Okgwan and Jang’s evocative piece—’A Fruit Bursting from Bloom’—captures raw, organic transformation, blending poetic tension with visual metaphor.

Description

Lavender Ink / Diálogos, paperback

Translated by Susan K

Publication Date: May 1, 2025

Publisher Marketing: 

Like A Fruit Tearing Its Way Out of a Flower by Jang Okgwan is a collection of poems selected by the poet from his almost 40-year, award winning career. With the lightness and wit of a comedian, Jang’s meditations on aging brilliantly capture the conflict between the unflinching power of the human mind against the unavoidable failing of the human body. Supernatural scenes of the Korean countryside are laced with interludes from philosophers and poets, cigarette butts are spit up from urinals, and happiness is receiving a fill-up of air for free for a bicycle tire in a tire shop. From the unique creaking of the famously crooked pine trees of Gyeongju, to the universal struggle of dealing with human mortality, these poems find the monumental in the mundane, the spectacular in the simple. After reading these poems, one can’t help seeing the world with changed eyes, finding the world forever altered by this new perspective.

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