Translating Mo'Um

by Cathy Park Hong

Poetry. Asian American Studies.

Zoo --
Ontology of Chang and Eng, The Original Siamese Twins --
Rite of Passage --
Helix --
Assiduous Rant --
Translating Pagaji --
Scale --
Body Builder --
Melanin --
Assimilation of Sitting --
The Shameful Show of Tono Maria --
During Bath --
All the Aphrodisiacs --
Not Henry Miller but Mother --
On Splitting --
Movement --
Translating Michin'yun --
To Collage a Beginning --
Hottentot Venus --
Androgynous Pronoun --
The Scavenging --
CAT Scan --
Wing --
Ablution --
The Gatherer --
Translating Mo'um --
Timetable.

Genres: Poetry, Asian American, Contemporary, Cultural

74 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

Cathy Park Hong’s book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House (US) and Profile Books (UK). She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in Poetry, A Public Space, Paris Review, McSweeney's, Baffler, Yale Review, The Nation, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of the New Republic and is a professor at Rutgers-Newark University.

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection; in some ways it felt like a first book (which it is), but that's alright! It made me want to read more of Cathy Park Hong's work. The poems are emotive and complex and thoughtful and fit together well as individual peices and as a book. My favorite poems included "Ontology of Chang and Eng, The Original Siamese Twins," "All the Aphrodisiacs," "On Splitting," "Movement," "Translating Michin'yum", "To Collage a Beginning" and "Wing" (as perhaps is clear, I liked the middle section of the book best, though it was all good).

The poems are personal, historical, and formal, like how "All the Aphrodisiacs" opens

blowfish arranged on a saucer. Russian roulette. angelic slivers.

ginseng. cut antlers alloted in bags dogs on a spit, a Dutch girl

winking holds a bowl of shellfish.

whit cloth, drunkennes. a different language leaks out--
the idea of throat, an orifice, a cord--

you say it turns you on when I speak Korean.

This lead-up makes the later invocation of "han-gul: the language first used by female entertainers, poets, prostitutes" feel like a natural continuation of the imbrication of her life and the history of both anti-Asian racism in the states and of Koreaa, without ever letting go of the glittering ellipsis of the insistence on lower case, of the refusal to explain how these things are related, of the sudden, sharp appearance of a couplet as the fourth verse paragragh when most of them are single lines. This or "On Splitting" is probably my favorite poem and they are both indicative of the very best attributes of collection in much the same way that this exceprt works--far from the only poem that does this work. She is not interested in writing pain for those of us who cannot share it, instead taking full advantage of poetry as a reflective and even impersonal mode to speak to the intimate, the personal, and the systemic limitations that the person runs up against--as well as the possibility of joy and pleasure. I look forward to reading more!

[Dylan Zucati · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all poetry, you should read this twice, at least once out loud. Not only do you get the usual reiteration of the literal words, but a second read reveals more resonance in the imagery and themes when taken with the context of the completed book. The final page has a note on the Hottentot Venus, a historical figure who was tragically butchered by white scientists and carnival men, as well as a note on the pronunciation of the titular Mo’um being pronounced like “Mom” in standard Romanized spelling. Both of these notes might have been more useful at the beginning if you were hearing them read aloud at a live event, but the reveal at the end for someone who can go back and see everything through this new lens, felt so much more important when it was revealed after all the poems had been parsed through. Of course I caught the themes of motherhood, or more accurately childhood in the presence of a Mother. The poems about the Hottentot Venus built with a rising action that propelled the book. These serve as just two examples of a larger technique at play in Cathy Park Hong’s work. The recurrence of the color blue, the concept of wind, first loves, and the Korean language, all come and go as the poems move forward, but it is on the second read that you feel the importance of their words the first time. Poetry is a challenge for me to write about, it feels like a larger equation that I can understand but not solve. Translating Mo’um was that unsolvable puzzle, untangling itself as I was tangled deeper within it the more I read. An excellent start to a poet I have more to read of!

[angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was an audacious and imagistic book.
repeating themes include: hottentot venus, simian, siamese, twins, melanin, helix

i'm curious to read this in conversation with other works of hers. dance dance revolution next!