All the Garbage of the World, Unite!

by Kim Hyesoon, Don Mee Choi (Translator)

Poetry. East Asia Studies. Translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi. The celebrated Korean poet Kim Hyesoon writes from a radiant black zone where matter becomes dark matter, human becomes trinket, garbage becomes god, a zero-point for our present moment's grotesque and spectacular inversions. This volume includes a selection of recent work, the landmark poem "Manhole Humanity," and the essay "In the Oxymoronic World." With fiercely incisive translations and a preface by Don Mee Choi. "As garbage, love and death accumulate in her poems, your world will be changed for real!"—Aase Berg

Genres: Poetry

156 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2011

About the author

Born in Ulijin, South Korea, Kim Hyesoon (1955-) received her PhD in Korean Literature from Konkuk University, and began as a poet in 1979 with the publication of Poet Smoking a Cigarette. She began to receive critical acclaim in the late 1990s and she attributes this to the strong wave of interest in poetry by woman poets; currently she is one of South Korea’s most important contemporary poets, and she now lives and teaches in Seoul. Her poetry aims to strive for a freedom from form, by experimenting with language focusing on the sensual - often female - body, in direct opposition to male-dominated lyrical poetry. ‘They are direct, deliberately grotesque, theatrical, unsettling, excessive, visceral and somatic. This is feminist surrealism loaded with shifting, playful linguistics that both defile and defy traditional roles for women.’

Having published more than ten poetry collections, a number of these have been translated into English recently: When the Plug Gets Unplugged (2005); Mommy Must be a Fountain of Feathers (2008); All the Garbage of the World, Unite! (2011); Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (2014) and I’m O.K., I’m Pig (2014). Tinfish has also published a small chapbook of three essays entitled Princess Abandoned (2012).

Throughout her career she has gained nearly all of South Korea’s most prestigious literary awards, named after the country’s greatest poets, such as Kim Su-yông Literature Award (1997), the Sowol Poetry Literature Award (2000) and the Midang Literature Award (2006). She was also the first female to win the Daesan Literary Award in 2008.

Reviews

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Hyesoon is a story of violent sublime. Each time I return to her, I feel like new parts of my bodymind, dark parts, have been enchanted in ways I hadn’t thought possible. This is another rousing, automythological collection from my all-time favorite poet, and a thoughtful, distressing, jarring treat for those prepared to receive it.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the Garbage of the World, Unite! is a creative writing paradox that chants words from everyone’s existence, experiences and anything below us, this book also screams prodigious masterpiece!

A writing technique Hyesoon plays with she combines words together with no space? I’m unfamiliar with its style—Example:
“whiteswhite, dripdripsripping,” etc.
At times the style seems affective and at times why?

Favorites:
Balsam Flower
Lady Phantom
I Don’t Rot Because I’m Crazy
Strawberries
A Christmas Morning’s Trumpet
The Water Inside Your Eyes
The Hidden Drowned Body
Why Are All Mermaids Female?
Delicatessen
SongJuice
Cat
MaPa
The Stones “Do”

[Elijah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't realize this is 70% the same collection as 'I'm OK, I'm Pig', but that's fine.

"Why does my misery that is solely mine return at last from elsewhere?"

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kim Hyesoon's poetry will shake your world and rattle your brain until all the worms fall out of your holes.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something happened here. Something got stuck in a hole. Something sick. Like how garbage is sick. Like some people might talk about having baggage from previous relationships, and it feels like a hole. Or they’re annoyed by people who carry baggage, then they pretend like it’s not there. EVEN WHEN YOU’RE STARING RIGHT AT IT! And then there’s Kim Hyesoon who’s like, “Yeah. I have baggage. It’s garbage. Packed in black garbage bags.” And it smells. Sometimes like a dead body. Sometimes like whatever a dog would smell like if it spontaneously generated from a mountain stone, or a statue of the Buddha. It might smell like a tree that’s rotting. And you go to touch it, and you think, Is this my grandmother?

Like, really, I’m reading this book The Anatomy of Disgust, by Willian Ian Miller, and he explains how smell can often be the trigger for disgust. And it’s like Hyesoon knew that before Miller knew it. Because so much of this book smells. Like if you’re going to read it, prepare to be nauseous. Prepare to laugh at how the world is. Think like you had someone dear to you leave. A relative. A significant other who was significant for long enough, but not that long, really. And you’re at that stage in the break-up where you’re annoyed that that person left, and you’re annoyed that you didn’t end it sooner, and you’re annoyed that all you’ve been doing for the last forty days is think about that person. What hole did you crawl out of? What in the world is that smell? Like is it possible to make that feeling a smell? Or is it just a feeling that you can’t describe, so you make something smelly that’s only something you can imagine. And, Jesus, it smells. Like a conspicuous nosehair sticking out of your nostril, and you know it’s there while you’re talking with a colleague, and it’s not just your imagination that this colleague keeps sweeping something away from her nose. That’s what a Kim Hyesoon poem is. The suspicion and the certainty. And for this book, make that fusion something disgusting.

Yes, disgust can be blind. Or blinding. And that might impel Hyesoon’s poems. But there is something very particular. Insert a poetic space between “nose” and “hair,” then imagine what disgusting consistency would weld those two words together. Wake up in the morning and feel sad because you saw the water you left in a water glass from the night before. In a Hyesoon poem it’s what can disgustingly bind moments together. And it’s what can be poetically observed, particularizing that moment. If you know you can find your inner disgust for any action, then you’ll know THIS BOOK WAS MADE FOR YOU!! Or how about this: if you can make an anagram of the word “nauseous” from the word “disgusting,” if you have the imaginative energy to accomplish this, you should probably read this book!

[mallory payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

“you pour butter down my throat and place a wick in it, you light the wick, my throat has become a candlestick, my organs burn up like beeswax, green flames shoot out from my mouth”

this collection is so fantastic, kim hyesoon writes in this insane headspace where all things blur into each other, not necessarily collide. i really enjoy it. all her poems feel like a mini alternate reality that slips together with our own.

[Rachel burns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful. Kim Hyesoon does an immaculate job of portraying social believes as they shift throughout her life time. The violence bonds with the tenderness & reacts in an explosive manner of morality, feminism, & cultural phenomena’s. The symbolism is shifts gracefully along with the time line while providing vivid imagery. All of the pages neatly tie together in one way or another, this book opened my eyes to endless possibilities. It is a must read.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

crushed words, direct declaratives, fresh language, and what feels to be a terrific translation from Don MeeChoi, All the Garbage in the World Unite! continually surprised me and envelopped me a very visceral body of dog dishes, ghosts, petals, two beer bottles, hairy holes, and more. This collection lives up to its title, and somehow gains an emergent hum so as to be more than the sum of the united whole.

[YL · Rating 4 out of 5]

have to think more about horror-grotesque-paranormal as a genre, but there's something viscous and fetid about hyesoon's horror, something very different from violence & blood & guts of Murakami or Tarantino or even Chan-wook park(who I vaguely feel to be more perverse, but in a psychological way). Maybe Hyesoon is more perverse is this primal mother sort of way but that sounds essentialist, medusa, something something. //TODO

[Bethany]

Interesting and different from a lot of stuff I've read lately. I enjoyed most of the pieces although some poems tended to recycle the same imagery. Yet all of it is worth it because of the last poem, titled i think "Hole". it blew me away. great read.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don Mee Choi is to be commended for such a fine translation. It is rare to find a translation that is so innovative, so clever, and that, at the same time, works so well as poetry. Bravo. Don Mee Choi

[tout · Rating 4 out of 5]

veryistvery good

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous

[Jerrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is cracked out surrealism at its finest. She does such an amazing job of using a distorted lens to bring lucidity and intensity to experiences and feelings with universal echoes.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

You are a theater of hollowness.