• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1295-1310
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• 2010

In her "After Language Poetry: Innovation and Its Theoretical Discontents" in Contemporary Poetics (2007), Marjorie Perloff spotted Steve McCaffery's and Lyn Hejinian's points of reference and opacity/transparency in poetic language, and theorizes in her perspicacious insights that poetic language is not a window, to be seen through, a transparent glass pointing to something outside it, but a system of signs with its own semiological interconnectedness. Providing a critique and contextualizing Perloff's argument, the purpose of this paper is to introduce a topological model for poetry, language, and theory and further to elaborate the relation between the theory and the practice of language poetry in terms of "the revolution of language." Jacques Lacan's poetics of knowledge and of the topology of the mind, in particular, that of "extimacy," can articulate the way how language poetry problematizes the opposition between inside and outside in the substance of language itself. In fact, as signifiers always refer not to things, but to other signifiers, signifiers becomes unconscious, and can say more than they actually says. The original signifiers become unconscious through the process of repression which makes a structure of multiple and polyphonic signifying chains. Language poets use this polyphonic language of the Other at Freudian "Another Scene" and Lacan's "Other." When the reader participates the constructive meanings, the locus of the language writing transforms itself into that of the Other which becomes the open field of language. The language poet can even manage to put himself in the between-the-two, a strange place, the place of the dream and of the Unheimlichkeit (uncanny), and suture between "the outer skin of the interior" and "the inner skin of the exterior" of the impossible real of definite meaning. The objective goal of the evacuation of meaning is all the same the first aspect suggested by the aims of the experimentalism by the language poetry. The open linguistic fields of the language poetry, then, will be supplemented by The Freudian "unconscious" processes of dreams, free associations, slips of tongue, and symptoms which are composed of this polyphonic language. These fields can be properly excavated by the methods and topological mapping of the poetics of extimacy and of the klein bottle.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.29-42
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• 2009

In an experiment to determine the relative effectiveness of poetry activities through constructivist cooking experiences 95 children in three kindergarten classes were assigned to experimental, comparative, and control groups. The experimental group participated in 12-week units of writing poetry after cooking experiences, while the comparative group participated in writing poetry after listening to poetry. Analysis of covariance revealed differences between the mean scores of the three groups on posttests of receptive and expressive language, indicating that the children in the experimental group performed better on the tests than the children in the comparative and control groups. These results suggest that incorporating constructivist cooking into poetry instruction is an effective means of fostering the language development of young children.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.675-693
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• 2011

In its restricted sense, 'sound poetry' refers to the poetic performance that rejects words and verbal meaning and instead foregrounds the aural materiality of poetry. Behind this seeking for materiality lies a quest for a 'language of presence,' which operates through a denial of signification toward an ideal of the Adamic tongue, a purely emotional and universal language. In the same light, it is argued that sound poetry is a unique and unrepeatable event devoid of meaning due to its directness to the body allowing no intervention of intellectual and semiotic process. But language may involve perceptual meaning as well as verbal or conceptual meaning ascribed to words. This implies that even though devoid of conceptual meaning by means of using grammatically non-articulated sounds, sound poetry cannot but have meaning whose articulation is differently, i.e., iconically made about the aural features of the sounds. Perceptual meaning is unavoidable because everything we are conscious of is a reduced form, a repeatable pattern that works as a sign. 'Language of presence' is then actually impossible, and therefore sound poetry should be seen rather as a fest of diverse perceptual meanings.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.3
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• pp.231-248
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• 1997

With the trend of globalization more people are absorbing in the English learning programs. Not a few attend even the English-Korean translation training course to be semi-professional translators, but we English teachers have already experienced that it is not so easy to translate any language into another, and that it is far more difficult to translate poetry. Much time has been devoted to investigating the problems of translating poetry than any other mode. Poetry translation theory is concerned with the problem of faithfulness to the original poetry. To be a good translator we must fully understand the sound and sense of the original work. But when in translating English poetry into Korean we feel keenly our limits of understanding the sound and style of English poetry, and of expressing them into Korean. Even our sense-oriented translation is far from satisfactory. We often make quite a few mistranslation. Another immediate problem is that of alternation between word-for-word translation and free translation method, but first of all, we should have a perfect knowledge and understanding in English, and a good command of our mother tongue. We should also have a sound interpretation ability because poetry translation is based on the interpretation of the original, and on the shaping of that interpretation. Some doubts have been raised over the feasibility of poetry translation. They say it is not possible to combine in another language the emotion, the form, the style, the musical devices of English poetry. Yet the art of translation has been practiced everywhere in the world. Through this art we can share our experience and culture with foreigners and theirs with us.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.1001-1021
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• 2012

This paper is concerned with John Ashbery's poetics of difficulty, questioning in particular the nature of communication in his difficult poems. Ashbery has an idea of poetry as 'information' to be transmitted to the reader. Meaning, however, is to be created by a series of selections among equally probable choices. Ashbery's poetry has been characterized by resistance to the interpretive system of meaning. But the resistance itself, as I will argue, can be an effective medium of communication as the communicated message is not simply transmitted but 'selected' and thus created by the reader. In Ashbery's poetry, disruptive 'noise' elements can be processed as constructive information. What is normally considered a hindrance or noise can be reversed and added to the information. In Ashbery's poems, random ambiguities or noises can be effectively integrated into the final structure of meaning. Such a stochastic sense of information transfer has been embodied in Ashbery's idea of creating a network of verbal elements in his poetry, analogous to the interconnecting web of hypertext, the most dynamic medium 'information technology' has brought to us. John Ashbery, whose poems are simultaneously incomprehensible and intelligent, employs ambiguities or noise in his poetry, with an attempt to reach through linear language to express nonlinear realities. It is therefore my intention to examine Ashbery's poetics of difficulty, from a perspective of communication transmission, using the theories of information technology and the principles of hypertext theory. Ashbery's poetry raises precisely the problem confronted in the era of communication and information technology. The paper will also show how his aesthetics of difficulty reflects the culture of our uncertain times with overflowing information. With his difficult enigmatic poems, Ashbery was able to move ahead of the technological advances of his time to propose a new way of perceiving the world and life.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.497-515
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• 2009

Culture as a source of identity, as Edward Said says, can be a battleground on which various political and ideological causes engage one another. It is not mere individual cultivation or private possession, but a program for social cohesion. Sensitively aware that a national culture should be independent from Europe, Walt Whitman enacts a new form of literature by placing different cultural values against Old World tradition. His interest in autochthonous culture originates from his deep concern about national consciousness. He believes that literary taste directed toward highly-ornamented elite culture is an obstacle to cultural unification of a nation. In order to represent American culture of the common people, Whitman incorporates a lot of cultural material into his poetry. Since he believes that America has many respectable writers at home, he urges people to adjust to their own taste instead of running after foreign authors. Whitman differentiated his poetry from previous literary models by disrupting the established literary norms and reconfiguring cultural values on the basis of American ways of life. In his comment on other poets, he concentrates on the originality and nativity of poetry. By claiming that words have characteristics of nativity, independence, and individuality, he envisions American literature to be distinguished from British literature in literary materials as well as in language. Whitman s language is composed of a vast number of words that can fully portray the nation. He works over language materials in two ways: reterritorialization and deterritorialization. Not only does his literary language become subversive of the established literary language, but also makes it possible to express strength and intensity in feeling.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.315-335
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• 2009

Controversies over W. H. Auden's "political" poetry remind us of an old but perhaps never easily resolved problem about the relationship between poetry (literature) and politics. Auden has arguably been referred to as a "leftist" or "Marxist" because of his political viewpoint registered in "Spain" or "September 1, 1939," which embodies his contemporaries' loss and fear, brought by the socio-political turmoil, economic depression, and moral conflicts of the 1930s. Interestingly, however, Auden is known to have an ambivalent position toward the political reality. He once disavowed the above "political" poems as "dishonest" in the preface of the 1966 edition of Collected Poems and declared, "poetry makes nothing happen" in "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," which seemingly acknowledges the political incapacity of poetry. Auden's position and poetry should be understood as the result of complicated interactions between his perspectives on society, human beings, and poetics. Auden definitely believed in the role of poetry in such a politically demanding time, yet was not concerned with the anticipation of certain immediate changes effected by poetry in real situations. Instead, he sought the intellectual and moral effects that poetry could give his readers to help them survive the dismal circumstances of the 1930s. This is what distinguished Auden's poetry from political propaganda. In doing so, Auden's poetry captures the zeitgeist of his generation and has privileged him as the leading voice of his time, but it has also encouraged the following generations to confront different socio-political difficulties. This is something poetry can make happen politically, and the survival of Auden's "memorable speech" proves the legitimacy of his frequently misunderstood poetics.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.539-565
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• 2009

T. S. Eliot attempted the combining of the liturgy of Anglican Church and a drama in Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and created a modern verse drama which comes most close to the regular tragedy like Greek tragedy today. Eliot chose the drama to deliver his religious insight because of its ritualistic origin and its potentiality to deliver a dramatic world which can contain a complete order. The central theme of this play is the martyrdom. The dramatic action of killing the archbishop Thomas Beckett in this play, however, is not treated as important event enough to be a dramatic climax. He is portrayed as a witness to the reality of God's will rather than a man who wills to give up his own life for any religious belief or cause. In Eliot, a martyr is nothing but "a witness" in its ancient sense. This paper purposes to review the language of this play. The various and new meters and rhythms of the language of this play function enough to bring its playwright to encounter 'the real audience' in 'a living theatre'. The interactions between different verbal models also play a big role to make this play a living theatre. Eliot found the poetry which crosses the various classes and levels of the tastes of audience is the most useful poetry. And the poetry of this play proves as the very thing which intensifies the theme of the play and gives the most powerful force to the play. Especially Eliot's poetry succeeds smost in the various and free meters of chorus, which makes Eliot the first playwright since Aeschylus, who could bring the chorus to undertake the function of extending the dramatic action of the play into the universal meaning. In the theatre the real audience identifies themselves with chorus. And the chorus leads the audience to respond to peace which passeth understanding beyond words and sounds of this play, which is the desired response in Eliot's conception of drama.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.39
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• pp.219-240
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• 2015

The following summarized argument is the comparative research of the characteristics of automatic techniques demonstrated in the mixed expression of foreign language and Korean language in Lee Sang's poetry. Our research examines the use of foreign languages such as French and English shown in Lee Sang's poems, and then, recognized the characteristics of the automatic techniques demonstrated by the parallel marks and signs of Korean language. The automatical technique's element that Lee Sang made use of is a language of loanblend, consisting of free use of French, English, Japanese and Korean. The mathematical and geometric figures such as numbers and shapes can be seen as an important poetic language. In Lee Sang's poetry, the French words "AMOUREUSES" and "ESQUISSE" and English words "I WED A TOY BRIDE" are considered as parts of Korean language. The use of foreign language is seen by the readers as encodes of a unacquainted language and it provides rhetorical characteritstics that gives off profanatory feeling about the poetry. The poet is seen to have created a new poetic language that excess the standards of the limitations that Korean and Chinese marks have through the application of polysems and poliphonyic effects that foreign languages have. The mathematical and geometric signs are Lee Sang's special experimental elements that can't be seen in other literary poetries. They are conversational and the requirements for the expression of abstract artistry and esthetics. The language used in his poetry are external to those traditional poetic languages and they mix freely with other poetic elements to become an automatic technique used in the writing. Lee Sang's techniques can be considered as the pursuit of defiance and departure, freedom about literature and artistry. Moreover, the avant-garde expressionism is the literary form that demonstrated the sense of inferiority, nervousness and loneliness risen from physical pain and the abnormal relationship with women in the poet's personal life. The technique shows the longingness of the the Western culture and literature that lay dormant in the poet's consciousness and it is also the expression of ingenious that created the new guide in the Korean poetic literature, exceeding the European surrealism. Lastly, the automatic technique images that are demonstrated by the mixture of the foreign languages and Korean language are the creations of an innate poetic language and poetic literature that can't be imitated by anyone in Korean literature.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.25-45
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• 2010

While environmental ethics, a relatively new field of philosophy, has gained its practical power in the contemporary world, the ethics of ecological poetry has not been studied well and the relationship between poetry and ethics has also been troubled for a long time. How can it be probed, interrogated, and constructed in ecological criticism? Attempting to steer some critical focus to the topic of ethics and poetic language, this essay is to elucidate these questions within the ecological traits of Mary Oliver's poems. In the process of revisiting Oliver's poems, this essay tries to rescue the poet Oliver, one of the most gifted poets in contemporary American poetic landscape, but a long-neglected one, and questions of ethics which have been evaded for a long time in ecological criticism. Oliver's ecological imagination at once invites readers to become other in the outer world in a most spontaneous way and re-questions the fundamental distance between the self and the other in the process of becoming other. Challenging the humanistic view of nature, she opens the various layers of becoming other: from the possible state of perfect merging to the sad recognition of the impossibility of merging, from the happy moment of rebirth beyond death, to the conflicting moment of being-together. In the different cycles and levels of becoming other, Oliver's poetry completes the poetics of relation in the components of 'self-in-relation.' In those different layers of relations, the ethics of ecological poetry is newly explored rather than residing in the safe net of goodness or sympathy between the self and the other, or the stark division between the two. Oliver's witty, sensitive, sometimes sad eyes toward others, therefore, entice readers to move from the established view of nature to the extraordinary moment of encountering it, thus accomplishing the ethics of beings, not just of ecological poetry.