anxiety of words

When I got back to Seoul 2 weeks ago, this book


was waiting for me, and what a relief. Contemporary, and not just contemporary, but written by three anxious women who make me feel as though I'm being slapped in the face the way Alice Notley makes me feel as though I'm being torn apart. There's violence in their words, and it's a welcome change to the other volumes of largely nature-centric bilingual Korean/English poetry that I've managed to get my hands on.

This is 이연주.

매음녀 6

어머니, 날 낳으시고 젖이 없어 울으셨다.
어머니 숨 거두시며
마음 착한 남자, 등짝 맞대 살으라 이르셨다.
나는 부둣가에서
선술집 문짝에 내걸린 초라한 등불 곁에서
매발톱 손톱을 키워 도회지로 흘러왔다.
눈 붙이면 꿈속에서 어머니
이 버러지 같은 년아,
아침까지 흑흑 느껴 우신다.
내 심장 차가운 핏톨, 썩은 물 흐르는 소리.
나는 살 속 깊은 데서 손톱을 꺼내
무덤을 더 깊이 판다.
하나의 몫을 치르기 워해 삶이 있다면
맨몸으로 던지는 돌 앞에 서서 사는
이 몫의 삶은 ...
희미한 전등불 꺼질 듯 끄물거린다.


Prostitute 6

Mother cried after giving birth to me because she had no milk.
Mother told me with her last breath,
"Find a kind man and live happily ever after."
At a pier next to a dented lamp hung from a tavern door
I grew my thorny toenails, fingernails
and drifted to a city.
When I close my eyes
Mother weeps in my dream until morning, "You wormy bitch."
My heart, a cold bloody speck,
the sound of putrid running water.
I take out the fingernails from deep inside my flesh
and dig the grave deeper.
If life exists to pay off a single life
then this life
lived naked in front of the rocks thrown at you is ...
The dim light flickers as if it's about to go out.

I like this translator (Don Mee Choi) a lot better than Brother Anthony of Taize, who seems to dominate all the bilingual Korean/English poetry available. But I'm still really confused by a lot of the line break decisions she makes. I really need to learn Korean better, so that I can understand what the original poems are doing better, and make more judgments about the translations.