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A Korean Century: Rivers & Fields
Over 100 poems of a spiritual nature. Born into a Catholic family in what is now North Korea, Sang is one of South Korea's leading poets. ""The poems display a rewarding blend of East and West, not only in religions (particularly Catholicism and Buddhism) but also in attitudes....A fine poet, well translated"" - World Literature Today.
- GenresPoetry
122 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 25, 2024
In the fields young shoots spring up.
In the fields leaves unfold.
In the fields flowers bloom.
In the fields harvests ripen.
Then what remains for us to do, in the field?
Run errands, that's all.
*
I first came across another collection of Ku Sang's, also translated by Br Anthony Teague, "Wastelands of Fire" and found myself very deeply moved by it. Ku Sang was a Catholic in dialogue with Buddhism, a refugee from the north to South Korea - I wondered whether his voice had the effect of filtering a Buddhist sensitivity and sensibility through a subtly Western-religious lens. In this collection he directly addresses this double cultural filter - at times contrasting the two perspectives, at times bringing them into dialogue, at times finding at a higher level a unity between "Being and Non-being," "Action and Inaction," "stillness and motion".
This collection contains a hundred poems, roughly half meditations on the river (connoting the flux of time), half on the fields (connoting its cyclical nature). At a certain point he breaks into prose to narrate a memory steeped in shame; there is a clarity to the poetry which seems redemptive of shame. At times we catch snatches of narrative from a life marked by war, exile, imprisonment and loss, surgery and illness, suffering experienced and witnessed - scenes too from a deep meditative practice, a detailed love for nature, and a long, respectful marriage.
In a deathbed poem he asks,
Spreading and scattering
like dandelion puff,
where will they float,
the seeds of my life,
where will they bloom?
The poetry seems part of a practice in which disintegration and rebirth, non-being and being, emptiness and mystery can at moments be attained together. A deep compassion suffuses it all.
In the fields leaves unfold.
In the fields flowers bloom.
In the fields harvests ripen.
Then what remains for us to do, in the field?
Run errands, that's all.
*
I first came across another collection of Ku Sang's, also translated by Br Anthony Teague, "Wastelands of Fire" and found myself very deeply moved by it. Ku Sang was a Catholic in dialogue with Buddhism, a refugee from the north to South Korea - I wondered whether his voice had the effect of filtering a Buddhist sensitivity and sensibility through a subtly Western-religious lens. In this collection he directly addresses this double cultural filter - at times contrasting the two perspectives, at times bringing them into dialogue, at times finding at a higher level a unity between "Being and Non-being," "Action and Inaction," "stillness and motion".
This collection contains a hundred poems, roughly half meditations on the river (connoting the flux of time), half on the fields (connoting its cyclical nature). At a certain point he breaks into prose to narrate a memory steeped in shame; there is a clarity to the poetry which seems redemptive of shame. At times we catch snatches of narrative from a life marked by war, exile, imprisonment and loss, surgery and illness, suffering experienced and witnessed - scenes too from a deep meditative practice, a detailed love for nature, and a long, respectful marriage.
In a deathbed poem he asks,
Spreading and scattering
like dandelion puff,
where will they float,
the seeds of my life,
where will they bloom?
The poetry seems part of a practice in which disintegration and rebirth, non-being and being, emptiness and mystery can at moments be attained together. A deep compassion suffuses it all.
September 11, 2018
Some really moving, gorgeous pieces in here.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews