The Korean genre known as shijo is short song lyrics. Originally meant to be sung rather than recited, these short poems are light, personal, and very often conversational. The language is simple, direct, and devoid of elaboration or ornamentation. The shijo poet gives a firsthand account of his personal experience of life and emotion: the rise and fall of dynasties, friendship, love, parting, the pleasures of wine, the beauty and transience of life, the inexorable advance of old age. In this anthology of translations of 612 shijo, Kevin O'Rourke introduces the English reader to this venerable and witty style of verse. The anthology covers the entire range of shijo production from the tenth century to the modern era.

Historian and novelist Song WooHye chronicles the life of Yun Dong-ju (1917-1945), one of the most beloved and important poets in the modern Korean literary canon, widely considered Korea's "National Poet". Beginning with the history of the North Gando region (now Yanbian, China), where Yun was born, and ending with facts behind the publication of his only and posthumous poetry collection, Sky, Wind, Star, and Poem, this critical biography elucidates who Yun Dong-ju really was, with factual descriptions of the bleak and turbulent period of Japan’s colonization of Korea.
 
While first working on the book in the 1980s, Song had interviewed the poet’s surviving relatives and friends, most of whom have since passed away. Without her interviews, these important first-hand accounts would have been lost. Song had an added advantage of an “insider,” as she is a niece of Song Mong-gyu, who was the poet’s first cousin and inseparable friend for life. Incorporating newly discovered materials and using interviews with the beloved poet's family and friends, this biography is the most comprehensive, definitive biography of Yun Dong-ju to date, now available in English for the first time.
 

This book is published with the support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).