Instances
Selected Poems
Published on 15. September 2011
144 pages
978-1-60235-235-3 (ISBN)
Description
Alert and streetwise, but tuned into the undercurrent of things, Choi's poetry creates environments at once familiar but dreamlike, marked by a preternatural clarity. Favoring imagistic condensation and formal trimness, Choi's poetry possesses a highly-suggestive, allusive intensity that locates the startling within the familiar. Always rooted in the here-and-now, Choi's speakers are simultaneously outside it, questioning the propriety of our taken-for-granted arrangements. Delicate and wistful, this poetry has the tensile strength to address itself to the deepest challenges of human experience: as Choi writes, with characteristic (and deceptive) off-handedness, "hey abyss." In a world of inconstancy and ceaseless transformation, Choi's poetry forgoes easy consolations and instead offers poetry of the highest order as the only consolation. Reading it offers an almost vertiginous sense of the variousness of experience. As Brenda Hillman observes, "There is a quality of imagination in her work that is still a rare thing in poetry."
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Persons
One of Korea's most exacting and innovative poets, JEONGRYE CHOI writes a poetry that uncovers the strangeness of everyday experience. BRENDA HILLMAN is the author of eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which is PRACTICAL WATER. She is the Olivia C. Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California. | WAYNE DE FREMERY recently received his doctorate from Harvard University with a dissertation on Korean poetry from the 1920s. He currently lives near Seoul where he continues his study of Korean literature.
Content
- Front cover
- Title page
- Copyright page
- CONTENTS
- PREFATORY NOTE
- Selected Poems
- MOTES
- WATCHING DEER
- IN THREE MINUTES
- BARBED WIRE IN A STREAM
- A THIEF CAUGHT AT DUSK
- JUST A GLIMMER
- THE AIRPLANE TOOK OFF.THE AIRPLANE DISAPPEARED.
- THE FIVE-THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD HEARTI'VE SWALLOWED
- AND BLINKS
- A TOWN WITH A TRUMPET CREEPER
- WINDOW WASHER
- THE ABSENT TREE
- SNOW
- HOTEL CALIFORNIA, A PUDDLE
- DEER CLIMBING A BAMBOO POLE
- SPRING RAIN SHOWER
- FOREST
- MIRROR, MIRROR ANDMIRROR IN THE MIRROR
- WINDOW
- A THICKET OF WILD ROSES
- ANGEL
- ON THE WAY TO BUY MEAT
- CANNA AND THE SWORD
- ROOM
- A FOREST OF DONKEY EARS
- WITH A MOUNTAINSIDE CHERRY TREEAND THE SHADOW OF A WOMAN
- A DANCE WITH THE WALL
- HER LIPS ARE WARM WHILE YOURS ARE COLD
- ARABESQUE
- THE WHALE SASHIMI RESTAURANT
- THE EVENING'S SUPERMARKET
- RED TUBS
- WATERMELON PATCH AND THE MOON
- AN APPLE SELLER SCATTEREDIN FRONT OF A MUSSO
- OLD WOMAN
- WHILE SLIPPING ON STOCKINGS
- BLOOD
- LEBANESE EMOTION
- CRIMSON FIELD
- IN FRONT OF MY OLD HOUSE
- RED MARBLE
- INTENT ON FORGETTING THE BODY
- A MEAL AT THE AQUARIUM RESTAURANT
- A SWAMP AND A POEM
- TIGERS IN THE SUNLIGHT
- I TALKED WITH GEESE IN IOWA
- SMELL
- PYONGJOM
- CRABS WITH ONE LEG INSIDE THEIR HOLES
- WHEN I WAS TREMBLING LIKE A LEAF
- FROG! GRASSHOPPER! DUNG BEETLE!
- AN ARROW LYING ON THE ROAD
- MY LANGUAGE AND ITS MOMENTS
- NOTES
- Series page
- Back cover
