Mānoa (special edn.), \"Tense Pasts, Present Futures? Contemporary Korean Poetry\"; eds. Brother Anthony of Taizé & Chung Eun-Gwi

REVIEWS Experimental fiction demands patience from its reader. In this lucid translation from Jung Yewon, Jung Young Moon explores the genre’s edges. Absent fixed characters, a plot, dramatic tension, or narrative focus, Vaseline Buddha lumbers on abstractedly, dragging the reader through a

Vaseline Buddha Jung Young Moon Translated by Jung Yewon Deep Vellum Publishing, 2016, 226 pp.

lingering impression.” (p. 6)

Tense Pasts, Present Futures? Contemporary Korean Poetry

youngest born in 1970); “Survivors of the

language” (p. 13) By scanning the last

calling “hell Joseon”), rather than feast on

War” contains the work of six poets, each

century’s poetry as both a sovereign artefact

the monoglottal discourses of corporations

of whom is still alive; “Founding Voices”

and suite of generative modern origins, this

working to feverish overdrive, the younger

houses the work of seventeen canonical

collection is a celebration and testament

poets in this edition of Mānoa seem to

poets. R ather than an independently

enshr ining a pantheon of famously

choose from an array of transgressive

published anthology in its own right,

courageous challenges in which poets have

styles; their vaudevillian, satirical, glam,

and despite being a special edition of the

spoken back to injustice while imperializing

grotesque, surreal détournements

series of detours on a journey through his

esteemed literary journal Mānoa, The Colors

forces visit violence and erasure across the

perhaps an ironic critique of the banality

thoughts. The thoughts are intimate, and

of Dawn is a prodigious advance on David R.

Korean peninsula.

of consumption as a mania of excess.

hint at a kind of spiritual searching, but

McCann’s The Columbia Anthology of Modern

Of course, these conditions did not

Once more we see a generation of Korean

Vaseline Buddha’s narrator guards against

Korean Poetry (2004). Boldly opening onto

wholly disappear after the Japanese were

poets arriving to take up the cudgel,

real self-disclosure. He considers the nature

vistas of contemporary creative production

forced out of Korea; what this collection

probing for meaning and value and again

of thought, but only shares glimmers of his

so as to contextualize those gestures that

makes clear is that Korean poetry contains

undertaking a humanizing enterprise,

life—hints of an affair that wasn’t with a

came before (ethical and aesthetic, stylistic,

a litany of epic and sometimes tragic

voicing dissent from within a place many

woman from Madagascar, a short tale of an

and thematic), editors Brother Anthony of

engagements, and that a great many poets

feel to be dehumanizing its inhabitants.

aborted rendezvous with another woman

Taizé and Chung Eun-Gwi have delivered

risked all and some accordingly suffered

In the first half of this collection, then,

in France, a dramatic retelling of a dramatic

an agenda-setting translation event which

greatly, or have been successfully silenced, or

there is a “Poetry of Today” summoning

breakup in Paris (in a hotel looking out on

seems to seek conversation with the future

have disappeared altogether and been lost

novel new modes of contrariety as equally

the Eiffel Tower)—but nothing more. There’s

by speaking equally to both the present and

too early. Some, sympathetic to (or simply

interested in engaging the prevailing issues

a passing mention of a son (“I didn’t have

the past.

silent in the face of) tyranny, bequeath a

of the day as any of the historical work in

the kind of relationship that most fathers

Make no mistake, the collection

tarnished legacy: the most famed of these,

Mānoa’s three remaining sections. As per

have with their children with my son”), but

carefully valorizes the important legacies

though, are not excluded from this survey.

the introduction, the challenge “for today’s

these passages raise more questions about

o f K o r e a ’s e a r l y - t o - m i d - t w e n t i e t h

And while the peninsula has endured

poets is to find meaning and value in a world

their relationship than they answer.

century poets. Surveying from the New

more than its fair share of upheavals and

of consumerism, materialism, and self-

What do these fragments together

Poetry movement onward, The Colors of

ruthless subjugations, this collection is

interest.” (p. 19) The poems that begin this

create? It’s not altogether apparent, though a

Dawn is also greatly assisted by a critical

suffused with poems that instrumentalize

important collection indicate contemporary

That lingering sensation provides the

sense of yearning and dislocation permeates

introduction historicizing the poets and

language, speaking up and out and against

Korean poets are already and as ever at the

impetus for Vaseline Buddha; as the narrator

the work. Above all, Vaseline Buddha’s

their work, situating them within a mesh

authoritarianism. As Brother Anthony

forefront of these discourses.

explains, “thinking into the morning, I

narrator is committed to circumventing the

of mutating social and political conditions.

asserts: “regardless of their writing styles,

think that perhaps what I’m about to write

usual conventions of storytelling, no matter

The introduction makes clear how Korean

ideologies, and aesthetics, [Korean poets]

by Dan Disney

will be about thoughts on my own thoughts

the outcome: “I may even feel a small private

poets have always been in the business of

were united in their conviction that poetry

Associate Professor of English, Sogang University

themselves, or things that occur in my

sense of victory in letting this story come, in

making sense amid the flux and chaos of

was a means to keep their humanity in a

Author of either, Orpheus

thoughts.” (p. 7) And so he embarks on the

the end, to a failure,” he confesses. (p. 133)

often-competing shifting ideologies, from

world that was absurdly cruel and unjust”

project of crafting a work that deliberately

If that sounds paradoxical, perhaps that’s

occupation and colonization to civil war to

(p. 18). Into the early twenty-first century,

resists a traditional narrative structure. The

the point. Vaseline Buddha is ultimately

military dictatorship to industrialization

it seems that while styles have altered (of

story—if it can be called that—languorously

a kind of defiant exercise in summoning

then rampant neoliberalism and on, to

course), none of these deeper aesthetic

meanders from one ephemeral recollection

victory in failure, a book that takes pleasure

today’s hyper-capitalism. A common point

urgencies have much changed; as ever,

to another, from one wayward meditation

in its opacity and invites readers to do the

This constellation of new translations

of origin is never far from the gaze of co-

newer poets are making their own desperate

to the next. The narrator examines fleeting

same.

necessarily updates our view of Korea’s

editor Brother Anthony of Taizé who, when

ontological maneuvers, employing language

literar y firmament. The collection is

surveying the era of Japanese occupation,

as a cutting-edge technology to show us

moments from his travels—incidents real,

The Colors of Dawn: Twentieth-Century Korean Poetry (MĀNOA 27-2) Guest edited by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Chung Eun-Gwi University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016, 171 pp.

imagined, or both, that made an impression

by Mythili Rao

structured into three chronologically-

informs his readers how that country’s

what and how we are, and where we may be

on him. He considers his own habits of

Producer, WNYC Radio

ordered sections and opens with “Poetry of

colonizing plans “entailed the systematic

heading.

thought. He ruminates over things he’s read,

Today,” containing the work of twenty-one

stripping away of Korea’s cultural heritage,

In this highly-structured hierarchical

or heard, or vaguely pondered.

poets (all but one still alive, and the three

beliefs, arts, and, in particular, the Korean

culture (which some have now taken to

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Korean Literature Now

Vol. 33 Autumn 2016

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