CHO T'AE-IL
Born in Kokso※ng, South Cholla Province, in 1941, Cho T'ae-il graduated from the department of Korean Literature and did his postgraduate studies at Kyunghee University, Seoul. He began his career as a poet when he was a sophomore in university, receiving the 1964 Spring Literary Award from the Kyonghyang Shinmun with the poem "Morning Shipping.' In 1965, he published his first book of poems, Achimso※nbak (Morning Shipping). Since then, he has published seven volumes of poetry: Shikkallon (An Essay on a Kitchen Knife,1970), Kukt'o (Motherland, 1975), Kago※do (1993), Chayuga shiindo※ro※ (From Freedom to a Poet, 1987), Sansogeso※ kkotsogeso※ (In the Woods, in the Flowers, 1991), as well as "Wild Flowers Will Not Be Broken" (1995) and "It was Burning Alone" (1996). He has also published works on poetic theory such as Static Poetry and Kinetic Poetry and Poetics for Poetry Writing. He has received the first Pyonwoon Literary Award and the 10th Manhae Literary Award. He is currently teaching in the creative writing department of Kwangju University.
His poetry up to From Freedom to a Poet is characterized by the intense political consciousness embedded in it. "Motherland" and "Kagodo" were banned by the government, and the poet was imprisoned, perhaps more for his involvement in the launching of the Writers'Association for Freedom of Action than for his writing itself.
An intense longing for his hometown which has always been the primary source of his inspiration and imagination, the grief deriving from that longing, the deliberation on this grief and the search for its solutions, the wish to stay young are the elements of his poetry which, at the end, arrive at the ongoing and ultimate question of the disordered reality.
However, from In the Woods, in the Flowers, Wild Flowers Will Not Be Broken, his poems turn toward nature. This probably reflects the general tendency of Korean poetry of the 1970's, which begins to turn its eye from reality toward the order of nature. Poets find the truth and order of life in natural phenomena formed by water, grass, wind and insects rather than in the reckless social reality created by human beings.
In his eighth volume, It Was Burning Alone, the awareness of socio-political reality is further removed. Stepping back from the reality, in lyrical poems on motherly love and nature, the poet finds a new perspective on natural phenomena, and reveals himself longing for Mother and the origin of his being. The land, trees, flowers, hometown, and mother that occupy the poetic space may indicate the wisdom of age and the peace in the mind of the poet.
Like dew,
like dew,
only if I can make jewels
by crying all night long
I would gather all the tears I've shed in my life
and all the tears I'll shed until my death
and I would become waves
to lap this world.
I would lap and lap
in front of the poor dew
hanging with the whole world in it.
At a secluded spot
in a wintry field
the flowers dry as a bone,
some looking up at the sky,
some looking around,
some looking down at the earth,
are casting their swinging shadows
on the white snowy field.
They are sobbing
barely holding the crooked world
and their crooked body.
Look at the evening glow.
Look at the evening glow.
Everybody carries
the evening glow at the sunset
on his head and wanders the streets
here and there.
In the chilly wind the bush clovers
are swinging with the evening glow
on their heads.
Look at the evening glow.
Look at the evening glow.
Someone's set a fire on the west sky.
Someone who still misses this world
must have built the fire on his way to the other world.
Look at this.
Look at this.
On the west side of my mind
a fire has started, too.
Over the autumn leaves eager to dress up with new colours
is the pendulous sky hanging high.
All kinds of birds are singing
into the heart of autumn.
All kinds of insects are competing
to sing about summer.
The water flows without break
time flows along with it.
When the heart overflows to find nowhere to stay
everything with life
everything without life
at the end of their radiant solitude
I build a rough cabin
for the warm winter sleep.
Beside everything that sings
beside everything that looks for a place to sleep
I build a singing cabin.
You build your own cabin.
White snow is falling murmuring.
It is continuously falling
and falling and falling.
Covering the ochre
covering the colours of the whole world, it is falling.
It is falling fearlessly.
As if it would tell the world that
the spirits are still wandering in Hades
it is endlessly falling in Mangwol-dong.
It is falling into the bosom of the Mudeung Mountain.
Fluttering its whole body
it is falling on every part of the world
on the mountains and the field
on the Hanla Mountain and the Baekdu Mountatin
on the land beyond the truce line.
Relentlessly erasing every border
even the border between a mind and a mind
it is falling and falling.
Upon all the living and the dead
upon all those lying and walking
Without discrimination
it hastens to fall.
On the crocks and on the stables
it is falling and falling
and falling ceaselessly
The white snow is falling murmuring.
It tells everything on earth
to open its eyes, open its eyes, open its ears, open its ears.
Shutting up its mouth, fluttering its cold body
it is falling and falling.