"...A childhood anecdote illustrates the kind of connections he often makes in his pithy poems: the family is hungry, little Ko Un is with his aunt, waiting for his mother to come back from the mudflats, where she has been gathering seablite. Night has fallen and he is clinging to his aunt’s back under a starry sky.
'Then I noticed for the first time the stars in the night sky. The cosmic landscape struck me for the first time. Only I mistook the stars for fruit dangling from the sky. So I began to beg her to pick me some stars, weeping.'
That first error of mistaking stars for food was the vague beginning of a poet who would later sing the stars as a dream. ..."
That first error of mistaking stars for food was the vague beginning of a poet who would later sing the stars as a dream. ..."
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| Guinea fowl plumage © Jennifer Phillips |
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