The Night of the Cat's Return

This collection of poems describes the textures of daily life through the eyes of the inhabitants of the land of pygmies. Butterflies, cats, and flowers speak in their own voices, presenting readers with a new perspective on their lives—and on nature. But this fairy tale-like world is not the innocent one of a child unacquainted with the harsher realities of experience. Rather, it is what awaits explorers of the fallen language. The author invites readers to engage in a dialogue with what the ancient Chinese called the ten thousand things; his poems demonstrate how to live harmoniously with nature. In this bilingual edition, the author and his English translators urge readers to attend different schools, including those of the mountain dove and the cat. There, freed from the dizzying speed of civilization, one may sit down in a yarn basket and taste the cat’s philosophy while drinking pine fragrance tea.

Chanho Song is a poet who has received the East-West Literary Award, the Kim Sooyoung Literary Award, and the Midang Literary Award, one of Korea’s most prestigious poetry prizes. He is the author of Camellia, The Earth Has Rectangular Memory, An Empty Chair for Ten Years, and Red Eye. He lives in South Korea. Won-Chung Kim is a professor of English Literature in Korea, where he teaches contemporary American poetry, ecological literature, and translation. Kim is the coeditor of East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader and has translated ten books of Korean poetry. He lives in South Korea. Christopher Merrill directs the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He is the author of six collections of poetry, including Necessities and Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.