Love's Silence and Other Poems

Hugh Oliver is the former editor-in-chief of the OISE (Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education) Press. He is the author of Hoblyn: A Novel in
Three Parts and Voices from the Cradle, Echoes from the Grave: A Volume
of Verse.

Yong-un Han (1879–1944), arguably Korea’s greatest modern poet, was
a devout Buddhist who was politically active in Korea’s struggle
against Japan’s occupation. Completed in 1925, Love’s Silence
comprises 88 shortish poems that celebrate multiple aspects of
love—both physical and spiritual—and are structurally influenced by
the modern free verse of the West. The volume also includes about a
dozen more traditional poems.

It is, of course, difficult to judge poetry in translation, but (in
common with a lot of Oriental verse), simplicity of statement and
imagery is infused with the enlightenment of paradox. As Yong-un Han
says in “To the Reader” (the final poem of the Love’s Silence
sequence): “Reading these poems may be like rubbing a wilted
chrysanthemum and holding it under the nose for its scent. / While you
sit in the midst of fragrant spring flowers.”

There are a few explanatory notes, but insofar as most of the poems
have a not-so-obvious Buddhist interpretation, more notes might have
been helpful.