Kim Hyesoon

The astonishing poetry collection The Hell of That Star enlivens the horror of Korean life under U.S.-backed authoritarianism. Poems of blows and vomit, births and coffins alternate blithe confidence and trembling terror. When slapped seven times by a government censor, Kim responded with defiant poems. The death of language becomes a death of the writer; within death, Kim finds new life in fragmentation and reorientation. This singular volume provides a wild and rigorous study of the words of the nation-state and the self, as well as the deprivations, detainments, and surprises in between. In evading censorship, Kim's poems question, twist, and transmute; language is a site where the personal and political meet to escape containment, emptiness, and domestication. The book includes essays by the author and translator. [sample poem] The tough after all we still remain and just in gathering it is lovingly even while building each other's tombs while patting each other's backs But when each bird turns around their arms flung! open embracing tightly what they do not even recognize as their grave and they hug and hold harder and harder stretching four limbs out over the laid sleeping mat and blanket saying I love you I love you even in their sleep In this world from which crying birds have disappeared only I am left

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