The Light of Love (English and Korean Edition) - Softcover

Yoon-Ho Cho

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0893046140 ISBN 13: 9780893046149

Publisher: Cross-Cultural Communications & Korean Expatriate Literature, 2018

Synopsis

These poems come wrapped in nature trees, stars, moon, sea, rain, bees, clouds. Yoon-Ho Cho's images are crisp, his poems concise not a word is wasted. Some slight aspect of the natural world ignites the poet s imagination, and the insights produced hurl the reader into an unexpected delight like the moon smiles, or Light is not light if it fails to illuminate. Sparks have been evoked from dust, light has been roused from the shadows of falling leaves. These poems are startling, comforting, disturbing. Like life, sometimes the road is soothing and peaceful, and sometimes it is disturbing and filled with apprehension. Yoon-Ho Cho reveals his mastery of subtle emotions with evocative language that resonates like a tingling through the flesh. --Bill Wolak Original poet and co-translator of Your Lover's Beloved: 51 Ghazals by Hafez

About this title

About the Author:

Yoon-Ho Cho was born in Changwon, Gyengsang-nam-do, Province, S. Korea. He made his literary debut in 1963 by winning the New Writer's Award of the Korean Jayu Munhak Literature. He immigrated to the US in 1971 and has published in numerous journals, such as the American poetry journals Lips, The Paterson Literary Review, and the Welsh poetry journal The Seventh Quarry, Romanian literature and Polish literature. He has published five books of poetry, including Meet Like Wildflowers, The River Empties Its Heart, and The Love of an Apple Tree. In 1997, he received the 4th Gasan Literature Award, and in 2012, The Korean-American Poet Association honored him with their Literature Award. In 2017, he won the encouragement prize as the "Light of Love" at the International Poetry Olympic Games in Turin, Italy.

Review:

We live in a complex era, one of information overload, distracted by technology and required to multi-task to the point of attention deficit disorder. How wonderful is it, then, to encounter the poems of Yoon-Ho Cho in the book, The Light of Love. With subtle detail, the poet finds inspiration in the simplicity of a fallen leaf and an errant branch in "The Autumn Wind," as well as the ever-important relationship of the poet to the natural world. In "The Stars Shine in the Autumn Sky," apples on a tree grow in a metonymic connection to the human heart, both "ripening in crimson," as in the poem, "Sound of Rain Shower" the "crack of lightning and thunder" embodies the writer's own excitement at the prospect of love. In The Light of Love, there are also lessons to be learned in nature for the poet as he searches for his own place in the world, as we see in "Like Water" that Cho chooses kindness as a life path, identifying with the graceful fluidity of water wearing down a rock as an image for his spirit: "I shall show that / softness wins over strength." Deep feeling shines through in poems, such as "Footprints in the Snow," where the poet stands before the door of love, declaring his "aching footprints will melt / and flow as a river" if the door isn't opened. Solids become liquid as the emotional landscape shifts with time in these carefully focused verses, and love triumphs over all, finally, in the lovely "In the Snow": "But when love piles up in my heart / even heavy snow becomes light." In The Light of Love, Yoon-Ho Cho teaches us the most valuable skill of all: how to truly pay attention. --Maria Bennett Poet and Translator of Annelisa Addolorato --Back Cover

About this edition

• Publisher: Cross-Cultural Communications & Korean Expatriate Literature
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0893046140
• ISBN 13: 9780893046149
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128
• Editor: Stanley H. Barkan
• Illustrator: Mia Barkan Clarke