Beyond Self: 108 Korean Zen Poems

Ko Un

The Nobel Committee keeps telling us they don't actually have a shortlist before they tell us who's won the Nobel Prize for Literature every year. But a few names crop up like clockwork when it's Nobel time. Joyce Carol Oates is the one most recognized in America; in Asia, the most likely candidate for that dubious honor is Korean poet Ko Un. The number of books of Ko Un's work one can get in English are relatively few, given that he's published over one hundred works of fiction and poetry in his native country (making him, according to most bios one can find on the web, Korea's most prolific living writer); this is one of them.

Those writing the prefaces and afterword to the book make a big deal over the fact that Son and Zen are the same in two different languages, and that "Zen," being of the language of the Japanese occupiers, was a word to be avoided in the translation. (One wonders, idly, why it shows up in the title.) Either way, the 108 poems (the number chosen because there are 108 prayer beads on what, to a Son Buddhist, would be equivalent to a Catholic rosary) in this collection are meant to be small pieces aimed at having the reader reflect on Son questions. You know the drill (probably, if you're reading this review)-- the one-with-nothingness thing. But in Ko Un's case, it's not the void bit that he's on about. Somewhere along the way, in the past couple of decades, it seems Ko Un found himself beyond the one-with-nothingness phase. Thus, Ko Un's particular brand of Son poetry is far more accessible than one normally sees, and far earthier. (Prepare, if you're used to the almost pathologically sterile "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" stuff, to be pleasantly shocked by Ko Un's mundanity, and the profanity that comes with it.)

A fun little book, one you're far more likely to read small pieces of at various times rather than just sit down and read through. Good mental exercise, this.