David McCann, the Korea Foundation Professor of Korea Literature at Harvard University, spoke for over an hour on the poetry of Pak Chaesam. But in a way that Pak would have appreciated, each audience member seemed to understand the poet's work in their own, inimitable way.

Drawing from his recently published translations of Pak's poetry, Enough to Say It's Far: Selected Poems of Pak Chaesam, McCann described Pak as a singular figure in Korean literature: a poet who stood resolutely outside the artistic mainstream of his time, but who in retrospect seems to embody the transitions that took place in Korean poetry from the 1970s
into the ‘80s.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007


Born in the 1930s, Pak reached the pinnacle of his career on Seoul's literary scene during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Park Chung Hee's repressive rule, and popular discontent with it, made for a highly politicized arts scene. Nearly all the notable poetry of the time, McCann explained, was engaged with current events and thick with polemical attitude. But not Pak's. His work reflects a rich, almost secluded, inner life; a preference for natural imagery and a fascination with other worlds. In his aloofness from contemporary politics, Pak resembles Emily Dickenson who, during the turbulence of America's Civil War, explored the universe of experience within a single room.

"[Pak] was a poet who explored the liminal worlds, the spaces between," McCann explained. In "Enough to Say It's Far," Pak attempts a metaphorical understanding of the distance between himself, his feelings of love, and the object of his love, through reference to the distance between the earth and the stars.

While the topics he addressed were deeply figurative and amorphous, the language Pak used to address them is exceptionally precise and illuminating. "In some ways," McCann added, "[reading Pak Chaesam] is like looking at an MRI of the Korean language."

As the 1970s marched on, Korean literature-and music, and filmmaking-drifted away from its earlier, stridently political content, towards the more varied contemplation that Pak wrote about. Pak continued to write and McCann met with him, though briefly, several times over the years. During the mid-1990s, McCann called Pak, who was in poor health, and suggested they get together. Alluding, perhaps, to the other worlds that so fascinated him, Pak replied simply "next time" and died shortly thereafter.

The program concluded with readings of a dozen of Pak's best poems, including "Brightness," "Place," and "As for Love."

Enough to Say It's Far: Selected Poems of Pak Chaesam

with 

David McCann
Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature
Harvard University

David R. McCann is currently the Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature at Harvard University. Previously McCann taught Japanese and Korean literature at Cornell University and acted as the Director of Cornell's Foundation Relations Program. As a poet, his works have been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology.  His recent Korean literature publications include The Columbian Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry, and Traveler Maps, Poems by Ko Un. McCann holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Enough to Say It's Far: Selected Poems of Pak Chaesam, translated by David R. McCann & Jiwon Shin, is the first English translation of selected poems by one of the most important and unusual modern poets of South Korea. In contrast to the strident political protests found in the poetry of many of his contemporaries, Pak Chaesam's work is characterized by intimate portraits of place, nature, childhood, and human relationships, and by indirection, nostalgia, and reflectiveness. Often focused upon the border of this world and some other, Pak writes with a spareness of presentation but a cornucopia of imagery, meticulously exploring objective and subjective realms of existence and memory.

Encouraging the reader to see and listen, and to allow the sensory to reshape the analytical, Pak's poetry opens up new realms of experience. A fellow Korean poet described Pak's poetry as being "the most exquisite expression of the Korean sense of han."