.

He met a woman on the street. He could not recognize her when she called him, oppa, or brother (not real brother, most confusing Korean word), but quickly recognized her with her smile that was not changed over the years.

They could be good friends in their young tender age. Time passed like an arrow. The poet saw aging phenomena, life fading and waning. Sadness. He saw death at the end of life. Life and death are two sides of one coin.

Kim seems to me a comparative urban scholar-poet. The homeless on the Korean street are silent and sorrowful in begging coins, whereas the ones on the American street are talkative, smiling, rather proud, begging one dollar.

Kim Ki-taek is a poet who finds vitality, life, dynamism on the street.

He ended his talk with a quotation from Jacques Lacan, a famous psychoanalytic philosopher.

“Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified, but also crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.”

It was a good Friday November night in Washington with a Korean poet. Korean poetry has expanded its horizon wider to the Washington area.

Choi Yearn-hong is a poet and writer based on Washington. He has been a contributor to the The Korea Times since 1966.