On the way down, I saw the flower I hadn’t seen on the way up
Ko Un
Tuesday night, though I didn’t think I had any energy left, I persuaded my daughter to eat sushi with me and then go hear the great Korean poet, Ko Un, read at an event sponsored by the Smith Poetry Center.
You never know when the world will break open for you—when life will seem more alive. From the moment Ko Un leapt onto the stage (literally: refused the stairs the translators took, the stairs there for that purpose, the stairs everyone uses), he held us completely. After saying that a poem is not to be understood through the words on the page (which I think he, or the translator, called “code”), but through sound, he proceeded to embody exactly that. The sound of his voice was all. He spoke his poems in Korean with such precision, uttering a line in an urgent whisper, the next in a rising howl, his whole body gesture: the poet became the poem.
Though he was speaking in a language I don’t know, listening I had no doubt that he would make me understand. I watched, delighted to see my daughter’s wide-eyed astonishment match mine. “Now I want to learn Korean,” she said, when we rushed out of the auditorium, breathless, late, into the night. Yes, I thought: I want to learn that language.
That language. Which could be English.
You can watch a similar performance of Un with Richard Silber at the Dodge poetry festival (though he was even more spectacular Tuesday night, and that performance will one day soon be available on DVD at the Nielson library). Some books of his in English: Ten Thousand Lives (Maninbo) from Green Integer and “What?” from Parallax.
Though the more immediate point I took away is spring’s: Don’t sleep now! Prepare to be astonished!
Tags: Green Integer, Ko Un, Smith Poetry Center
