Radiance of Jades: Modern Korean Poets of a Past Generation

These poems are from the poets of a past generation no longer with us. Some have attained legendary status, others only recently allowed to be published again, having gone to the North during the Korean War. Kim So Wol beautifully evoked the Korean folk songs as in Azaleas. Intellectualism, introduced by Kim Ki Rim with his A Weather Chart in the thirties startled readers, difficult as it was for them to comprehend it. Chong Ji Yong skillfully elicited the beauty inherent in the Korean language in the Window Pane. Kim Kwang Kyun was somewhat like a painter in his sensitivity to color in The Gas Light. Many poets debuted in Munjang including Pak Mog Wol, Pak Du Jin and Cho Ji Hoon. Writing secretly during the War years, they published them after Liberation in the Green Deer Anthology. It had a decisive influence upon modern Korea poetry; it revealed an escape from the prevailing spirit of decadence through nature. Grapes by resistance poet Yi Yug Sa was also posthumously published in 1964.