Someone In Ireland Asked Me How Many

Longing, We Say, Because Desire Is Full Of Endless Distances.

I Was Aware That A Quarter Of The Children In The Country Are Born In Poverty, And That The Condition Of Public Schools In California Was Disastrous.

What We Usually Find Is That When People Think They Have A New Idea Or Approach Something For The First Time, It Is Actually A Recurrence Of A Line Of Thinking Explored In The Past.

Ko Un Is A Crucial Poet For The Twenty-first Century, And This Is An Enormously Fresh And Vivid Translation.

Like Everyone Else, I Was At Least Peripherally Involved In The Antiwar Movement. You Woke Up Every Morning Feeling Tormented About What Was Going On In Vietnam. It Seemed To A Lot Of Us Like A Catastrophe From The Very Beginning, Inflicting Immense And Needless Suffering On Not Only The American Soldiers But On A Lot Of Innocent Peasants Who Were Caught In A Cold War Proxy Battle - Two Million Vietnamese Died During Those Years, And You Woke Up Every Morning Knowing That That Was Going On.