What?

What? 108 Zen Poems
By Ko Un

Working at McKeldin library affords me the opportunities of a book whore—to hold short fantastic affairs between myself and dozens of books, per hour, without commitment; But I remember the good ones. Ko Un's What? - 108 Zen Poems was one such book. A calligraphic Zen painting of a sword on the creamy skin of the pocket-sized book caught my eye. "I must have this book," I told myself. I checked it out that evening.
I read it in one sitting and loved every single minute of it, the first book of poetry dedicated to one person I have ever read. It was of course translated and had several introductions from Ginsberg, Zen Master Thich Naht Hanh, and others. Their introductions of Ko Un gave me the perfect frame of mind—though I had learned about and practiced several faces of Buddhism in previous years—to read and fully enjoy Ko’s poetry. But words and praises about a person can only do so much; some other deeper bond drew me to What?
Existential-Zazen theory...
The nothingness of existence that prevails in Zen Buddhism radiates between the lines of almost every poem in this book. This, however, is not to say the collection is a cold bleak outlook on life, it is more like a set of realist/naturalist/meditative blips of clarity from a very well-experienced Korean (that’s my endorsement for Ko Un).

"A Rosary

Angulimala was a devil of a cutthroat.
The fellow
sliced off the fingers of the people that he killed
and wore them
strung dingle-dangle around his neck,
including his father's fingers.

That was a real hundred-eight bead rosary.
Every bead on the string
a life."

"A Rosary" was the meeting point for the two of us: a metaphor for, and an agreeable way a Zen warrior ought to live in his time and culture. I think this is the most potent poem in What?
He, a Korean "jail-bird" rogue Bodhisattva, and I, an Americanized Africa-Born Romantic and anti-intellectual, through but a few words that allowed for cosmic transcendence, came to a mutual understanding and view on life. Check it out, maybe you'll find your own questions and answer to the question: What? [is this?]