Autobiography of Death

Kim Hyesoons poems create a seething, imaginative under-and over-world where myth and politics, the everyday and the fabulous, bleed into each other (Sean OBrien,The Independent)*Winner of The Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Award*The title section of Kim Hyesoons powerful new book, Autobiography of Death, consists of forty-nine poems, each poem representing a single day during which the spirit roams after death before it enters the cycle of reincarnation. The poems not only give voice to those who met unjust deaths during Koreas violent contemporary history, but also unveil what Kim calls the structure of death, that we remain living in. Autobiography of Death, Kims most compelling work to date, at once reenacts trauma and narrates our historical deathhow we have died and how we survive within this cyclical structure. In this sea of mirrors, the plural you speaks as a body of multitudes that has been beaten, bombed, and buried many times over by history. The volume concludes on the other side of the mirror with Face of Rhythm, a poem about individual pain, illness, and meditation.