Five Poems

In a time when Korean women were hardly published, read, or heard, Kim Myŏng-sun’s poems were loud—they were daring, unapologetic explorations of female spirituality and sexuality against a patriarchal and colonial zeitgeist. The five poems presented here were released across various publications in mid-1920s Korea: “A Modern Poem” was published in the newspaper Chosŏn Ilbo (July 13, 1924), “Road” and “[On evenings as calm as silk]” in Kim’s first collection, The Fruit of Life (1925), “Blue Dome” in the magazine Chosŏnmundan (May 1925), and “Thinking of Unni” in the poetry anthology Chosŏnshiinsŏnjip (1926).

As a translator born around the centenary of Kim’s birth and translating these poems as they approach their centenaries, I have been fascinated by the simultaneous remoteness and immediacy of Kim’s poetry. I feel the temporal gap opening between us whenever I encounter a word like “유현경” (place of serenity in “Road”), which was used in the northern regions of Kim’s pre-division Korea, but is obsolete in South Korea today. Just as tangible as this distance, however, is the compelling urgency of Kim’s imagery, as well as the liveliness that her verses take on even when recast in such a distant language.

The poet’s recipe for rhythm is often simple. “A Modern Poem” repeats the word “lonely” (“외로운”), “Road” repeats “road” (“길”), and so on. In “[On evenings as calm as silk]”, I took the opportunity to highlight Kim’s fondness for repetition, by closing each stanza with rhyming (or eye-rhyming) couplets (e.g., “rain” with “pain” and “midair”) and underscoring the poem’s “refrain.” The italicized “Blue” in “Blue Dome” not only mimics the elongation of “파아란” (blue), but also stresses the anaphora (“Blue autumn sky [...] Blue autumn wave”). Through repetition, Kim meditates on the repetitive patterns and cycles that govern both nature and human psychology: the road continues to stretch; loneliness multiplies in the solitary chamber; the sky is the sea, the sea the sky.

Writing “[i]n the seam of sound and color,” Kim accompanies her music with vibrant images that trouble and transgress dichotomies. “Thinking of Unni” melds pain (“thorns”) with pleasure (“its eventual flower”), resentment with admiration, and sapphic desire with familial affection. The “us vs. them” binary collapses in “Blue Dome,” where “our hearts” and “their hearts” alike plead for divine providence. Kim Myŏng-sun’s poems are not only provocative for their female authorship in colonial Korea, but also for their disruption of political, psychological, and ontological boundaries.