| Sumario: | Myung Mi Kim's poetry and poetics is grounded in the physical body. Mouths and throats abound in her poems, and the physical act of speaking is an important, and overlooked, dimension of her poetic practice. Poetry comes from the body as rhythm, sound, and breath, yet we have few resources for talking about further dimensions of the physicality of poetry, including the muscular and kinesthetic experience of words in the mouth. Recent work in cognitive science and sociolinguistics offers a useful supplement for more fully exploring the physical, and physiological, in Kim's poetry. Her poems are full of obdurate sounds and conjunctions of multiple languages that prompt for the reader new experiences of the mouth and tongue. Through such forms of resistance and play, Kim seeks to revitalize language as a form of connection and "commons."
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