Flowers of a Moment

by Ko Un

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 103
Rating:

Synopsis:

Flowers of a Moment is a treasure trove of more than 180 brief poems by a major world poet at the apex of his career. A four-time Nobel Prize nominee, Ko Un grew up in Korea during the Japanese occupation. During the Korean War, he was conscripted by the People's Army. In 1952, he became a Buddhist and lived a monastic life for ten years. For his activism confronting South Korea's dictatorial military government, he was imprisoned and tortured. He has published more than one hundred volumes of poetry, essays, fiction, drama, and translations of Chinese poetry.

Flowers of a Moment is a collection of short poems by Ko Un, in translation from Korean. Some of them are only a few words long across a couple of lines: rather than long evocations of feelings and situations, it feels more like they’re a collection of moments of stillness and observation.

Predictably I liked this one, though it’s probably the most trite of the lot:

There has to be more energy for loving
than energy for hating
Here in this world,
and in the other world too,
there is a morning, evening, night worth
living

I light a lamp in solitude

A very quick read, but sometimes it was worth lingering with an image or feeling. It’s lightly illustrated as well, but I didn’t think that added a lot.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)