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Jul 8, 2024 | 
theparisreview.org | Kim Hyesoon |Cindy Juyoung Ok
By Kim Hyesoon and Cindy Juyoung Ok July 8, 2024 For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages. Kim Hyesoon’s poem “Person Walking Backward,” translated by Cindy Juyoung Ok, appears in our new Summer issue, no. 248. Here, we asked Kim and Ok to reflect on their work. 1. Kim HyesoonHow did this poem start for you? Was it with an image, an idea, a phrase, or something else?
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Jun 18, 2024 | 
theparisreview.org | Kim Hyesoon |Cindy Juyoung Ok
In 1970 a novel by an unknown Albanian writer took literary Paris by storm. The General of the Dead Army was the story of an Italian general who goes back to Albania after the Second World War to find the bodies of the Italian soldiers killed there and take them back to Italy for burial. It was hailed as a masterpiece and its author was invited to France, where he was welcomed by French intellectuals as an original and powerful voice from behind the Iron Curtain.
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Apr 6, 2024 | 
muse.jhu.edu | Kim Hyesoon |Cindy Juyoung Ok
Wearing a black hat andcarrying a black cane andfluttering the tail of a black tuxedoas though conducting a funeral Covering and covering myselfI pull down my cuffs Like a doll popping suddenly out the stomach,there is a timefor curse words to be spat like seeds If I cover the doll's mouthmy mouth is blocked andthere is a time whendeath bursts from the stomach without warninglike held-back laughter When I take my black gloves off and put on my black hat and turn around to go—such an end...
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | John Maher |Kim Hyesoon |Sophia Stewart
The 2024 National Book Critics Circle Awards were presented on March 21 at the organization's second in-person ceremony since the pandemic began, once again held at the New School in New York City. The awards, which honor books published in 2023, are among the only literary honors in the country decided by working book critics, and are considered among the most prestigious and venerable in American letters.
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Jan 25, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Jonny Steinberg |Lorrie Moore |Kim Hyesoon |Dorothy Tse
The National Book Critics Circle has announced 30 finalists in six categories—autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, general nonfiction, and poetry—for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Awards, which recognizes books from the publishing year 2023.
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Jan 13, 2024 | 
poetryfoundation.org | Kim Hyesoon
Bird in high heels walks on asphalt, crying Mascara drips down My night feathers are infinitely, infinitely large Critics tell me, Condolences are for us You’re too filthy for them I keep dreaming the same dream It has the face of a human but is a bird when it stretches out its limbs I told you not to cut me off I keep dreaming the same dream Inside my bone bird’s transparent pathway Behind my sunglasses two black beans on a silver platter (Can you read dreams with those two beans?) I can’t...
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Nov 11, 2023 | 
tricycle.org | Kim Hyesoon |Don Mee Choi
Written after the passing of her father, Phantom Pain Wings is a remarkable achievement from one of South Korea’s most heavily revered and imaginative poets, Kim Hyesoon. While the poems of this collection center on grief and death, they never aim for consolation or an easily digestible sentiment but rather create parallel worlds, separate from reality and simultaneously separate from the memories or images that conjured them into being.
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Oct 24, 2023 | 
powells.com | Jamaica Kincaid |Kim Hyesoon |Don Mee Choi |Fleur Jaeggy
The journey of writing Organ Meats was far from linear; it was more like the patchwork process of creating a quilt. Foraging from inherited histories, oral stories, and inspirational texts, I conceived of this novel as a vessel for collectives of women. The two girls at the center of the novel, Anita and Rainie, are haunted by a chorus of feral dogs who narrate their hungry ancestry, giving voice to generations of deferred desire. As always, I was inspired by writers in translation.
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Jul 6, 2023 | 
guernicamag.com | Kim Hyesoon |Jack Saebyok Jung
Aerok Fiction FactoryThere once was a country where beatings produced works of fiction. The tools needed for producing such fictions were clubs, screaming, and bathtubs. There were various methods of completing a work of fiction, like beating, hanging, and pushing someone’s face into water. When a writer’s progress on their fiction slowed down, the screaming of friends, relatives, parents, and spouses were brought into the adjoining room, and this pushed the peak of the fiction’s climax higher.
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Jul 5, 2023 | 
guernicamag.com | Kim Hyesoon |Don Mee Choi |Don Mee Choi’s
Flower blossoming in her hair is scorching hot — Sister is Leaves are scalding hot even at the slightest touch — Sister is Metallic apple above her breasts is even hotter — Sister is Two front teeth that bite into the apple are shockingly cold — Sister is Frozen tongue, so her body feels like a fireball — Sister is The command living inside her brain becomes increasingly severe — Sister says that the photograph of her family on the wall is boiling that the picture frame is as hot as the pot...
