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영어

Song Soo-Kwon’s is a poet who is creating a clear and unique poetry world while succeeding traditional lyric poems of Korean modern poetry's 100-year history. He made his debut in 1975 at the age of 35 with releasing four poems including ‘Leaning over a Buddhist temple’, and is actively creating poems until now publishing Planting the frozen ground wite Chosun Maehaw. He has published 11 books of poems so far. He has firmly created own artistic world based on ‘The Spirit of Nam-do(南道)’. His ‘The Spirit of Nam-do(南道)’ means ‘the spirit of bamboo’, ‘the spirit of yellow soil’ and ‘the spirit of mud flat’, which are referred to as three spirit of our land by him. That is, ‘the spirit of bamboo’ is associated with historical consciousness, while ‘the spirit of yellow soil’ is related with his experience in his hometown during childhood.
In addition, ‘the spirit of mud flat’ that is formed after he moved to Gyeokpo-ri, Byeosan means his affectionate eyes on people with the strong smell of mud flat. Characteristics of Song Soo-Kwon’s 's poems are as follows. First of all, his poems succeed and recreate tradition of melody
and forms of Korean lyric poems while expressing folk nature and national emotion through simple folk language in South Jeolla Province and emotions of Nam-do. Secondly, his poems
strongly present his love for nation or people and historical consciousness. Thirdly, he insisted that national lyric poetry should harmoniously unite original melody of folk language, nation's unique spirit and historical will, that is, Sam-hap-ron (三合論, unification of three theory) for ‘language, spirit and rhythm(melody)’. Fourthly, most of his poems deal with nature and contain affection for traditional things and common people's life. Moreover, these poems related with naturally-friendliness and criticisms on civilization are well presented in ‘the spirit of yellow soil’. Fifthly, it is found that his poems are based on Buddhist imagination and our nation's shamanistic traditional view on the world. In conclusion, it is clear that Song Soo-Kwon’s is a poet who is creating his own unique poetry world while succeeding the trend of traditional lyric poems. Nevertheless, few meaningful studies on his poems have been conducted. I expect
that Song Soo-Kwon’s will be assessed properly in terms of the history of poetry on the basis of broad understanding of his poems and various approaches to his original poetry world.