Professor Sung-Il Lee of the English Department, who will be retiring in February of 2009, has recently published a book of Korean poetry in English translation, entitled “The Brush and the Sword: Kasa, Korean Classical Poems in Prose” (Merrick, New York: Cross-Cultural Communications, 2009). The book contains his translations of fifteen poems composed in the form of Kasa during the Chosŏn Dynasty, from the early fifteenth to the late eighteenth century, including the works of Chŏng Ch’ŏl and Pak In-ro as the book’s central poets. In addition to providing a parallel translation in Korean and English, the book allocates a considerable portion of its bulk to the translator’s comments and notes, thereby helping the readers tackle the original verses and become immersed in the artistic merits of Kasa, this uniquely Korean form of poetic composition. Critical praise for the work includes the following: ". . . a brave and astonishingly successful attempt to represent this distinguished but remote ancient poetic tradition in English, together with an illuminating introduction and the source texts for scholars and serious students of the language and culture." (Daniel Weissbort, Founding Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, Director of the MFA Program in Translation, University of Iowa, 1985-2000) "Sung-Il Lee lays before us samples of the great classical form of Korean poetry called Kasa, so sadly unknown to western readers along with any coherent knowledge of the country’s past and its culture. He gives us too a careful and yet properly poetic version in the appropriate English. . . . Just as our own great poets managed to transfer Latin verse into good and appropriate English poetry, so has Sung-Il Lee done here with these Korean forms. The collection is enhanced by a thoroughgoing set of notes and explanations. One will be so much better off for having read this book." (Gregory Rabassa, Translator of Nobel Prize Winners, Miguel Angel Asturias and Gabriel Garcia Márquez; Winner of a National Book Award, the PEN Translation Award, the National Medal of Arts)