The Three Way Tavern

by Ko, Un; You, Clare; Silberg, Richard; Snyder, Gary

• ISBN13: 9780520246126
• ISBN10: 0520246128
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Ko Un, the preeminent Korean poet of the twentieth century, embraces Buddhism with the versatility of a master Taoist sage. A beloved cultural figure who has helped shape contemporary Korean literature, Ko Un is also a novelist, literary critic, ex-monk, former dissident, and four-time political prisoner. His verse--vivid, unsettling, down-to-earth, and deeply moving--ranges from the short lyric to the vast epic and draws from a poetic reservoir filled with memories and experiences ranging over seventy years of South Korea's tumultuous history from the Japanese occupation to the Korean war to democracy. This collection, an essential sampling of his poems from the last decade of the twentieth century, offers in deft translation, as lively and demotic as the original, the off-beat humor, mystery, and mythic power of his work for a wide audience of English-speaking readers. It showcases the work of a man whom Allen Ginsberg has called "a magnificent poet, a combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian," who Gary Snyder has said is "a real-world poet!" who "outfoxes the Old Masters and the young poets both," and who Lawrence Ferlinghetti has described as "no doubt the greatest living Korean Zen poet today."

Table of Contents

Foreword Gary Snyder	xi
Introduction Clare You	xvii
FROM Song of Tomorrow (1992) Today	5	(24)
Song of That Day	6	(1)
Front of a Tree	7	(1)
The Woman of Kageo Island	8	(1)
Arirang	9	(2)
Grand Dame Choi Kumja	11	(1)
Strange Land	12	(1)
Cold Mountain	13	(1)
First	14	(1)
Memorial Night	15	(1)
Song of Innocence	16	(2)
Kangaroo	18	(1)
A Boat	19	(1)
My Resume	20	(2)
The Cow Is Laughing	22	(1)
You and I	23	(1)
A Slice of Old Moon	24	(1)
Sosan Granny	25	(1)
Confucius, One Day	26	(3)
FROM The Road Ahead (1993)
Majung Village	29	(1)
Ignorant Man	30	(1)
Empty Field	31	(1)
Memories	32	(1)
My Spring	33	(1)
After Stacking the Chopped Pines	34	(1)
The Poem in Last Night's Dream	35	(1)
In the Woods	36	(1)
Mother's Dew	37	(1)
Chirping of a Cricket	38	(1)
A Cup of Green Tea	39	(1)
Grandfather's Advice	40	(1)
The Road Ahead	41	(4)
FROM A Cenotaph (1997)
My Poems	45	(2)
Forgetting	47	(1)
Going Over Ssari Hill	48	(1)
By the Window	49	(1)
Sumano Pagoda	50	(2)
Fallacy	52	(1)
The Poet	53	(1)
Poems of the Peninsula	54	(4)
Hometown	58	(1)
Untitled	59	(1)
A Cenotaph	60	(2)
Anapurna	62	(1)
Lullaby	63	(1)
The Voice of Baekdam Monastery	64	(1)
Alone One Day	65	(1)
About the Time Crepe Myrtles Bloomed	66	(1)
Lion	67	(2)
Self-Portrait	69	(1)
Spring News	70	(1)
Sadness	71	(1)
The Winter Sky	72	(1)
Breeze	73	(1)
Salmon	74	(1)
Back Home	75	(1)
Passing through a Mountain Village	76	(1)
The Croaking of Frogs	77	(1)
At Buan Gomso	78	(1)
After a Hangover	79	(1)
But	80	(1)
Empty Hands	81	(4)
FROM Ten Thousand Lives (1986-)
Traveler	85	(1)
January Full Moon	86	(1)
Morning Rooster	87	(1)
Women of Sunjeri	88	(1)
The Street Kids	89	(1)
Byong'ogi	90	(1)
Mansooni, Comfort Woman	91	(1)
Letters	92	(2)
Aunt	94	(1)
Uncle Jaemoon	95	(2)
A Good Day	97	(1)
Planting Rice	98	(1)
Mountain Well	99	(1)
Mitsukoshi Department Store	100	(1)
Lark	101	(1)
Kasame Salt Flats	102	(1)
Sudong's Swallows	103	(2)
Ch'ilyong'i	105	(1)
Chungdu's Mother	106	(1)
Ttaoggi	107	(1)
Tavern Justice	108	(1)
Three-Headed Eagle	109	(1)
YH Kim Kyungsook	110	(3)
FROM Ko Un's Son Poems: What? (1991)
Echo	113	(1)
Owl	113	(1)
Baby	113	(1)
Coming Down the Mountain	114	(1)
Bushman	114	(1)
Looking Back	114	(1)
Drunkard	115	(1)
Friend	115	(1)
The Three Way Tavern	116	(1)
Late Summer	116	(1)
Tsetse Fly	116	(1)
Moon	117	(1)
Green Frog	117	(1)
Held in Your Arms	117	(1)
Cuckoo	118	(1)
Way	118	(1)
Winds	119	(1)
Cheju's Reed Field	119	(1)
Mosquito	120	(1)
House	120	(1)
Summer	120	(1)
From A Cenotaph: Cheju Island	121	(12)
FROM The Whisper (1998)
Afterlife	133	(1)
Suddenly	134	(1)
Stars and Flowers	135	(1)
Unlike Laozi	136	(1)
You	137	(1)
Confession	138	(1)
Peace	139	(1)
A Certain Song	140	(1)
Meeting Myself	141	(1)
Barley Field	142	(2)
Mustard Flowers in April	144	(1)
Early Spring	145	(1)
Searching for the Cow	146	(3)
Coda: The Thuja Fence	149	(2)
Notes	151