All posts tagged: Korea

Sorrow of Phoenix

By CHO JI HOON
Translated from the Korean by SEKYO NAM HAINES

 

Translator’s note:

Cho Ji Hoon’s “Sorrow of Phoenix” appeared eleven months before the Pearl Harbor attack in the literary magazine Moonjang in 1940. This poem, along with “Old Fashioned Dress” and “Monk Dance,” published a year earlier, are considered to be among his major works. Born in 1920, Cho Ji Hoon grew up under Japan’s oppressive colonial rule after the demise of Chosun Dynasty in 1910 and has said that the foundation of his poetry was his attachment to what was vanishing from his native culture. He longed for the beauty of traditional Korea.

Sorrow of Phoenix
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October 2014 Poetry Feature

This month it’s our pleasure to present new work from Korea: three poems by Lim Sun-Ki translated by Suh Hong Won.

Close-up of Leaves
Poet Lim Sun-Ki was born 1968 in Incheon, Korea. He graduated from Yonsei University Department of French Language and Literature and received his doctoral degree in Linguistics at L’université Paris-Nanterre (Paris X). In 2006, Lim published his first collection of poems, Poem in a Pocket, and a second collection, Flower and Flower Are Swaying, was published in 2012. His third collection, Winter Tidings Fall on the Harbor, was published recently in August 2014 (Munhak-dongnae press). He is currently a professor at Yonsei University Department of French Language and Literature.
Translator Suh Hong Won was born 1962 in Hong Kong. He received a bilingual primary and secondary education, spanning Korea, England, and Hong Kong, and graduated with a B.A. in business administration from Yonsei University. He then moved on to English literature and received a Ph.D. in English at the University of Notre Dame. A professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Yonsei University, Suh’s interests lie in English renaissance poetry, esp. Milton, rhetoric and translation, and English education. He is currently translating into English all three collections of poetry by Lim Sun-Ki.

October 2014 Poetry Feature
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