Ko Un Is A Crucial Poet For

Poetry, When It Takes Sides, When It Proposes Solutions, Isn't Any Smarter Than Anybody Else.

Not To Make Too Much Of A Claim For Poetry, But This Is A Question That Goes To The Moral Heart Of The Business Of Any Art: How Do You See The World, And What Right Do You Have To See The World In The Way That You Do?

A Word Is Elegy To What It Signifies.

Sometimes From This Hillside Just After Sunset The Rim Of The Sky Takes On A Tinge Of The Palest Green, Like The Flesh Of A Cucumber When You Peel It Carefully.

The Ideal Of Universal Literacy, In The West Anyway, Was First Of All A Protestant Idea - That Everybody Had To Be Able To Read To Save Their Soul. That Idea Got Transposed Into An Idea Of The Importance Of Literacy For Democratic Citizenship.