Radio Days
Radio Days
By Ha Jaeyoun
translated by Sue Hyon Bae
Paperback / 66p. / Poetry
ISBN 978-1939568-72-4
A collection of poems that gives new life and magic to the everyday.
Radio Days offers a unique collection by Ha Jaeyoun in a distinct, clear style, distinguishing it from her previous works in English. Although her poems range widely in topic, they are united by lucid language and breathtaking imagery. Through vivid impressions of humid childhood summers, Radio Days is an extended meditation on the heartbreak of growing up and being alive. Together, the poems create a whimsical, quietly unsettling, and nostalgic universe that is easily entered while refusing to make obvious statements on loss and love.
Ha Jaeyoun was born in 1975 in South Korea, and she received her bachelor's and doctorate degrees in Korean literature from Koryo University. In addition to Radio Days, originally published in 2006, she has published two other poetry collections in Korean as well as many scholarly works on modern Korean poetry. She has previously been translated into English by Jake Levine in the collection Poems of Hwang Yuwon, Ha Jaeyoun, & Seo Dae-kyung. Sue Hyon Bae was born in South Korea and received an MFA in poetry at Arizona State University. She is cotranslator of the poetry collection A Drink of Red Mirror by Kim Hyesoon and has published a collection of original poetry in English, Truce Country.
“Don’t be fooled by the crisp, clear, and deceptively straightforward language of Sue Hyon Bae’s extraordinary translation of Ha Jaeyoun’s Radio Days. As you read, you will discover that the ambitious philosophical questions these poems ask only seem to multiply. At turns surreal and disconcertingly quotidian, these poems quietly destabilize our beliefs about language, perception, and the self. This volume is as elegant and understated as it is conceptually groundbreaking.”
