Ever so often I come back to this poem by E. J. Koh, but I don’t post it here because it needs to be formatted just right. Here are some quotes: “The word names the feeling that arises as you are buried alive with your dead husband.” “To have han is to be a child who hoped to be loved in a manner she understood but accepts any love, because pain cannot lessen a hope for love.”
I can’t get over the way she uses the word “arises”.
Han leads to illness called Hwa-Byung. It is an “illness that includes symptoms of insomnia, depression, and somatization in the lower abdomen. This illness is unique in that it is found mostly, but certainly not only, in middle-aged Korean females. “
Han “han inhabits the gap between atrocity and reconciliation”.
It’s important not to read too many of Koh’s poems at once. She is less dramatic than Goralik, but her poems shatter one’s peace just as much, and the lack of drama means there’s no warning.