Yi Won is a leading voice in contemporary Korean avant-garde poetry, combining cunning wit and social criticism with bold formal and typographic experimentation rarely seen in Korean literary history. Her work is particularly attuned to the complex mediations we have come to call the postmodern, as the title of one of her poems, “I Click Therefore I Am,” readily attests. Throughout her poems appear such images as internet news feeds, cyborgs, department stores-cum-tombstones, investor suicides, womanizing literary critics, and the world’s lightest motorcycle, which together intimate her various shades of ironic detachment as well as sober-faced reflections on the cruel realities of late late-capitalism. The only other work of hers that has appeared in English is Walter K. Lew’s translation of “I Click Therefore I Am.” Below are two poems from her collection History of an Impossible Page (2012). —Kevin Michael Smith, translator
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Voices
Stone, Up to there solid things and I
Light, Things leaking, stretching my flesh
Wall, Up to there things nudged
Road, Up to there things tossed
Window, Until it doesn’t arrive
Surface, Until it wells up
Interior, Until there is no place to fall
Blood, Getting tangled up
Ear, Crawling out
Back, The world losing
Color, Digging up, tearing apart
I, While escaping from the mirror,
in the swamp surprisingly there are so many things to bury
You, Having already escaped from the mirror,
in the air too surprisingly many things are buried
Eye, Breaking, shattering
Star, Tearing
Dream, Soaked in blood
Seed, That which is darkest
Egg, There too undoubtedly silence vehemence
Bone, There too left alone
Hand, There too cracking
Mouth, There too caught
Door, Impetuous, delayed, belated
Body, Shadow revealing its true colors
God, Stuck to fingertips
Flower, Vomit
Water, Boiling
Knife, Swelling up to the throat
White, Fluttering
The Window Closes in One Minute
59 Hey there, excuse me
58 Inside the body the body is rotting
57 Where’d you put what you dug out from my body
56 Exhale your last breath
55 The hole is completely filled
54 Spit your last breath
53 The first day of this year began on a Monday
52 The first day of this year was cold all day
51 If you shut your eyes far away I was boiling inside
50 Quickly, come into the shadow
49 ……………
48 Boring
47 It’s all the same the same death
46 Lights off lights on
45 A barely visible threshold
44 Bone
43 Flesh
42 Spill your blood
41 Take off your skin
40 Fling your heart
39 Foot
38 Shriveling
37 Hand
36 Shriveling
35 The shadow’s quite mushy
34 Before the flesh smolders
33 Before the body escapes from the body
32 Where is here
31 Oil floating in spicy beef soup gone cold
30 Working at job #7
29 Don’t remove the insides of the body
28 Barely crying and so on
27 It’s hot
26 Inside the shadow, it’s hot
25 Crazy, huh
24 Pitch black
23 Outside the body a wailing sound is heard
22 Not permeating and slipping
21 Strip off your skin
20 The steps entering the body are all there
19 You cannot exit from inside the body
18 Spit your last breath
17 Where did the mouth go
16 Where is the voice
15 I am boiling up
14 I am burning
13 One hand’s width of door
12 Exactly one hand’s width
11 Before it all burns
10 Choose the bones
9 You came too late didn’t you night
8 You came too early didn’t you darkness
7 Ripples on the Danube River is today’s last song
6 Completely draped in wind
5 Don’t stop keep flowing
4 O river water
3 Completely draped in wind
2 I am your
1 …………………..
0 –– –– ––
* * *
Yi Won is an award-winning poet from South Korea, whose avant-garde work is at the cutting edge of the contemporary Korean poetry scene. Born in Hwaseong, Gyeonggido Province in 1968, she holds a BA in creative writing from Seoul Institute of the Arts and a graduate degree from Dankook University’s creative writing department. She has published five poetry collections, When They Ruled the World (1996), A Thousand Moons Float in the River Yahoo! (2001), The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (2007), History of an Impossible Page (2012), and Let Love Be Born (2017), each from the publisher Munhak kwa Jiseongsa (Literature and Intellect). Her first prose collection, The Smallest Discovery, was published in November, 2017 by Minumsa. She currently lives in Seoul.
Kevin Michael Smith is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis. His dissertation focuses on modernist Korean poetry from the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945). His essays and translations have appeared in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture; Yi Sang Review; Asia-Pacific Journal; and Lana Turner Journal. He currently lives in Seoul.
