As I stare, I can see
a big wheel rolling on the water
(from “Water Lily,” page 4)
A counterpoint to the madness of the contemporary cityscape, Flatfish by Moon Tae-jun is a brilliant new bilingual poetry collection that is at once remedy and conversation. It features poetry offering hope within the howl of the machine, peace within the violence of energy, and rest within the ecstatic of the image. Moon’s work is at once simple and complex, often leading the reader into a softness of context only to muster quirks and flares around a structural corner.
Moon’s poetry is concerned with flatness, a unique metaphorical current at once underwhelming and overwhelming. What is flat? What is shallow? What is at rest? What is slow? These are just some of the countless questions that bridge the reader into the poet’s inquiry. And they are fundamentally filled with curious implications, that the reader is given something lesser to explore something greater, that these poems are portals, are steppingstones leading to opportunities for a momentum of ideas, of potential, of depth.
The falling autumn leaf
and the leaf still hanging—
you and I
(from “The Bottom,” page 40)
As a realm of juxtapositions, Flatfish becomes knowable through the resulting transformations, a lesson which poetry once again offers us in our everyday world, a world of monotony, cycles, and closed thinking. A world of explicit and direct impact through consumerism and deadness. With Moon’s poetry, the reader may find themselves reinvigorated to explore that which is flat as a starting point.
And what of flatness? What of simplicity? What is depth? Through Moon’s lessons, through the poem-by-poem guiding the book holds, the reader may find themselves discovering these questions, and perhaps even answers, on their own terms. As Jae Won Edward Chung so succinctly puts it in the book’s introduction “By slowing things down, we can restore our authentic relationship to time, the futures and the pasts immanent in the ongoing present” (“Forward,” xvi).
The smoke is lethargic, the smoke is illiterate, the smoke is nude
The smoke is a forgotten field covered in weeds
(from “Spread, Disease, Spread!,” page 31)
And so there is a meditative quality to this lyrical poetry, and that meditativeness is active, rooted in action, practice, and engagement. It is an establishment of flux and fluidity through time, noting that there is a now and there is a then, there is a beginning and there is an ending, and those components are indicative of some degree of presence, authenticity, and a truer, more illuminated existence. The occasional references to Buddhism reinforce these learning and growth processes.
Undoubtedly a book with firm roots in and around Seoul, Flatfish is also a book that feels of many places. Moon’s poetry may not be entirely universal, and may wear the surreal outfits often found in contemporary South Korean poetry, and yet it is a poetry that feels like it could be of any place. Indeed, the surrealistic affect is more rooted in the poet’s individual voice than it is in any singularly regional or local context.
Midday’s unbearably dull pulse
Midday’s natural scaffolding
That flatness that I am staring at today
Vines from vines
Sprouts like poison flatly rise
(from “Metaphor of the Vine,” page 37)
Flatfish has been published in a bilingual edition that includes English at the front and the original Korean, from 2006, in the back. Brandon Joseph Park includes a translator’s introductory note that explains the inclusion by Moon of hanja (Chinese characters) in the poems, which are somewhat challenging to consider when integrated into the English translation. Overall, alongside the introductory essay by Jae Won Edward Chung, this is a fantastic book, a toolkit of sorts, and a wondrous introduction to Moon Tae-jun’s poetry.
Greg Bem lived in Seattle for 13 years before moving to Spokane, where he has resided since 2023. He is a community college librarian and union organizer, small press publisher, poet and performer, and book reviewer, among other things. His reviews are linked on his website, and can be found published here in International Examiner as well as in Rain Taxi, North of Oxford, Exacting Clam, and Another Chicago Magazine.
