Himalaya Poems

By: Ko Un

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In 1997, Korean poet Ko Un and a few companions spent 40 days of rough traveling through Tibet, despite the fact that years before an undiagnosed attack of tuberculosis had seriously damaged his lungs. Enduring terrible pain and near death, he recovered and wrote the powerful poems of this volume, which both describe and evaluate his journey.

As he says in his Preface, “Narrowly avoiding falls, I scrambled up and down precipices, crossed plains, on the way to the last place we could go. Now there seemed to be nowhere left for us to go, and nowhere for us to go back to.”

It was not “truths” that he discovered in the poor and yet magical Himalayan mountains. After all, the poet queries, “Who speaks truth?” Instead he learned that “what has raised me is… the road,” the journey itself, where, as he describes it, he hoped to encounter “the hinterlands of history.”

These marvelously direct poems continue to reveal just how majestic and intelligent his work is. Beautifully translated by Brother Anthony and Ko Un’s wife Lee Sang-Wha, Himalaya Poems is a stunning testament to life’s endurance and energy.