Book record
All the Garbage of the World, Unite!
Kim Hyesoon
Translated from Korean by Don Mee Choi
All the Garbage of the World, Unite!, by Kim Hyesoon and translated by Don Mee Choi, is not interested in behaving. The title alone turns political slogan, refuse pile, and feminist grotesque into one gleefully contaminated field. Kim is one of the great contemporary Korean poets of the body under pressure, and Choi’s translations have helped make her English-language presence feel electric rather than merely representative. I would read this collection as a revolt against cleanliness: aesthetic cleanliness, national cleanliness, gendered cleanliness, the whole machinery that wants suffering packaged nicely. Kim’s poems often let the abject speak, laugh, multiply, and leak beyond control. For readers who want poetry that is ferocious, hilarious, disgusting, and formally alive, this book is not a side road. It is a main event.
- Published
- 2011
- Publisher
- Action Books
- Language
- Korean
- Country
- Korea, Republic of
- ISBN
- 9780983148012