Translating Mo'Um

by Hong, Cathy Park

• ISBN13: 9781931236119
• ISBN10: 1931236119
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-02-01
• Publisher: Hanging Loose Pr

Summary

Poetry. Asian American Studies. "Deft, edgy, dystopic, assiduous in their loathing of the famous fascination of the exotic, Cathy Park Hong's poems burst forth in searing flashes of ire and insight. She gives no quarter to either Korean or English. Without creative interference, without mistranslation, language to her is history's 'cracked' thorax, a resented 'dictation,' and a constant personal embarrassment. Her poems are 'islands without flags,' 'the ocean a slate gray/ along the wolf-hued sand.' TRANSLATING MO'UM is striking both for its stabbingly original, vinegary images and its ruthless honesty: Hong being that rare thing, a poet as rigorous in her self-scrutiny as in her cultural confrontations"-Calvin Bedient.

Table of Contents

I.
Zoo	13	(2)
Ontology of Chang and Eng, The Original Siamese Twins	15	(2)
Rite of Passage	17	(2)
Helix	19	(1)
Assiduous Rant	20	(1)
Translating Pagaji	21	(2)
Scale	23	(1)
Body Builder	24	(1)
Melanin	25	(1)
Assimilation of Sitting	26	(5)
II.
The Shameful Show of Tono Maria	31	(4)
During Bath	35	(2)
All the Aphrodisiacs	37	(2)
Not Henry Miller but Mother	39	(1)
On Splitting	40	(3)
Movement	43	(1)
Translating Michin'yun	44	(1)
To Collage a Beginning	45	(8)
III.
Hottentot Venus	53	(4)
Androgynous Pronoun	57	(1)
The Scavenging	58	(2)
CAT Scan	60	(1)
Wing	61	(4)
Ablution	65	(2)
The Gatherer	67	(1)
Translating Mo'um	68	(5)
Timetable	73	(1)
Notes	74