Full Description
Hardly War, Don Mee Choi's major second collection, defies history, national identity, and militarism. Using artifacts from Choi's father, a professional photographer during the Korean and Vietnam wars, she combines memoir, image, and opera to explore her paternal relationship and heritage. Here poetry and geopolitics are inseparable twin sisters, conjoined to the belly of a warring empire. Like fried potato chips--I believe so, utterly so--The hush-hush proving ground was utterly proven as history-- Hardly=History--I believe so, eerily so--hush hush--Now watch this performance--Bull's-eye--An uncanny human understanding on target-- Absolute=History--loaded with terrifying meaning--The Air Force doesn't say, hence Ugly=Narration-- Don Mee Choi is the author of The Morning News Is Exciting (Action Books, 2010), and translator of contemporary Korean women poets. She has received a Whiting Writers Award and the 2012 Lucien Stryk Translation Prize. Her translation of Kim Hyesoon's Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (Action Books, 2014) was a finalist for the 2015 PEN Poetry in Translation Award. She was born in Seoul and came to the United States via Hong Kong.
She now lives in Seattle, Washington.
Contents
Hardly War
Race=Nation
Photo: Taedong River Bridge & Flight of
Refugees /A Little Glossary
Woe Are You?
6.25
Photo: With her brother on her back/
I refuse to translate
1950 June 28: The Fall of Seoul
Photo: With my brother on my back/
I Was Narrowly Narrator
The Hydrangean Candidate
Photo: August 15, 1948/ A Little Menu
Hydrangea Agenda
Suicide Parade
Photo: There is no sky only visual aid
A Little Confession
Double Hence
Ugly=Nation
Please!
Purely Illustrative
New Tarzon Guided Bomb/Bomb with a Brain
The Tarzon's Guide to History/Victory=Narration
Photo: Refugee Girl Daisy Girl
I, Lack-a-daisy
Daisy Serenade
Kitty Hawk Postcard
Daddy's Flower Bed: A Little Chorus
Shitty Kitty
Neocolony's Colony
Operation Punctum
Hardly Opera
Photos: My Father in Saigon, May 1968/
A Little Paper Closet
Act 1. I was surprised!
Act 2. What's going on? OK OK
Act 3. Everybody was there
Act 4. U.S. Ambassador's garden party
First Stage Scene
Second Stage Scene
Act 5. Madam Kim!
Act 6. Pyongyang Excursion 1950
Act 8. Flower of All Flowers
Notes
Acknowledgements
