By Arlene Kim:
(Today’s poems originally appeared in Diode and appear here today with permission from the poet.)
Arlene Kim grew up on the east coast of the U.S. before drifting westward. Her first collection of poems What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? (Milkweed Editions) won the 2012 American Book Award. She lives in Seattle where she reads for the poetry journal DMQ Review and writes poems, prose, and bits between.
Editor’s Note: The biography of Prince Sado is fascinating, but there is no entry into this (or any) history quite like that of a poet. Arlene Kim has latched onto this fascinating tale, and in her telling she not only invites us into a history, but also makes that history entirely new, entirely her own. Who was Prince Sado—in both his life and death—and how does he live anew in the imagination of the poet?
Want to read more by and about Arlene Kim?
Arlene Kim’s Official Website
Milkweed Editions: Video
DMQ Review: Poetry
Buy What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? from Milkweed Editions
Buy What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? on Amazon
As It Ought To Be 
It IS a super fascinating story! Especially that the only record of that time is the memoir written by Sado’s child bride – well, I guess they were both children really. The book is _The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea_ translated by JaHyun Kim Haboush. It’s particularly interesting because of the coded way everything in it is written. Here’s a terrific piece written by Ed Park about the book, with more on Sado’s odd phobias and behaviors: http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-10-26/books/the-family-plot/full/. Thanks, Sivan, for the Saturday love!
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