Full Description
"[These] accumulated poems [are] a smoldering tragedy, a heady descent, songs from a pit where what glints may be gems or the moon off snake scales."--Douglas Kearney Sun Yung Shin's poems animate the elements of the epic poem and Korean history across a dystopian dreamscape of fairy tale and folklore. Filled with pithy observations and striking lyrics, this collection explores alienation, moral isolation, and nationhood. Sun Yung Shin is the author of Skirt Full of Black, which won the 2008 Asian American Literary Award for poetry, and the children's book Cooper's Lesson, and is the co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. Raised in Chicago, Illinois, Shin currently lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and frequently returns to Korea.
Contents
Changeling
Which Way | Gichicheon | Yankeetown
The Donor Sibling Registry
Kingdom of the Light, Kingdom of the Dark
In the End
Suffrage
Assassin
Are You Here
In the News Again, the Language Cycle
In the End
Uri Nara
(Riot Police)
(Pyongtaek, U.S. Military Base Expansion)
(Naju, Weeding at the Base of the Pear Tree)
(Demilitarized Zone)
(Mountain, Jirisan National Park)
(The North Korean Observatory)
(Outside the Gate at Camp Humphreys, U.S. Military Base)
(Budae Chigae Near the Gi Ji Cheon / "Garbage" Stew near the Prostitution Camptown)
Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU): Headquarters, Seoul, August 2007
Itinerary
Ode to the Frog Bridegroom
The Brother
Ask Us to Pray
Isolette
Political Prisoner
Marching
Upon Seeing Former "Comfort Women" Not (Allowed by the Korean Police) in Front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul
Waking
The Daughter's Semi-Daily Violin Practice
Available
Easy
American Missionary
Seoul, December 1883
August 1910
The 1816 Voyages of the Alceste and Lyra
Superstition
1895, the King of Korea is a Vassal of China
Coal and Iron and Gold
Here Not Then
Ordinary Geography
Territorial Dispute
August 1950, 8,000 Korean Replacements
Clay & Fire
Bongeun-Sa Temple, Samseong-Dong of a Gangnam-Gu District
Memories of a Murder, 2003, Directed by Boon Jong-Ho
The Tourist's Prayer Bead Bracelet
A Thanksgiving Series
Revere Your Enemies
The World in Surrender
Dowry, Rights and Obligations
A Curious Genealogy
