ISBN 921870-62-0   6 x 9 136 pp, $14.95 Poetry

Yong-un Han (1879-1944) is recognized as Korea's finest Buddhist poet of the twentieth century and also one of the country's most influential political activists in the struggle against Japanese imperialism. Yong-un Han's Buddhist insights and political passion combine to give his poetry great spiritual power. He describes the complexities of love as beginning in the desire for total union and leading to an illumination of the void or nothingness. Delighting in paradox, these are poems that tease us into a subtle understanding of the limitations of both self and union, while never denying the importance of political struggle. Now Jaihiun Kim and Ronald B. Hatch have translated his most famous collection — Love's Silence — along with a selection of 16 other poems. Included also is a foreword detailing the life and publications of Yong-un Han.

Autumn Flowers

An idle person in a mountain cabin,
moved by pity for autumn flowers,
pruned his hedge
to let in the sun.
The west wind strode over the hedge
and mowed down the flowers.

"Yong-un Han's poems marry exquisite rhetorical shapes with expressions of the subtlest emotional distinctions to bridge ancient Zen traditions and 20th-century Western free verse. It is a civilized and exciting fusion, multi-faceted, and transformational — translated with music and clarity."
— Harold Rhenisch

Jaihiun Kim, a Professor of English at Ajou University, South Korea, is a well-known poet who has also translated many volumes of poetry, both from Korean into English and from English into Korean.

Ronald B. Hatch is a professor of English at the University of British Columbia.