| Poet Choi Seung-ja / Korea Times file |
By Yearn Hong Choi
This volume is a translation of Choi Seung-ja's 1991 anthology, titled "Portrait of a Suburbanite." Published by Mirae Press's in the series "100 Prominent Korean Poets" by Mirae Pressseries, the anthology poems that appear in this volume were selected fromincludes four of Choi's previously workspublished poems, — "Love of This Age" (1981), "Merry Diary" (1984), "House of Memory" (1991), and "My Tomb, Green" (1993). I, with like many other Korean poets, may remember Choi Seung-ja's poems as a uniquely grotesque poetess; whoChoi created a new dark image of poetry inat a her young and tender age. In this article, I quotereview her poem, "Love of This Age, in this space."
‘Love of This Age'
Though you call out, there's no master in March.
At the foot of the Great East Gate, a grass steeps in secrets.
Round the unchanging street corners
Into the houses we habitually slip
Into the sleep outside the world
And though you all call out from the deep swamp of dreams,
My beloved, by the "fallen blossoms and flowing water of this land"
Heavy with the hue of a four-thousand-year-old sky
We are ankle-shackled clouds.
The burning code of this time
The masked wind
Calls us out with nightly;
The chilling love of this age for which death follows death
— these we cannot decipher.
Kim Eun-ju, the translator of this volume, commented on Choi's poetry in the following in hervolume's long introduction, as follows.
Breaking down ossified aesthetics and conventions in existing Korean poetry, Choi experimented with the fixed form and persona of lyric poetry. She modernized the traditional language and attitude of love poems; suggested a model of the new women, who are unsilenced, carnal, and political; and imbued the intense sociopolitical poems with tender lyricism. Despite Choi's prominence as a modern poet, English translations of her poems have only been published in a few anthologies. The present volume represents the first substantial English introduction to Choi's poetry as well as serves as an invaluable literary record of the eighties, in which the most fundamental social transformation occurred in modern Korean history.
Kim emphasized that Choi's poetry were written fromduring thea dark political age under authoritarian president Park Chung-hee in the 1970s and anotherunder president Chun Doo-whhwan in the 1980s. Seeking a relationship between the poet's life in her sociopolitical space can be properly done. In this volume, that relationship could be oversized to my view. In any brightoptimistic, democratic free society, grotesque imagery and dark-looking poetry can be emerged. Poets and writers could choose to sketch moreillustrate the dark side rather than the bright side of human life, rather than the bright side of human life. This isIn my view point., one can read Choi's poetry can be readeven without making political connections. This is my view point.
Translator In the introduction, Kim eloquently explained that theChoi's choice of herthe word, "suburbanite," in her introduction over arefers to the marginal man and woman or his/ or her society. The term "Ssuburbanite" in this volume ishas a totally different meaning from the onethat in the United States. American suburbanites left the urban areas to avoid the racial urban riots and black people-centered city life in the 1960s. So her choice of the word, "suburbanite", should be carefully acceptedtaken with care.
Kim commented on the term "suburbanite" in lengthdetail, as follows.
Choi's suburbanites suffer from the sense that a better life exists elsewhere, that the suburban life is a pale shadow of the urban one. Choi does not feature suburbanites existing "in their place" as if living within their natural environment. Instead, she depicts the feeling of anxiety suburbanites have concerning their unnatural placelessness. Choi vividly presents the suburbanite as being in a state of fluctuation and frustration, as simultaneously ambitious and complacent, aspiring and resigned, engaged and disaffected. By mapping social hierarchy onto the landscape, Choi portrays the political, economic, and existential displacement of the suburbanite.
‘Portrait of a Suburbanite'
Though each time he learns the grammar of this world,
Each time he forgets.
Whether the world is anesthetized or his skull is anesthetized,
Each time he cannot decide.
From matter to spirituality, from spirit to materiality,
Their paths of migration he knows so well,
Yet sometimes he knows nothing at all.
A suburbanite habitually restlessly awaits
The moment of the newspaper delivery,
The moment of the television broadcast.
A suburbanite occasionally calls 116 without the area code
To see if the only clock in his house is correct.
Then listens to the robot-voice till the sentence ends.
A suburbanite usually commutes
By subway or by city bus.
At times at the risk of his life
He takes bullet-speed taxis.
Envying the happy people who believe in
The ideology of happiness,
Yearning for Seoul's high surface tension
Innumerably craving and innumerably loathing
To be drawn into it,
From surface to surface
From periphery to periphery
From fringe to fringe,
A suburbanite rolls around aimlessly
Confusing maps, ceaselessly entangling times.
Kim concluded her introduction with Choi's contribution to modern Korean poetry with — explosive language coupled with bold and sometimes grotesque imagery. She wrote: "Certainly, Choi Seung-ja established a distinctive poetic idiom that ranged far beyond the limited emotional scope typical of much Korean poetry." I tend to agree with herKim's concluding remarks.
Dr. Choi is a Korean poet based in the Washington area.