Quote

Poems are ways of saying you clearly remember the day of your death and your tomb. When I am writing poetry, I relive my days when a woman inside me dies many times.

Kim Hyesoon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Kim Hyesoon
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Many
Saying
Writing
Ways
Relive
Days
Tomb
Way
Dies
Tombs
Times
Poems
Woman
Clearly
Death
Poetry
Remember
Inside

More quotes by Kim Hyesoon

Image
In Korea, a woman must first obey her father, then her husband when she becomes an ajuma, and finally obey her son as a halmoni. Any woman who violates or lives outside of these roles is called a ch'angyŏ (prostitute).
Kim Hyesoon
Image
The grotesque in my poems is the motion I use to put myself and the grotesque world together. So the miserable images I use in my poems are the same as the letters I send into the miserable world.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
I am a tomb robber who is robbing my own tomb. Things from my tomb are exhibited under the radiant sun. Every time it happens I feel crude.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
Our mothers who have gone are buried in our bodies. It can be said that we were born with dead mothers in our body.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
There is a specific kind of day when I feel like writing poems. My senses become really sharp. This day is when I feel as if I am drowning into the abandonment of death.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
I have to reach the poetry condition to write. Then it is as if the border around me is thinned or blurred or erased or disappeared or dead.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
If you propose there is a feminism problem in Korea, somebody would point out that you are bringing up antiquated issues. No one acknowledges that discrimination against women is still widespread.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
If someone asks, Is anyone alive? Break, your, head, open, and, show, your, ten, ta, cle.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
The language of poetry is not stuck in place. Nothing can own language. I think, however, the genre of poetry itself is very feminine and motherly.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
Living in South Korea as a girl meant living under a lot of discrimination and limitation. It was the same in my university and in the Korean literary world I am involved in.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
As a university student, I tried hard to write poems in Korean. It was at that time that I foresaw my death and the world's death. I think my poems started at that time.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
When I was at university, the policemen used to measure how short the women's mini-skirts were and how long guys' hair was. We were living under a government that considers people to be soldiers.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
Men think women should do trivial things on the margins. They think women should be merely a seasoning for a dish. I feel anger and sorrow seeing this.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
The body of poetry is nothing but energy, waves, rhythm.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
Mother does not exist, like water that has given life to a flower and then disappeared. Mothers live somewhere after giving birth to us.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
When I first started to write poetry, I used to feel as if my tongue would go numb.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
Women are foils to men. It is hard for women to take a lead role even in NGOs for political resistance.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
Since the boundary of the world of poetry is fluid, the language in it is also fluid. Hence, the language that is outside of the poetry world, namely the language that is not the language of poetry, cannot go into the poetry world.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
When anger and sorrow overflow, sometimes it becomes poetry.
Kim Hyesoon
Image
Korean feminism has been swept away by popular culture. It became a sort of old-fashioned trend or a joke.
Kim Hyesoon