The Poetic Blending Machine 2: Thoughts on a Poem by Ko Un (with Ideas from Mark Turner) by Jerome Sala
In a recent issue of Poetry Magazine, I came across a translation (by Suji Kwock Kim and Sunja Kim Kwock) of a poem by Korean poet Ko Un. It caught my eye because, in a few brief lines, the poem created a whole, mysterious imaginative world.
EAR
Someone's coming
from the other world.
Hiss of night rain.
Someone's going there now.
The two are sure to meet.
One way to read this poem is as a reflection on birth and death. A sort of balance is envisioned; one person leaves the world, another one comes (or perhaps returns). What interests me most, though, is that moment when the poet imagines both persons meeting.
Where is it, I ask myself, that this meeting occurs? I suppose it is a kind of Bardo state, a liminal space visible to the poet when things are murky (like on a rainy night) in the ordinary world. But as mysterious as this imaginative space may be, it insists itself upon the speaker's consciousness, hissing into his awareness.
EAR
Someone's coming
from the other world.
Hiss of night rain.
Someone's going there now.
The two are sure to meet.
One way to read this poem is as a reflection on birth and death. A sort of balance is envisioned; one person leaves the world, another one comes (or perhaps returns). What interests me most, though, is that moment when the poet imagines both persons meeting.
Where is it, I ask myself, that this meeting occurs? I suppose it is a kind of Bardo state, a liminal space visible to the poet when things are murky (like on a rainy night) in the ordinary world. But as mysterious as this imaginative space may be, it insists itself upon the speaker's consciousness, hissing into his awareness.
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