A Poet, Baekseok, and His Foods
Lecture in Korean
Image from Wikimedia (Public Domain Image)
Raesub So, Ph.D., Professor, University of Ulsan
Thursday, October 19, 202311:00 AM - 12:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall (10th floor)
Baekseok is a famous modern poet in Korea. In 2002, the magazine Poet World selected the ten greatest poets in 100 years of modern Korean poetry, and Baekseok took fifth place. In 2005, due to a survey of 156 poets, Baekseok's only collection of poems, Deer, was selected as the number one collection of poems that had the most influence on poets of our time. In 2007, the Korean Poets Association also selected him as one of the 'Top 10 Contemporary Poets in Korea'.
One of the characteristics of Baekseok's poems is that they feature numerous foods. He created about 130 poems, and 110 foods appear in them. Food appears frequently and occupies a significant position in his poems. None of the poets before Baekseok featured food so much in their poems. Some say that food has become a meaningful topic in modern Korean poetry only because of Baekseok. Why on earth did Baekseok do that?
It is no exaggeration to say that Baekseok's poems are a literary exploration of food. He attempted to go beyond the modern dichotomy and restore old traditions by focusing on food. Since modern times, the Western perspective has understood food only as a substance. However, in the old tradition regarding food and taste, especially the Eastern tradition, food and taste were recognized as going beyond the dichotomies of 'mind/body, reason/senses, individual/group, subject/object.' So, modern and artificial boundaries such as nation and people can not embrace his poems. On the contrary, his poems continuously erase those boundaries, revealing an orientation for the world of wholeness.
*Event is exclusive to CKS Visiting Scholars, graduate/undergraduate students, and faculty
Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies
