#don mee choi

[commajade]

refusing to celebrate an award given by the west, refusal to engage in industry discourse when there's larger issues in the world, i respect it a lot

[loneberry]

Poets partying

(Bohemian Tea Party, Woodberry Poetry Room)

Christina Davis gives a speech about the poetry room's activities + I am caught close-eyed catching up with poet Fanny Howe + selfie with poet and Woodberry fellow Rosa Alcalá for our mutual friends.

Poets grieving

(Memorial for Ukrainian writer and poet Victoria Amelina)

A moving night of readings, remembrances, and reflections on war and the Ukrainian literary community. Also ran into Fanny again (3 times in 5 days--I forgot how much I missed seeing Fanny at all things poetry & film related in Boston/Cambridge).

Ukrainian poet Iryna Shuvalova's reading and speech was utterly devastating.

Poets reading and translating

(Kim Hyesoon reading with translator Don Mee Choi, introduced by poet and translator Jack Jung)

Was deviously thrilled to get this pic of Jack that also captured Don Mee snapping Jack's photo. Don Mee read her English translations of Kim Hyesoon's poems.

The queen herself, Kim Hyesoon!

I've been a Kim Hyesoon and Don Mee Choi fan for over a decade, so this reading was a real treat for me. Could not pass up the opportunity to buy this gorgeous signed broadside, which tickles my bird-woman fancy!

[noleavestoblow]

It hurts to look down from above Two people walk side by side like the way the light switches for the dining room and kitchen sink are perfectly in line like two words that appear on the back of the page written by my teacher, drowsy from a painkiller How wonderful if there were no doors in this or that world

-Kim Hyesoon (translated by Don Mee Choi)

[seekingstars]

from For Suk - Ch'oe Sûng-ja trans. Don Mee Choi (2006)

source: Pome

[ukdamo]

Today's poem, by Don Mee Choi

[commajade]

it's so interesting to compare the two translations! the first one is don mee choi and the second one is jack jung.

asking to lend vs pleading and breast vs chest and past tense "once rose" vs "ascend"

a song: tosolga by kim hyesoon

[librarycards]

Happy Women in Translation month! Here is a recommendation list of books by women, translated into english. I based my selection on the widest variety of countries and languages of origin possible, and as a result, found nine books written by women and almost all translated by women, in nine different laguages!

Vivarium by Maarja Pärtna, tr. Jayde Will (Estonian)

Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Maojin, tr. Bonnie Huie (Chinese)

The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo, tr. Lola Rogers (Finnish)

Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada, tr. Kit Maude (Spanish)

How the First Sparks Became Visible by Simone Atangana Bekono, tr. David Colmer (Dutch)

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval, tr. Marjam Idriss (Norwegian)

Breasts and Eggs by Meiko Kawakami, tr. Sam Bett and David Boyd (Japanese)

Blood Feast by Malika Moustadraf, tr. Alice Guthrie (Arabic)

Mommy Must be a Fountain of Feathers by Kim Hyesoon, tr. Don Mee Choi (Korean)

tagging people below, including the ones who encouraged me to do this!! i'd love to see your liss, esp. those living outside the anglosphere!

@cigaretteaunt @shivtomdivorce @hamsterprincessdoll @podcastlesbian @secretcircuit @growtiredofpublicvulnerability @aldieb @heavenlyyshecomes @fatehbaz @punkkwix @fluoresensitive @bioethicists @felgueirosa @abstractlesbian @capricornpropaganda

[smokefalls]

(For how long can humans stay inside a poem?)

Kim Hyesoon, "Korean Zen" from Phantom Pain Wings (translated by Don Mee Choi)

[commajade]

I loooooove comparing translations! Since you posted about it I really want to ask, hope it's not a bother! As a personal opinion, who do you think captures the essence of kim hyesoon's poem better? don mee choi or jack jung?

i like jack jung a lot but don mee choi is superior here. i think it's because don mee choi is a woman and kim hyesoon is a historically significant feminist poem so there's a different weight in her translation. also don mee choi has worked with her on several different translations and idk if this was an earlier or later collaboration but that closeness is definitely there in the work:

to use "lending" not "pleading" is more accurate to the original's use of 빌려/비러 and has an added layer of nuance that the mother is asking for more than she says in her words alone. the central irony is that the dead mother is asking to borrow these things that cannot be given back. and borrow and pleading/wishing are the same word here so the layers are just better presented.

i would probably have chosen to use several different words for 비러 but surrounded it with similar sounds/grammar as the other instances of 비러 to signal that it's supposed to be the same word? i might try to translate it myself.

"heart" is also a more dramatic and less gendered word than breast and because kim hyesoon speaks frequently about gendered violence and the female form it seems a bit of a strong word to use for 가슴 in my opinion. neither of them had the perfect verb for that line tho it's something along the lines of taking off a piece of clothing, like giving your mom your ribcage and beating heart is as easy as taking off a jacket for her.

jack jung's translation "once rose" is technically more accurate because it gives the nuance that it's an old story or song that is being told with the folktale-esque grammar but "ascend" is just more rhythmically pleasing and the effect is grander. i think it's a more elegant translation by a lot even tho it's not past tense like the original is.

[spookymartianbitch]

all the garbage of the world, unite! (korean version available here) by kim hyesoon, translated to english by don mee choi

On the seat you left, two beer bottles, a cigarette butt, two pieces of scratch paper.

Why are you screening my calls, my messages? Don’t you have anything else to do?

You are the bourgeoisie of communication. Why am I always afraid of the phone?

When you look at me, I always feel as if I should change into something else.

How about changing myself into a bundle of clothes dumped on the sofa

or a pale pink wad of bubble gum dangling from someone’s lips

like the poor tummies of all the animals that flail about when they are turned over?

Do you know?

Eyesnavel god. Forearmsearflap god.

Sweetpotatokneesappleseed god. Pigstoenailschick god.

Dreamingdivingbeetlesashtree god. Lovelygirlsheelstoenail god.

Antsghostscatseyeball god. Ratholescatsrottingwater god.

Mrsdustingarmselephant god. Salivadropexplodeslikefreongas.

Salivafountainevenmoremortifyingnauseatingthanthesmelloflionsrottenbreath god.

Do you know all the dearest gods that are hanging onto our limbs?

On the seat you left, a wet towel, a wad of gum, a crushed tomato.

Dear blackgarbagebags who thankfully lent each one of their bodies.

Dear foldedarms of the window and concrete and steel under my feet.

How high the armsofthemachinehammers that beat down steadily upon

those foldedarms.

All the pigs of the world unite god. All the cats of the world let’s become a butter god.

Dear wrists escape from the arms god. Heap of curses, mackerel corpses spit out from a soccer player’s mouth god. There are 3 million gods in India. How many people live there?

Dearest multiple gods that have swarmed in from the sky, land, sea.

On the seat you left, I sit like a garbage god, and do you or don’t you know

that I wait for the green truck heading to the landfill like the dearest dirtiest loftiest god

who has long endured till now because of its hunger for humans?

Do you or don’t you know that every day our hair falls and mixes with the melting water of an iceberg in the faraway sea?

Yournostrilssingledropofapricklynosehairearth god!

do the tumblr poetry girlies even know about kim hyesoon

[144]

The firestorm blows every day and a big hand reaches my waist at last. When the smell of my sweat soaks into the ecstatic valley of my fingerprints, shoot! I will shoot! I feel in my digestive machinery the heaviness of the barrel, and in my mouth the slick muzzle of a gun. I close my mouth to shoot but instead of a bullet blast — huh? What did I really spit?

Poem no. 9 "Muzzle" from Yi Sang - Selected Works. Translated by Jack Jung, edited by Don Mee Choi

[poetrysmackdown]

hi hiii i wanted to say that your account is so refreshing to see, esp with the passion you have for the arts. as someone who's been meaning to read (and write) more poetry, do you have any recommendations? some classics that everyone and their mothers know? perhaps some underrated pieces that changed you? or even just authors you like, I'm very open to suggestions :]]

Hi! Thank you so much for this kind ask :) So exciting that you’re looking to delve deeper into reading and writing! I had to take a little time to answer this because my thoughts were all over the place lol.

For a review of notable/classic poems/poets, I honestly just recommend looking at lists online or, hell, just binging Wikipedia pages for different countries’ poetry if that’s something you’re into, just to get a sense of the chronology. I read one of those little Oxford Very Short Introductions on American Poetry and thought it was pretty good, but online is quicker if you’re just searching for poets or movements to hone in on. Poetry Foundation also has lots of resources, in addition to all the poems in their database. I guess my one big classic recommendation would have to be Emily Dickinson (<3), but really the best move is just to find a poet you already enjoy and then look around to see who their peers were/are, who they were inspired by, who they’ve maybe translated here and there, etc. and follow it down the line as far as you can.

For some personal recs, here are some collections I’ve really enjoyed over the past two years or so. Bolded favorites, and linking where select poems from the book have been published online. But also, if you want a preview of a couple poems from another of the books to see if they interest you, DM me and I can send them over! You can also feel free to pilfer through my poetry tag for more stuff lol

Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon trans. Don Mee Choi

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo

DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi

Hardly War by Don Mee Choi

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier

Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Mouth: Eats Color—Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals by Sawako Nakayasu

The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam trans. W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown

The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright

This Journey by James Wright

God’s Silence by Franz Wright

Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (the translation I read was by Alfred Corn—I thought it was great, but idk if there are better ones out there!)

DMZ Colony, Hardly War, Dictee, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, and partially Whereas are all book-length poems with some prose poetry and varying levels of weirdness/denseness/multilingualism—if you were to pick one to start with, I’d say do Don’t Let Me Be Lonely or Whereas. Mouth: Eats Color is some experimental translations of Japanese modernist poet Chika Sagawa, with other translations and some of Nakayasu’s original stuff mixed in—it's definitely a bit disorienting but ultimately I remember having such fun with it, as much fun as Nakayasu probably had making it. It’s a book that emphasizes co-creation and a spirit of play, and completely changed my attitude towards translation.

If you’re less interested in that kind of formal fuckery stuff though (I get it), can’t go wrong with the other books! Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is the one I read most recently, and it’s great—Harjo also featured in Round 1! Franz Wright also featured, and God's Silence is the collection which "Night Walk" comes from. James Wright (father of Franz) is one of my favorite poets of all time, though his poetry isn’t perfect. Even so, I’m honestly surprised he’s not doing numbers on Tumblr—Mary Oliver was a big fan of his, even wrote her "Three Poems for James Wright" after his death.

I mentioned in another post that one of my favorite poets is Paul Celan, so I’ll also recommend him here. I read Memory Rose into Threshold Speech which is a translated collection of his earlier poems, but it’s quite long if you’re just getting to know him as a poet—fortunately, both Poetry Foundation and Poets.org have a ton of his poems in their collections. There’s also an article by Ilya Kaminsky about him titled “Of Strangeness That Wakes Us” (!!!!!) that’s a great place to start, and is honestly kind of my whole mission statement when I’m reading and writing poetry. Looking at the books I’ve recommended above, a lot of them share feelings of separateness or alienation—from others, from oneself, from one’s country, from language—that breed strange, private modes of expression. That tends to be what I’m drawn to personally, and that’s some of what Kaminsky talks about.

Sorry of the length of this—I hope it's useful as a jumping-off point! And if you or anyone ends up exploring any of these poets, let me know what you think! If folks wanna reply with recommendations themselves too that'd be great :)

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of november

jesse patrick ferguson mama

a.e. stallings momentary

nate klug squirrels

fady joudah tell life

joyelle mcsweeney percussion grenade: "dear fi jae 2 (ms. merongrongrong)"

thomas james letters to a stranger: "mummy of a lady named jumtesonekh"

mukoma wa ngugi logotherapy: "i swear i see skulls coming"

kim hyesoon mama's expansion (tr. don mee choi)

nikki giovanni my house: "mothers"

harmony holiday gazelle lost in watts

calvin forbes mama said

marianne chan all heathens: "momotaro in the philippines"

richard speakes mama loves janis joplin

sara teasdale a november night

tyrone williams adventures of pi: "mama's boy"

reynolds price rescue

mary moore easter mama said...

frank stanford you: "faith, dogma, and heresy"

elinor wylie full moon

melissa johnson cancer voodoo: "mama's hair"

noor hindi breaking [news]

kemi alabi a financial planner asks about my goals, or golden shovel with cardi b's "money"

franny choi perihelion: a history of touch (this is one of my favourites)

james k. baxter selected poems: "wild bees"

kevin prufer black woods

evan kennedy the sissies: "(the) abashed"

jacob polley the house that jack built

primus st. john communion: poems 1976-1998: "after that"

frank stanford you: "freedom, revolt, and love"

monika sok bodhisattvas at the beach in november

kofi

[soulmaking]

from "Girl, Your Body Has So Many Holes for Straws" by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi