Book record
Sorrowtoothpaste mirrorcream
Hye-sun Kim
Translated from Korean by Don Mee Choi
Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream, by Kim Hyesoon and translated by Don Mee Choi, is a title that makes ordinary bathroom objects misbehave. Sorrow becomes toothpaste. Mirror becomes cream. The domestic turns linguistic, bodily, ridiculous, and grim. Kim’s Korean poetry thrives in exactly this transformation, where gendered routines and consumer surfaces open into grotesque psychic theater. Choi’s translation preserves the compound weirdness, the speed of the title’s invention, and the refusal to let any object stay clean. I would read this book as one of Kim’s confrontations with the intimate machinery of the body: washing, looking, smearing, swallowing, performing. It is funny in the way nightmares can be funny after you wake up sweating. For readers who want poetry to contaminate everyday life, this is essential.
- Published
- 2014
- Publisher
- Action Books
- Language
- Korean
- Country
- Korea, Republic of
- ISBN
- 9780989804813