When I ran across a very positive review for Yi Mun-yol’s novel The Poet over at Korean Literature in Translation, I was really excited to check the book out. It’s a novel about a poet who went by the handle Kim Sakkat–“Rain-Hat” Kim, the grandson of a rebel-leader who suffered social censure (and, almost, the execution of his whole family, in retribution for the granddad’s “crime”). The grandson becomes a poet, and then a wanderer, and arguably the first proto-rapper or beat poet in Korea… and the novel purports to explore his life story. Sound great, right? Unfortunately, I found …