For Nirvana: 108 Zen Sijo Poems

By Oh-Hyun Cho

For Nirvana features exceptional examples of the poet Cho Oh-Hyun's award-winning work. Cho Oh-Hyun was born in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, Korea, and has lived in retreat in the mountains since becoming a novice monk at the age of seven. Writing under the Buddhist name Musan, he has composed hundreds of poems in seclusion, many in the sijo style, a relatively fixed syllabic poetic form similar to Japanese haiku and tanka. For Nirvana contains 108 Zen sijo poems (108 representing the number of klesas , or "defilements," that one must overcome to attain enlightenment). These transfixing works play with traditional religious and metaphysical themes and include a number of "story" sijo, a longer, more personal style that is one of Cho Oh-Hyun's major innovations. Kwon Youngmin, a leading scholar of sijo, provides a contextualizing introduction, and in his afterword, Heinz Insu Fenkl reflects on the unique challenges of translating the collection.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231179901
• ISBN13: 9780231179904
• Release Date: September 2016
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 7.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher