Magnolia and Lotus by Chin’gak Kuksa Hyesim and translated by Ian Haight, T’ae-Yong Ho

This is poetry from South Korea.

Magnolia and Lotus by Chin’gak Kuksa Hyesim translated by Ian Haight, T’ae-Yong Ho is published by White Pine Press. This is a Book originally written in Korean. This was published in 2013.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781935210436E12.

Magnolia and Lotus, by Chin’gak Kuksa Hyesim and translated by Ian Haight, T’ae-Yong Ho from Korean, brings Korean-language poetry from South Korea into English through Korean Buddhist lyric inheritance, magnolia, lotus, and spiritual attention shaped through historical language. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for lotus, magnolia, practice, and the contemplative work of turning image into discipline, not as a fixed lesson about South Korea. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Magnolia and Lotus belongs in the translated poetry library because it gives the Korean shelf a devotional and philosophical counterweight to the contemporary urban works around it.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.