Everything Yearned For : Manhae's Poems of Love and Longing

Andrew Schelling, editor of The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry
"Wonderful, wonderful poetry reminiscent of Rilke and Tagore. These poems penetrate the heart like a gong at midnight."

Book Description
Long a cultural hero in Korea, Manhae--whose work can be compared to that of Rumi and even Pablo Neruda--is overdue his proper audience in the West. Beautifully packaged, the love poems collected in Everything Yearned For will speak volumes on Valentine's Day this year for lovers and seekers everywhere.

From the Publisher
"Francisco Cho has provided the definitive English translation of these remarkable poems. Manhae's long rhythmical lines seem to sweep forward with an almost Biblical cadence in some places, while in others breaking apart into brief, almost conversational phrases. Their mix of the philophical, mystical, and sensual are uniquely distinctive. A WONDERFUL VOYAGE AWAITS YOU." -from the foreword by David R. McCann, recipient of the Manhae Prize for Arts and Sciences, and Director of the Korea Insitute at Harvard University

From the Inside Flap
Review by Sam Hamill, author of Dumb Luck: "Manhae's deceptively simple ecstatic poems draw on a tradition that goes back thousands of years. Manhae joins to that tradition his Korean Buddhist sensibility and practice, and considerable technical skills, producing a suite of poems of striking originality." - Sam Hamill, founder of Poets Against the War and author of Dumb Luck"

About the Author
FRANCISCA CHO is an assistant professor of theology at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. She is the author of Embracing Illusion: Truth and Fiction in the Dream of the Nine Clouds (SUNY Press).


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The first poem, "My Lover's Silence," narrates the lover's departure and establishes the enduring themes of the work: the happiness of meeting, the sadness of separation, the agony of longing and waiting, and, most of all, the perfection of love in absence that demands the cost of one's ongoing life, as opposed to the relief of death. The Korean word translated in these poems as "love" and "lover" is nim, though nim has many and broad interpretations. Understandably, the identity of Manhae's lover, or nim has been the subject of much speculation.


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