ROUGH, AND SAVAGE
Spirited and restlessly imaginative, Shin’s poems weave a lyrical collage of ancient fragments, fairytale, and both Korean and American History.
These poems animate the elements of the epic poem and Korean history across a dystopian dreamscape of fairytale and folklore. Filled with pithy observations and striking lyrics, this collection explores alienation, moral isolation, and nationhood.
Rough, and Savage is a lyrical collage of ancient fragments, fairytale, and both Korean and American history that is as daring as it is restlessly imaginative.
August 2012, Coffee House Press, 114 pages, ISBN: 978-1-56689-314-5
ROUGH, AND SAVAGE
Spirited and restlessly imaginative, Shin’s poems weave a lyrical collage of ancient fragments, fairytale, and both Korean and American History.
These poems animate the elements of the epic poem and Korean history across a dystopian dreamscape of fairytale and folklore. Filled with pithy observations and striking lyrics, this collection explores alienation, moral isolation, and nationhood.
Rough, and Savage is a lyrical collage of ancient fragments, fairytale, and both Korean and American history that is as daring as it is restlessly imaginative.
August 2012
Coffee House Press
PRESS + MEDIA
“In her new collection Rough, and Savage, Sun Yung Shin draws from Robert Pinsky’s translation of Dante’s Inferno, the Korean War, and events from her own life to create a multi-layered archipelago combining the past and the future and mimicking or redefining the epic poem. As we follow Shin deeper down into her inferno, themes of separation, possession, and ignorance collide with images of war and violence.” —Rain Taxi
“Shin’s poems enact what happens when the violence and erasure of history collide with the poetic impulse to make meaning. . . . Much of [her] work reads like redactions, offering fragments to be explored, investigated and interrogated, making her reader equal partner in the creation of meaning.” —Star Tribune
“Sun Yung Shin’s new collection offers poems for an uneasily globalized world”. —Knight Foundation
“Revisiting many of the themes from Skirt Full of Black, Shin takes us further into the realm of myth, exploring the history of Korea and the people who have inhabited and ruled it. Blending academic research with her own composed text, Shin calls our attention to the erasures in history—erasures both deliberate and unconscious.” —Hazel and Wren
“Shin’s work strikes me as more cerebral than lyrical. . . . Even her less experimental work . . . has a prose quality of fragments from old myths.” —Twin Cities Daily Planet
“Without a doubt Rough, and Savage is the most moving book of poetry I have read all year. . . . Her work is like a haunting yet intriguing fairy tale exploring thoughts about Korean North and South and the rising Western presence.” —The Corresponder
“In this inspired follow-up to Skirt Full of Black, she presents explosively imaginative poems that are never untethered from experiential reality. It’s Shin’s genius to seamlessly wed the imaginary, the dream-wrought, and the mythical with the historical, the hard and factual.” —ALIST Magazine
“Rough, and Savage is a challenging and riveting exploration of such intimate yet universal issues. . . . Delicately executed and beautifully written.” —Eleven Eleven
“Rough, and Savage . . . is simultaneously alluring and caustic, lovely and mournful, ambitious in both its moral ambition and literary invention.” —Knight Arts Blog