INTRODUCING MYSELF

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INTRODUCING MYSELF




  1. I dream, sometimes.
  2. After a pelican has flown far across the Indian Ocean.
  3. I dream.
  4. Like my father used to back at home
  5. in the darkness when the light had vanished after sunset
  6. I dream.
  7. Awakened from dreams,
  8. I'm alive like a power line buzzing in the wind.


    1 I've indicated in email why I've reintroduced the inversion and punctuation.

    4 Excellent revision! I've eliminated just one more word to make it perfectly colloquial, off-the-cuff. (uncooked).

    5 similar reason for removing sun -- sunlight after sunset seems too thought-out. the light after sunset vs. the sunlight after sunset, huh?

    7 following the trajectory and momentum of the changes above, this one seems inevitably so, going down like a hot knife through butter.

    So far, I've always rejected dreams.
    Even in my dreams
    I've struggled to reject dreams.


    Rather
    I have rejected
    every kind of idle fantasy,
    any conjecture dominating an age.
    Things are the things they are.


    Then I saw light
    glittering phosphorescent in the night tides.
    I saw
    even the waves' white teeth,
    faintly gleaming
    as they were buried in darkness.


    I saw waves
    glittering and fading
    yet united
    as a new-born child still one with its mother.


    Now I approve of dreams.
    Things are not only the things they are.
    I dream.
    Yesterday
    is not today.
    Today
    is not tomorrow.
    I only dream of tomorrow.


    Earth is the tomb of experience.

    Translators' note: People who live by the sea might have seen so-called red tides, whereby large deposits of a certain kind of red kelp cause any motion in the water at night to create luminescent filaments and sparks, like fireflies.


    Second stanza

    I like the contraction. Consonant with the kinds of changes made in Stanza one, above.

    Fourth and fifth stanzas

    How to resolve this?

    Might a trot be in order?

    Meanwhile, I regret to inform I am adamant about my previous proposal here, until convinced otherwise.

    I not only like my version better -- I understand it better.

    In your previous and more recent version, I don't know what light is united with. It leaves me craving an explication du texte.

    I've reworked it again, to even greater satisfaction I think.

    If you have problems with it, how about a quick phone call, beginning of the week?

    If you prefer for me to explain why I've done what I've done by e-mail, i'd be happy to do so. I somehow like to imagine that it's clear.


    PS Beside the repetition of the phosphorescent light, the uncertainty of what's united (that makes the poet accept dreams), etc., my dictionary says "barely" means hardly; "faintly" indistinct, dim." Thus barely as a measure of energy, activity, strength, and faintly as visual, phanopoeic even.

    Next-to-last stanza

    I prefer to change ;s to full stops (periods).
    Semi's are very literary, and 19th-century at that.

    They invite the reader to diagram sentences logically in their mind, rather than the very kind of spontaneous expository delivery you were saying Mr. Kim was frightened we're erasing.

    Capper

    Believe me, if I thought an exclamation was necessary, I'd vote for it. On the other hand, adding it where I believe it wasn't indicated courts the danger of sounding quaint (and it's not a quaint thought). The simple direct statement alone is more forceful and Korean, I believe.

    I believe this is analagous to omitting "... quite without lingering ... " from Nogodan and just going with the declarative No regrets instead.

    Please give these a trial, as I do your own work.

    I think the differences between Draft 1 and this represent a significant forward motion of the poem in its journey from the poet's experience to the (loving) tomb of language.

    -- Anonymous, May 27, 2000

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