#don mee choi
Text
Poets partying
(Bohemian Tea Party, Woodberry Poetry Room)
Christina Davis gives a speech about the poetry room's activities + I am caught close-eyed catching up with poet Fanny Howe + selfie with poet and Woodberry fellow Rosa Alcalá for our mutual friends.
Poets grieving
(Memorial for Ukrainian writer and poet Victoria Amelina)
A moving night of readings, remembrances, and reflections on war and the Ukrainian literary community. Also ran into Fanny again (3 times in 5 days--I forgot how much I missed seeing Fanny at all things poetry & film related in Boston/Cambridge).
Ukrainian poet Iryna Shuvalova's reading and speech was utterly devastating.
Poets reading and translating
(Kim Hyesoon reading with translator Don Mee Choi, introduced by poet and translator Jack Jung)
Was deviously thrilled to get this pic of Jack that also captured Don Mee snapping Jack's photo. Don Mee read her English translations of Kim Hyesoon's poems.
The queen herself, Kim Hyesoon!
I've been a Kim Hyesoon and Don Mee Choi fan for over a decade, so this reading was a real treat for me. Could not pass up the opportunity to buy this gorgeous signed broadside, which tickles my bird-woman fancy!
#poetry#Woodberry poetry room#kim hyesoon#don mee choi#literature#korean poetry#ukrainian poetry#victoria amelina#Iryna Shuvalova#jack jung#fanny howe#Rosa Alcalá#Christina Davis
26 notes
·
View notes
Note
I loooooove comparing translations! Since you posted about it I really want to ask, hope it's not a bother! As a personal opinion, who do you think captures the essence of kim hyesoon's poem better? don mee choi or jack jung?
i like jack jung a lot but don mee choi is superior here. i think it's because don mee choi is a woman and kim hyesoon is a historically significant feminist poem so there's a different weight in her translation. also don mee choi has worked with her on several different translations and idk if this was an earlier or later collaboration but that closeness is definitely there in the work:
to use "lending" not "pleading" is more accurate to the original's use of 빌려/비러 and has an added layer of nuance that the mother is asking for more than she says in her words alone. the central irony is that the dead mother is asking to borrow these things that cannot be given back. and borrow and pleading/wishing are the same word here so the layers are just better presented.
i would probably have chosen to use several different words for 비러 but surrounded it with similar sounds/grammar as the other instances of 비러 to signal that it's supposed to be the same word? i might try to translate it myself.
"heart" is also a more dramatic and less gendered word than breast and because kim hyesoon speaks frequently about gendered violence and the female form it seems a bit of a strong word to use for 가슴 in my opinion. neither of them had the perfect verb for that line tho it's something along the lines of taking off a piece of clothing, like giving your mom your ribcage and beating heart is as easy as taking off a jacket for her.
jack jung's translation "once rose" is technically more accurate because it gives the nuance that it's an old story or song that is being told with the folktale-esque grammar but "ascend" is just more rhythmically pleasing and the effect is grander. i think it's a more elegant translation by a lot even tho it's not past tense like the original is.
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
It hurts to look down from above
Two people walk side by side
like the way the light switches for the dining room and kitchen sink are perfectly in line
like two words that appear on the back of the page
written by my teacher, drowsy from a painkiller
How wonderful if there were no doors in this or that world
-Kim Hyesoon (translated by Don Mee Choi)
#Kim Hyesoon#Don Mee Choi#reading#literature#quotes#life#life quotes#quote#world#random quotes#random beautiful stuff that i read#stumbling on random beautiful quotes#poem excerpt#excerpt
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
from For Suk - Ch'oe Sûng-ja trans. Don Mee Choi (2006)
source: Pome
6 notes
·
View notes
Quote
It can take billions of years for light to reach us through the galaxies, which is to say, History is ever arriving. So it's most likely that the decision, seemingly all mine, was already made years ago by someone else, which is to say, language -- that is to say, translation -- always arises from collective consciousness.
Don Mee Choi, DMZ Colony
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
Therefore as a woman, as poet, I dance and rescue the things that have fallen into the coil of magnificent silence; I wake the present, and let the dead things be dead.
Kim hyesoon
Translated by Don Mee Choi
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
“It can take billions of years for light to reach us through the galaxies, which is to say, History is ever arriving.”
- 최돈미 DMZ Colony
0 notes
Text
do the tumblr poetry girlies even know about kim hyesoon
#or don mee choi who did most of her english translations#i just think the tumblrinas would like all the garbage of the world unite#poetry#poemblr#kim hyesoon
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
(For how long can humans stay inside a poem?)
Kim Hyesoon, "Korean Zen" from Phantom Pain Wings (translated by Don Mee Choi)
812 notes
·
View notes
Text
lean on the water (day 4) from kim hyesoon's "autobiography of death" tr. don mee choi
30 notes
·
View notes
Note
hi hiii i wanted to say that your account is so refreshing to see, esp with the passion you have for the arts. as someone who's been meaning to read (and write) more poetry, do you have any recommendations? some classics that everyone and their mothers know? perhaps some underrated pieces that changed you? or even just authors you like, I'm very open to suggestions :]]
Hi! Thank you so much for this kind ask :) So exciting that you’re looking to delve deeper into reading and writing! I had to take a little time to answer this because my thoughts were all over the place lol.
For a review of notable/classic poems/poets, I honestly just recommend looking at lists online or, hell, just binging Wikipedia pages for different countries’ poetry if that’s something you’re into, just to get a sense of the chronology. I read one of those little Oxford Very Short Introductions on American Poetry and thought it was pretty good, but online is quicker if you’re just searching for poets or movements to hone in on. Poetry Foundation also has lots of resources, in addition to all the poems in their database. I guess my one big classic recommendation would have to be Emily Dickinson (<3), but really the best move is just to find a poet you already enjoy and then look around to see who their peers were/are, who they were inspired by, who they’ve maybe translated here and there, etc. and follow it down the line as far as you can.
For some personal recs, here are some collections I’ve really enjoyed over the past two years or so. Bolded favorites, and linking where select poems from the book have been published online. But also, if you want a preview of a couple poems from another of the books to see if they interest you, DM me and I can send them over! You can also feel free to pilfer through my poetry tag for more stuff lol
Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon trans. Don Mee Choi
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo
DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi
Hardly War by Don Mee Choi
Whereas by Layli Long Soldier
Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop
Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Mouth: Eats Color—Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals by Sawako Nakayasu
The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam trans. W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown
The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright
This Journey by James Wright
God’s Silence by Franz Wright
Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (the translation I read was by Alfred Corn—I thought it was great, but idk if there are better ones out there!)
DMZ Colony, Hardly War, Dictee, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, and partially Whereas are all book-length poems with some prose poetry and varying levels of weirdness/denseness/multilingualism—if you were to pick one to start with, I’d say do Don’t Let Me Be Lonely or Whereas. Mouth: Eats Color is some experimental translations of Japanese modernist poet Chika Sagawa, with other translations and some of Nakayasu’s original stuff mixed in—it's definitely a bit disorienting but ultimately I remember having such fun with it, as much fun as Nakayasu probably had making it. It’s a book that emphasizes co-creation and a spirit of play, and completely changed my attitude towards translation.
If you’re less interested in that kind of formal fuckery stuff though (I get it), can’t go wrong with the other books! Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is the one I read most recently, and it’s great—Harjo also featured in Round 1! Franz Wright also featured, and God's Silence is the collection which "Night Walk" comes from. James Wright (father of Franz) is one of my favorite poets of all time, though his poetry isn’t perfect. Even so, I’m honestly surprised he’s not doing numbers on Tumblr—Mary Oliver was a big fan of his, even wrote her "Three Poems for James Wright" after his death.
I mentioned in another post that one of my favorite poets is Paul Celan, so I’ll also recommend him here. I read Memory Rose into Threshold Speech which is a translated collection of his earlier poems, but it’s quite long if you’re just getting to know him as a poet—fortunately, both Poetry Foundation and Poets.org have a ton of his poems in their collections. There’s also an article by Ilya Kaminsky about him titled “Of Strangeness That Wakes Us” (!!!!!) that’s a great place to start, and is honestly kind of my whole mission statement when I’m reading and writing poetry. Looking at the books I’ve recommended above, a lot of them share feelings of separateness or alienation—from others, from oneself, from one’s country, from language—that breed strange, private modes of expression. That tends to be what I’m drawn to personally, and that’s some of what Kaminsky talks about.
Sorry of the length of this—I hope it's useful as a jumping-off point! And if you or anyone ends up exploring any of these poets, let me know what you think! If folks wanna reply with recommendations themselves too that'd be great :)
#ask#not a poll#i originally was going to link to previews of the books directly on this post but for some reason I suddenly feel very paranoid about#copyright LMAO. ik this blog is already like copyright infringement central but I feel like I can at least make an argument for the polls#being fair use lol. in the way that i could not for the pdf previews I made. (i also have a full pdf of hardly war if anyone wants lol)#and i know it's not entirely rational bc this is tumblr and nobody looks on tumblr. but i'm not used to having this many followers lol so i#admittedly just getting anxious about silly things#but please please feel free to DM me! or send an ask off anon#discussion
293 notes
·
View notes
Text
favourite poems of november
jesse patrick ferguson mama
a.e. stallings momentary
nate klug squirrels
fady joudah tell life
joyelle mcsweeney percussion grenade: "dear fi jae 2 (ms. merongrongrong)"
thomas james letters to a stranger: "mummy of a lady named jumtesonekh"
mukoma wa ngugi logotherapy: "i swear i see skulls coming"
kim hyesoon mama's expansion (tr. don mee choi)
nikki giovanni my house: "mothers"
harmony holiday gazelle lost in watts
calvin forbes mama said
marianne chan all heathens: "momotaro in the philippines"
richard speakes mama loves janis joplin
sara teasdale a november night
tyrone williams adventures of pi: "mama's boy"
reynolds price rescue
mary moore easter mama said...
frank stanford you: "faith, dogma, and heresy"
elinor wylie full moon
melissa johnson cancer voodoo: "mama's hair"
noor hindi breaking [news]
kemi alabi a financial planner asks about my goals, or golden shovel with cardi b's "money"
franny choi perihelion: a history of touch (this is one of my favourites)
james k. baxter selected poems: "wild bees"
kevin prufer black woods
evan kennedy the sissies: "(the) abashed"
jacob polley the house that jack built
primus st. john communion: poems 1976-1998: "after that"
frank stanford you: "freedom, revolt, and love"
monika sok bodhisattvas at the beach in november
kofi
#tbr list#tbr#poetry#poetry list#sara teasdale#a november night#elinor wylie#full moon#reynolds price#rescue#monica sok#bodhisattvas at the beach in november#mama said...#mary moore easter#mama said#melissa johnson#cancer voodoo#mama's hair#tyrone williams#adventures of pi#mama's boy#richard speakes#mama loves janis joplin#mama#jesse patrick ferguson#don mee choi#mama's expansion#kim hyesoon#marianne chan#all heathens
152 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Kim Hyesoon, tr. Don Mee Choi
837 notes
·
View notes
Text
There is a knife inside the hearts of all the firsts of the world. There is nothing that is more heartless than first. First always dismembers. First forever dies. Dies in an instant as it is called first.
Kim Hyesoon
Translated by Don Mee Choi
All the Garbage of the World, Unite!
1 note
·
View note
Last Seen Blogs
dfactualidad
Deán Funes Actualidad
futurepastoscillation
Future/Past Oscillation
superroddo
Untitled