Ko Un

Korean poetry is not yet widely known or appreciated in the West, compared to Chinese or Japanese, but Ko Un is a great example of modern Korean poetry, indeed known by many as the nation’s unofficial poet laureate. One factor making translating his work doubly difficult is his facility at an amazingly wide range of genres and styles. As the introduction states, to follow the major periods of his work is to see much of modern Korean culture and history encapsulated, a history wherein he’s not only been eye-witness but also an activist.

Ko Un has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature and is recognized as one of the most important of living poets of our times. This volume selects work from his entire career to date.… (meer)

I have found this to be a beguiling book, following a little boy (Sudhana) and his exceptional experiences while he travles around South India. He has an inner need to taste all the different ways that people (and for that matter, supernatural beings) demonstrate thier own Buddha path. In some cases, these people don't seem to have much to offer, but they all build a certain roundedness to ones character, and perhaps gives the seeker some modalities that can draw upon on their own path. There is both a restlessness and a goal orientation in this story, two aspects that don't often meet. This book is written by a Korean who had been a Buddhist monk. The first half of the book had been serialized in a magazine. This is really a retelling of the Gandavyuha Sutra, and the book itself was translated by a collaborative efort of Brother Anthony of Taize with Young-Moo Kim, a poet and professor at Seoul National University.… (meer)

Ko Un (1933-) is an award winning Korean poet, who has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature on four occasions. Flowers of a Moment is a collection of 185 brief and delicate but powerful zen poems. Here are four poems from the book:

A photo studio's shop window
A woman who cannot bear children
gazes smilingly at a photo of a one-year-old child

Look, that dandelion drenched by a shower
is making the best of it, pursing its lips
Stand firm, little girl

At the foot of a hill where children are playing
a dainty stream babbles
It does not realize that very soon
it will be the sea

Go to Somalia
and look at your capitalism
look at your socialism
Look in the eyes of starving children

This is a beautifully written and translated collection; definitely recommended.… (meer)