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English(English) Article

The Poet Who Speaks the Dialect of the Universe | LIST

About the Article

Article
http://list.or.kr/content/poet-who-speaks-dialect-universe
Journal
list_Books from Korea
Issued Date
-
Page
-
Language
English(English)
Country
SOUTH KOREA
City
Seoul
Book
-
Writer
Ko Un

About the Author

  • Ko Un
  • Birth : 1933 ~ -
  • Occupation : Poet, Novelist
  • First Name : Un
  • Family Name : Ko
  • Korean Name : 고은
  • ISNI : 0000000110791051
  • Works : 101
Descriptions - 1 Languages
  • English(English)

The Poet Who Speaks the Dialect of the Universe   By Kim Hyeong Soo on Oct 29 2014 20:26:37 Vol.25 Autumn 2014 Good poets are always loved before they’re comprehended and explained. The language used in poetry is letters and words, but it must always be something greater than that, because the movement of every living thing is not only ranked above words, but must be bigger and deeper than words. Ko Un’s poetry gives dimension to life by virtue of making readers feel before they understand. It is fruitless to try to label him when his works transcend reason and logic, meaning and form, and travel freely through time, space, and things.   Even though Ko Un was once a monk well versed in Buddhism, trying to find keys in Buddhism to unlock his world will get you nowhere. His experience with Buddhism does not explain why poetry, the true essence of Ko Un’s philosophy, led him back to the secular world. He was who he was when he sang of drifting at the peak of his life, and when he was a political prisoner fighting the paradoxes of reality. He was not a pessimist when he attempted suicide, and he was not a Marxist when he was imprisoned. In his 56-year history as a poet, he has never once relied on scriptures. The spirit of his poems does not allow the use of the tools of preexisting discourses, ideological systems, or epistemological devices. It would be a great shame indeed if the words in the hundreds of books that he has written were read through the lens of preconceived notions.         For Ko Un, being alive is itself more important than truth or ethics. He never fails to capture a moment when a life is not trapped in the cubicles of civilization. For Ko Un, scriptures are things that appear in unexpected moments—laughter he hears passing an alley, or the sound of raindrops on mulberry fields he’d heard when he was a child. These moments are neither right nor wrong. There are things in the world that must be accepted for the shape and color they are. Existence is always in harmony with the unseemly and other things we would rather not see. And so he does not refrain from marveling at the moments created by the movement of life.

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