Enough to Say It's Far : Selected Poems of Pak Chaesam

This is the first English translation of selected poems by one of the most important and unusual modern poets of South Korea. In contrast to the strident political protests found in the poetry of many of his contemporaries, Pak Chaesam's work is characterized by intimate portraits of place, nature, childhood, and human relationships, and by indirection, nostalgia, and reflectiveness. Often focused upon the border of this world and some other, Pak writes with a spareness of presentation but a cornucopia of imagery, meticulously exploring objective and subjective realms of existence and memory. Encouraging the reader to see and listen, and to allow the sensory to reshape the analytical, Pak's poetry opens up new realms of experience. A fellow Korean poet described Pak's poetry as being "the most exquisite expression of the Korean sense of han," or melancholy. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Soaring Dragon Waterfall Han Sound of the Taffy Seller’s Shears Landscape Thousand-Year Wind From the Song of a Celebrated Singer A Path of a Heavenly Maiden Autumn River in Burning Tears Some Day, Some Month As Summer Goes and Autumn Comes Landscape Painter Enough to Say It’s Far In the Wind Waking Alone at Dawn Spring’s Pathway News from Home Immortals’ Paduk Game Untitled Night at Tonghak Temple Seeing the Ferry My First Love In an Empty Courtyard Nothing Seeing the Fresh Green The Feeling of the Gingko Recollection 13 Spring Path The Road Back New Arirang Looking at Winter Trees Spring Riverside By the Night Sea Having a Drink Poplar Friend, You Have Gone My Poem At the River Recollection 18 Recollection 29 I Know the Heart of the Wildgoose Without Title On a Rainy Day Tree Autumn Sea Flowers on a Dead Tree Song of Death Diary in Summer Heat Flowers May Bloom Four-Line Poems 1 Brightness 2 With One Head 3 Place 4 A Song Baby’s Foot on My Brow Asking Not Understanding What You Sent Me P’i ri Hole Days and Months Parenthetical Before the Wind What I Learned from the Sea Looking at the Sunlight Shimmering Small Song Stars By the Mountain As for Love After an Illness Going to the Mountain Place Where I Look at Islands Recollection 16 Autumn Coming A Night When Sleep Is Far Translators’ Epilogue Presents an English translation of selected poems by one of the most important and unusual modern poets of South Korea. Pak Chaesam's work is characterized by portraits of place, nature, childhood, and human relationships, and by indirection, nostalgia, and reflectiveness. He writes with a spareness of presentation, but a cornucopia of imagery.