For Nirvana
108 Zen Sijo Poems
Published on 6. September 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-0-231-17991-1 (ISBN)
Description
For Nirvana features exceptional examples of the poet Cho Oh-Hyun's award-winning work. Cho Oh-Hyun was born in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, Korea, and has lived in retreat in the mountains since becoming a novice monk at the age of seven. Writing under the Buddhist name Musan, he has composed hundreds of poems in seclusion, many in the sijo style, a relatively fixed syllabic poetic form similar to Japanese haiku and tanka. For Nirvana contains 108 Zen sijo poems (108 representing the number of klesas, or "defilements," that one must overcome to attain enlightenment). These transfixing works play with traditional religious and metaphysical themes and include a number of "story" sijo, a longer, more personal style that is one of Cho Oh-Hyun's major innovations. Kwon Youngmin, a leading scholar of sijo, provides a contextualizing introduction, and in his afterword, Heinz Insu Fenkl reflects on the unique challenges of translating the collection.
Reviews / Votes
In his Translator's Afterword, Heinz Insu Fenkl describes his astonishing encounter with the poems in this collection-from dream encounter with the poet, to the poems, then the poet himself. Extraordinary workings of the three-line sijo form into the spaces of Zen practice, the poems call us to see! -- David McCann, Harvard University Reading these translations of Cho Oh-hyun's Zen sijo is like shining a light on a carefully cut, many-faceted stone. The poems are concentrated, understated, and effortlessly colloquial, both immediately accessible and, paradoxically, mysterious. The Zen nature of the poems' inquiries and observations-with their allusiveness and open-endedness-bear up under many readings, defying prized Western rationality and yielding a surprisingly rich range of tones, moods, and insights. -- Elizabeth Spires, poet and author of The Wave-Maker and Now the Green Blade Rises [Cho Oh-Hyun] has created a new tradition of Korean sijo poetry. -- Choi Yearn-hong The Korea Times While some of the poems embrace the kind of open-ended imagery commonly associated with Buddhist poetry, Cho innovates in this volume with narrative techniques that engage the senses and the imagination. World Literature Today Monk Cho... is not simply another Zen Buddhist, like those I found in the Korean history. Rather, he is his own Zen monk writing his own style of sijo. -- Yearn Hong Choi Korean QuarterlyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 178 mm
Width: 140 mm
Weight
170 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-231-17991-1 (9780231179911)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2017
1st Edition
Columbia University Press
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Book
09/2016
Columbia University Press
€86.80
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Persons
Cho Oh-Hyun is in retreat at Baekdamsa Temple at Mt. Seoraksan. The lineage holder of the Mt. Gaji school of Korean Nine Mountains Zen, he received the Cheong Chi-yong Literary Award for Distant Holy Man in 2007, and translations of his work have appeared in Asymptote, the Buddhist Poetry Review, Asia Literary Review, Azalea, and the Adirondack Review. Heinz Insu Fenkl is associate professor of English and Asian studies at SUNY New Paltz. He is the author of Memories of My Ghost Brother and is working on a translation of Yi Mun-yol's novella Meeting with My Brother.
Content
Contents Preface Introduction, by Kwon Youngmin Bitter Flower Daydream Distant Holy Man Elm Tree & Moon Desire, Deeper than the Marrow What I've Always Said The Sound of Ancient Wood The Dance & the Pattern Spring Musan's Ten Bulls 1. Searching for the Bull 2. Finding the Footprints 3. Seeing the Bull 4. Catching the Bull 5. Taming the Bull 6. Riding the Bull Home 7. The Bull Transcended 8. Both Bull & Self Transcended 9. Reaching the Source 10. Return to Society Regarding My Penmanship Weekend Scrawl Wild Foxes Hoarse Speaking Without Speaking 1 Speaking Without Speaking 2 Speaking Without Speaking 3 Speaking Without Speaking 4 Speaking Without Speaking 5 Speaking Without Speaking 6 Waves What the Northeast Wind Said 1 What the Northeast Wind Said 2 What The Southeast Wind Said Ancient Rules for Everyman 3. Amdu-Drowned Man 4. Joju's Great Death 11. Gaesa Entering the Bath 13. Chuimi's Zen Gong Buddha Children of Namsan Valley Walking in Place The Path of Love At the Razor's Edge Crime & Punishment Today's Beaming The Way to Gyerimsa Temple Jikjisa Temple Travel Diary 1. The Way Forward 2. Not Two Gates 3. Sitting Buddha 4. Blue Crane-Zen Master Yeongheo 5. Stone Lamp 6. Cold Lamp-Master White Water 7. Mind Moon Tales from the Temple 2. The Seagulls & the East Sea 3. Two Squirrels 16. The Cry of Wild Ducks 25. The Otter & the Hunter 29. The Green Frog The Way to Biseul Mountain 2007-Seoul at Noon 2007-Seoul at Night Wild Ducks & Shadow Winter Mountain Beasts A Day at Old Fragrance Hall Bodhidharma 1 Bodhidharma 2 Bodhidharma 3 Bodhidharma 4 Bodhidharma 5 Bodhidharma 6 Bodhidharma 7 Bodhidharma 8 Bodhidharma 9 Bodhidharma 10 Sunset, Bay of Incheon The Sea Words of a Boatman Moments I Wished Would Linger You and I: Our Outcry You and I: Our Lamentation Siblings When the Dawn Comes Down A Fistful of Ashes Holding on to a Finger When the Thunder God Came to My Body Opening the Mountain-Side Window Proximation Sun & Moon Arising, Passing, Attachment The Wind that Once Wept in the Pine Grove Gwanseum This Body of Mine The Day I Try Dying As I Look Upon Myself Waning Landscape At the Tomb of King Seondeok Forest New Shoots Early Spring Three Views of Spring The Sound of My Own Cry All the Same at Journey's End Scarecrow Days Living on the Mountain Vapors My Lifelines Embers (Afterword) Translator's Afterword Acknowledgments