Korean Buddhist poet Hong Sung-lan’s work is typically characterized by her use of environmental imagery, especially allusions to flowers. Hong often addresses themes of political revolution, lost and forbidden love, sexuality, spirituality, and isolation, and her poems are usually short and imagistic, like these poems from her collection titled
명자꽃 (서정시학 (Lyric Poetry & Poetics; Flowering Quince, 2009). On the surface, they may appear to be about lost love, but layers of deeper meaning resonate in the language and imagery. Hong worked for many years with the late Musan Cho Oh-hyun, a major figure in Korean Zen (whose sijo poems have also
appeared in
Asymptote), and as in his work, Hong’s layers of wordplay are especially challenging to translate.
For example, “Warm Grief,” which is about lost love, includes the line “숫눈길” (
sunnungil), which would typically indicate a snow-covered road; but the first syllable, 숫 (pronounced sut on its own), can be a prefix that indicates maleness or purity. At the same time, it sounds like the word “숯” (
sut), which is charcoal, suggesting a road sprinkled with charcoal ashes to keep it from being slippery.
Many of Hong’s poems are sijo, a traditional Korean three-line form (usually conveyed as six lines in English), which she often adapts innovatively to fit her work. “Lovestruck” is a good example because it adheres closely enough to the sijo form for that to be apparent, but still features a departure—the first two stanzas are typical of the form, with two lines broken into two parts each; stanza three, however, is broken into three parts to make its structure reflect its imagery.
