Belly Button Disc contains about 50 poems by Dongho Kim who investigates the mysteries of life and the world we inhabit from a Taoistic lens. His poems exhibit the insights he has harvested throughout his life-long sauntering through the mountains of Lao-tze and Chuang-tze. Though he sings of the depth of Oriental thoughts, Kim does not hesitate to tell of the painful reality of our lives. This double vision allows him to stand apart from the pressing issues that haunt us incessantly. Hence the many ironies, satires, and paradoxes found in his poems. However, these weapons of rhetoric are not aimed at others. They are, instead, directed toward himself, which is why his poetry is seldom biting or vicious, but rather humorous. This comedic quality is the most prominent characteristic of Kim’s poetry. With his sense of humor, Kim overthrows the obstinate, rock-hard preconceptions and prejudices, and directs us to uncover hidden facets of things. Dongho Kim was born in Koesan in 1934. He studied English literature at Sungkyunkwan University and worked as a professor of English poetry. Kim has published twelve books of poetry including Flowers, Lao-tze’s Mountain, and Belly Button Disc since 1975. He was awarded the Sungkyun Literary Prize and the Poet Selected by Poets Prize. He lives in Kunpo with his wife Jeung-kang Lee. Translators Won-Chung Kim is a professor of English Literature at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Korea, where he teaches contemporary American poetry, ecological literature, and translation. He earned his Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa in 1993. He has translated twelve books of Korean poetry including Chiha Kim’s Heart’s Agony, Choi Seungho’s Flowers in the Toilet Bowl, Hyonjong Chong’s The Dream of Things, and Cracking the Shell: Three Korean Ecopoets. He has also translated E.T. Seton’s The Gospel of the Redman and H.D. Thoreau’s Natural History Essays into Korean. His first book of poetry, I Thought It Was a Door, was published in 2014. Chang-Soo Ko’s poems, in Korean and in English, have been published in Korean and American journals. He has published more than six books of poems including Things, Their Eyes and Ears (2013) and one of his book of poems What the Spider Said: Poems of Chang Soo Ko was published in English. He also translated several books of Korean poetry including Sending the Ship out to the Stars and Drawing Lines: Selected Popems of Moon Dok-su. He was awarded the Poetry Prize, the Jung-mun Literary Award the Modern Korean Literature Translation Award (for poetry), the Bolan International Merit Award in Pakistan and the Lician Blaga International Poetry Festival Grand Prize in Romania.
