Choi Jeongrye (1955 – 2021) was a modern South Korean poet.
1. Life
Choi Jeongrye was born in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Korean poetry from Korea University. Choi made her literary debut in 1990, publishing the poem "Beongae" (번개 Lightning) in Hyeondae Sihak. Starting with Nae gwitsogui jangdaenamu sup (내 귓속의 장대나무 숲 A Forest of Bamboo in My Ear) in 1994, she published six volumes of poetry over her career. She participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 2006, and was writer-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley in 2009. Her poems have been printed in Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry & Poets, Iowa Review, Text Journal, World Literature Today, and various Korean and Japanese literary magazines. An English-language collection, Instances (which she co-translated), was published in 2011. Choi was a lecturer at Korea University. She is the recipient of the Kim Daljin Literary Award, the Isu Literary Award, the Baek Seok Literary Award, and the Midang Literary Award. She died in 2021 after having been diagnosed a year earlier with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, a rare blood disease.
2. Writing
Choi's poems usually originate from a profound contemplation of time and memory. For Choi, the process of identifying her true and unknown self embedded in the fragments of time and memory is a tool for understanding others and the world at large. What ultimately emerges from her exploration of fragmented memories and chaos of time is the sense of emptiness and loneliness that forms the very core of existence.
A product of the poet's ceaseless effort to pioneer a new frontier in her spiritual existence by unraveling the tangled relationship between memory and present existence, Choi's poetic language is simple but intense, boldly rejecting sentimentalism as well as conventionalism. Plain words used in everyday conversations become unfamiliar all of a sudden, creating moments of fresh insight that reveal sorrow and pain of living. Everyday experiences entwine with fragments of forgotten memory to reveal the emptiness of life and destroy the idea of self as a solid, clearly defined being. Despite such dark subject matters, however, Choi's language remains dynamic and full of life.
Always rooted in the here-and-now, Choi's speakers are simultaneously outside of it, questioning the propriety of our taken-for-granted arrangements. Delicate and wistful, this poetry has the tensile strength to address itself to the deepest challenges of human experience; as Choi writes, with characteristic (and deceptive) off-handedness, "hey abyss." In a world of inconstancy and ceaseless transformation, Choi's poetry forgoes easy consolation and instead offers poetry of the highest order as the only consolation. Reading it offers the almost vertiginous sense of the variousness of experience.[1]
Reference
[1] Choi Jeongrye, et al. Instances: Selected Poems. Anderson, S.C., Parlor Press, 2011. Back cover.
