{"id":276756,"date":"2010-02-26T21:09:09","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T21:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2010\/02\/26\/scale-and-stairs-by-heeduk-ra-btba-2010-poetry-finalists\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:38","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:38","slug":"scale-and-stairs-by-heeduk-ra-btba-2010-poetry-finalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2010\/02\/26\/scale-and-stairs-by-heeduk-ra-btba-2010-poetry-finalists\/","title":{"rendered":""Scale and Stairs" by Heeduk Ra [BTBA 2010 Poetry Finalists]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the next six days, we’ll be featuring each of the ten titles from this year’s Best Translated Book Award poetry shortlist.<\/a> Click here<\/a> for all past write-ups.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Scale and Stairs<\/em> by Heeduk Ra. Translated from the Korean by Woo-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill. (Korea, White Pine Press)<\/b><\/p>\n

This guest post is by Kevin Prufer, whose newest books are National Anthem<\/em> (Four Way Books, 2008) and Little Paper Sacrifice<\/em> (Four Way Books, forthcoming). He\u2019s also Editor of New European Poets<\/em> (Graywolf Press, 2008) and Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n

The speakers in these carefully crafted poems are, first of all, keen and imaginative observers. One sits in a cafeteria watching a workman eat boiled rice until the grains \u201ccarried by the chapped hand \/ . . . gather and scatter like clouds between the blistered lips.\u201d Another stands outside at night observing the moon, telling us how \u201cI turned around \/ and caught her furtive eye, her soiled feet. \/ Blushing, as if she were being watched, she hid behind a cloud \/ and reappeared in the distance.\u201d A third narrator stands in a hospital corridor listening to the agony of the others, \u201ca judge of cries,\u201d teasing stories out of pain. \u201cEvery cry is singular,\u201d she tells us, <\/p>\n

\n

            like a bird\u2019s feather,
\nso that even without touching the trembling shoulder
\nyou can tell if the crier has just learned the name of his disease,
\nor if he has been sentenced to death,
\nor if he weeps over a cold body.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Heeduk Ra\u2019s poems, set in Korea\u2019s cities (a hospital elevator, a church\u2019s back stairway) and natural landscapes (where graves become boats and falling snow becomes feathers, flowers, rice), are filled with intricate detail, surprising turns, and moments of sadness, transcendence and breathtaking grace. Here, the daily minutia of Korean life are rich with imagery, reflecting not just their own details, but the brilliant and unpredictable mind that would tell us about them and, in so doing, imbue them with deeply personal turns of phrase and sharp, often witty, metaphors. <\/p>\n

In one of the book\u2019s most lovely poems, the speaker contemplates renting a room, finding in the mundane task a deep connection with Korea\u2019s history and the lives of others:<\/p>\n

\n

To rent a room in Damyang or Changpyung,
\nto visit it like a chipmunk,
\nI looked in every village I came across.
\nWalking past a place in Jasil,
\nI saw common flowers in the yard
\nbetween the traditional Korean house and a modern annex.
\nWhen I entered through the open gate,
\na man was sharpening his scythe on the grindstone
\nand his wife\u2019s scarf was wet, as if she had just returned from the fields.
\n\u201cExcuse me, I wonder if I could rent a room.
\nI\u2019ll stay here two or three nights a week.\u201d
\nWhen I pointed at the traditional house
\nshe smiled. \u201cWell, our children moved to Seoul,
\nso we live in the annex. Yes, the main house
\nis unoccupied, but we hold it in our hearts.
\nOur family history lies there.\u201d
\nListening to her, I saw the clean wooden floor
\non which lay day\u2019s last light.
\nI didn\u2019t press for the room, I left,
\nwondering if the couple knew
\nthat I\u2019d already rented it, was living in their words\u2014
\nthat in their hearts they lived in the vacant house.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Heeduk Ra, born in Nonsan in 1966, is widely regarded as one of Korea\u2019s preeminent younger poets. Woo Chung-Kim and Christopher Merrill\u2019s plainspoken, moving translation makes it clear why. Distinguished for their graceful sensibility, rich imagery, and subtle intelligence, these poems will hopefully bring a wide English language readership to this valuable poet.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the next six days, we’ll be featuring each of the ten titles from this year’s Best Translated Book Award poetry shortlist. Click here for all past write-ups. Scale and Stairs by Heeduk Ra. Translated from the Korean by Woo-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill. (Korea, White Pine Press) This guest post is by Kevin Prufer, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[29976,28636,30916,16076,1196,30936,30906,30896,30926],"class_list":["post-276756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba-2010","tag-christopher-merrill","tag-heeduk-ra","tag-kevin-prufer","tag-korean-literature","tag-korean-poetry","tag-scale-and-stairs","tag-white-pine-press","tag-woo-chung-kim"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334616,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276756\/revisions\/334616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}