Ko Un has long been a living legend in Korea, both as a poet and as a person. When a writer has published as much as Ko Un has in the course of more than fifty years of writing, it is hard to know where to begin, what to translate. For this collection, his translators have selected poems from the five collections published since 2002. Nothing shows more clearly his stature as a writer than the variety of themes and emotions found in his most recent work; as he approaches his eightieth year, with his energy and originality unabated. "Un's poems take the ordinary world and peel the skin off, so that a gentle meditation on the passage of hours becomes something both beautiful and terrible as light shining through blood."-The Quarterly Conversation March 4, 2013
Throughout his eventful life as a monk, poet, novelist, political dissident, husband, and father, Ko Un has remained a traveler on the Way. The poems in this collection, though strictly within the true Zen tradition, are as witty and down-to-earth as they are contemplative. Described by Allen Ginsberg as “thought-stopping Koan-like mental firecrackers,” the poems reflect both writer and reader. First published in 1997, the new edition features a more sympathetic translation and 11 original brush paintings by the author.
Ko Un has long been a living legend in Korea, both as a poet and as a person. Allen Ginsberg once wrote, 'Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.' Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives) is the title of a remarkable collection of poems by Ko Un, filling thirty volumes, a total of 4001 poems containing the names of 5600 people, which took 30 years to complete. Ko Un first conceived the idea while confined in a solitary cell upon his arrest in May 1980, the first volumes appeared in 1986, and the project was completed 25 years after publication began, in 2010. Unsure whether he might be executed or not, he found his mind filling with memories of the people he had met or heard of during his life. Finally, he made a vow that, if he were released from prison, he would write poems about each of them. In part this would be a means of rescuing from oblivion countless lives that would otherwise be lost, and also it would serve to offer a vision of the history of Korea as it has been lived by its entire population through the centuries. A selection from the first 10 volumes of Maninbo relating to Ko Un's village childhood was published in the US in 2006 by Green Integer under the title Ten Thousand Lives. This edition is a selection from volumes 11 to 20, with the last half of the book focused on the sufferings of the Korean people during the Korean War. Essentially narrative, each poem offers a brief glimpse of an individual's life. Some span an entire existence, some relate a brief moment. Some are celebrations of remarkable lives, others recall terrible events and inhuman beings. Some poems are humorous, others are dark commemorations of unthinkable incidents. They span the whole of Korean history, from earliest pre-history to the present time.
Born in 1933 in a small village in Korea's North Cholla Province, Ko Un grew up in a Japanese-controlled land that was soon to experience the horrors of the Korean War. He became a Buddhist monk in 1952 and began writing in the late 1950s. This is his major, ongoing work which began during his imprisonment with a determination to describe every person he had ever met. Maninbo, as it is known in Korea is now in its 20th volume and he has plans for five more before its completion. Collected here is a selection from the first 10 volumes.
During the Vietnam War Bao Ninh served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred men who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of only ten who survived. The Sorrow of War is his autobiographical novel. Kien works in a unit that recovers soldiers' corpses. Revisiting the sites of battles raises emotional ghosts for him and the memory of war scenes are juxtaposed with dreams and remembrances of his childhood sweetheart. The Sorrow of War burns the tragedy of war in our minds.
On the verge of marriage and a fresh start, Charlie Lewis can't stop thinking about the past, and the events of one particular summer. At sixteen he was failing his classes, and looking after his depressed father. If he thought about the future at all, it was with dread. Then Fran Fisher burst into his life. In order to spend time with Fran, Charlie became a different person: he joined the Company. The price of hope, it seems, is Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet learned and performed in a theater troupe over the course of a summer. Now Charlie can't go the altar without coming to terms with his relationship with Fran, his friends, and his former self. -- adapted from jacket
Albert Raboteau was born into a Catholic family in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, three months after his father was shot and killed by a white man. It was during the 1940s, when blacks couldn't swim at the same beach as whites, when the priest gave communion to white Catholics first and made others wait. In a moving account of his life, Raboteau tells how the boy grew into a man, married, became a success as a college administrator, then learned sorrow, lost his way and had to start over again. His is an American spiritual journey that is redolent of sacramental Christianity marking the sacredness of time, place, and community. The journey brought him to a conversation that reconciled him to his own past, including his religious heritage, his African roots, and his family members. In the end his spiritual quest became a journey home, to a human circle that opened to him and brought him to God.
A biography of the famous Shawnee describes Tecumseh's plan to amalgamate all North American tribes into one people, his role as statesman and military strategist, and his death in the Battle of Thames.
