Everything in the Living Room
There is a desk in the living room. There is a chair in the living room. In the living room is a book. Is a flower. Is a mirror. Is paper. Is glass. Is a drawer. Is a promise. And is a sigh. On one side, a dining table. On the other, a fridge. In the fridge, an apple. In the apple, flesh. In the flesh, a seed. In the seed, darkness. In the darkness, a memory. In the memory, curls of breath. In the curls, tears. In the tears, your words. In your words, my words. In my words, stains. Certain things we used to call our feelings. Everything we used to call our preference. Everything we didn’t have to enumerate. Certain things we didn’t have to verbalize. In the living room is a certain everything. A certain everything inside a certain everything. Every certain thing inside every certain thing. The slanted corner. The faint wallpaper. The fingers that graze the wallpaper; the eyes that trace the fingers; your gaze that is no longer there; a certain irreversible stain; every stain that bleeds from one to another. In the living room is every certain thing. Is. Is. Is. A certain everything in every certain thing. Every certain thing in a certain everything. Every certain thing that separated us from another us. A certain everything that bled us into another us. There is a door in the living room. There is a window in the living room. In the living room is a hat. Is a pencil. Is warmth. Is a shelf. Is a regret. Is a waver. Is a hesitation. Is a monologue. Is a candle. Is a cloud. Is a midday. Is a lament. Is a tree. Is grass. Is water. Is fire. Is a laugh. Is a cry. Is music. Is silence. Is a shadow. Is a cat. Is a dog. Is a bird. Is I. Is you. Is you who are no longer there. Is today’s you who is no longer there. In the living room is a certain everything. Is. Is. Is. A certain thing inside everything. Everything inside everything. A certain thing inside a certain thing. Everything inside a certain thing. In the living room is a certain thing. Is. Is. Is. In the living room is everything. Is. Is. Is.
Moon and Stone
I go to the rainy night sea. Night. Sea. Rain. You pick up a stone underfoot and cast it over the water. To see how deep. The stone sinks slowly slowly for a long long while with a lingering lingering sound.
As we look away the stone swims back up
You write. You write with your finger dipped in water. Few streaks of sentences. Few streaks of truths. Few streaks of lies. Lies harboring truths. Truths harboring chimeras. Chimeras harboring amnesia. Amnesia harboring memory. Memory harboring present. Present harboring future. Future harboring chance. Chance harboring fate. Fate harboring disillusion. Disillusion harboring sobs. Sobs harboring sorrow. Sorrow harboring clouds. Clouds harboring face. Face harboring darkness. Darkness harboring sentences. Back to few streaks of sentences. Back to few streaks of faint sentences.
As we look away the stone sinks back down
Stone and stone are far away. Moon and moon are far away. Water and water are far away. Words and words are far away. Words and water are far away. Water and stone are far away. Stone and moon are far away. Moon and words are far away. Moon and words for moon are far away. Stone and words for stone are far away. Water and words for water are far away. Words and words for words are far away.
As we grow afar the words float back
As we run away the moon flees back
Over the vaporizing face moonwhite dust drifts
like the fine ashes that fluttered and scattered that day
skidding everywhere all at once
visible and invisible
Beneath the moon the stone drifts
Beneath the water the moon stains
Clouds and Dog
The dog that now is gone
The dog that has vanished
One day the dog let out a yawn
Beyond the yawn the clouds were drifting
Yawns instead of words
clouds instead of yawns
the clouds were scattering into dots
they were turning to resemble something ancient
All is too late, I thought
Words came to me, but I couldn’t return them anywhere
With an irreversible look on my face, I faced the wall
I am my dog
My dog is my mirror
I laughed
The dog that once laughed
I lamented
The dog that once lamented
Oh, I was left as myself
Oh, the dog was completed as the dog
As time passed, the wall began to slide open
Oh, belated greetings are drifting away into the clouds
My dog spoke with my mouth
I shrouded myself with one more petal
The dog is now gone, and I let out a yawn again
I jump and turn into the clouds in the midday void
Spiral Sensation
—There Is a Black Sheep
A black sheep beckons a white sheep. A white sheep beckons a black sheep. Children rest inside a red balloon. A black cloth descends from the blue sky. There is a black sheep in my heart. A black sheep. There is one black sheep. The black sheep beckons a black dog. The black dog beckons a white horse. The children are clutching yellow millet. A goldfish is grazing on green waterweed. The face was neither red nor black that day. I made a false vow to underwater air bubbles. That I will no longer return to yesterday. Morning came a little late today. The goldfish died and left us. Oh such beautiful days. Like the cherries that left their tree. Silver paper flutters. I used a pencil with abandon. The eraser, I spared. A black flag sings out a white song. The white song beckons a black bird. Midday flowers were wilting. An airplane was drifting to the left. Rotating things were missing wings. Lost things were swirling. Tails were red, black, and short. There was a somber face. A face. There was a face.
As We Walked We Became Light
Closing my eyes as if to recite a spell
I see people from long ago standing on an off-season beach
A girl and a girl were holding hands
Their backs were turned
Their hands azure, the sun ablaze
The clouds puttered, and the sand scattered
The sea receded as the sea
painfully flooding my eyes
I stood there instead of fleeing
my eyes facing the light of water
The blinding light was always nice
Forgetting poetry was finally fine
Holding hands
Watching vines clawing up the wall
When trees we saw but did not see rise
the street suddenly elongates, the day stretches into myriad days
words come running, hands come reaching
waves came, and waves went
Until we became light
as we walked toward light in invisible light
the mirror broke as a mirror
the waterdrop fell as a waterdrop
something soared beyond
the bird as a bird finally soared anew
from As We Are Others to Ourselves
Lee Jenny
translated from the Korean by Jaewon Che
Listen to the original read by the poet:
These five poems from Lee Jenny’s second poetry collection offer a glimpse into how Lee translates the barely visible, audible, tangible, or noticeable into monosyllabic words—concrete nouns and simple verbs—strung together with a jarring lucidity, only to push us right back out of clarity into an aching awareness of the ever-changing, forever-swinging push and pull of sound and meaning. Her poems remind me of the theory of relativity. As the theory posits, time is but another axis of space-time, and any event in its web can be defined and redefined by gravitational push and pull. Similar actions occur in Lee’s poems: when and where are inseparably linked, and their trajectory in space-time is embedded in what. “Where—and by extension what—are we?” is an unspoken question that resonates throughout her poetry, indirectly expressed in the title of this collection, As We Are Others to Ourselves.
Lee Jenny is a poet who instinctively knows that, like color, words are relative and relational. The same patch of color that looks green next to magenta will look purple when surrounded by a brighter green. See the fifth stanza of “Moon and Stone,” for instance. Wait. Look at the title. Lee places “Stone” near “Moon” to see if they gel or repel. Or spark. Whatever the reaction, they are now connected. The poem becomes a means to measure the distance in between, and weigh the cognitive, linguistic, and emotional haul. Eager readers will notice that many of the sixty poems from this collection bring forth this magical juxtaposition in their titles: “Giraffes Drew,” “There to There,” “Tree’s Tree,” “Flowers and Ashes,” “Car and Ball,” “Apple and Persimmon,” “Sun Waves and Sea Waves Back.”
Now to the fifth stanza of “Moon and Stone”: The phrase “[A and A/B] are far away” repeats twelve times in this twelve-sentence stanza. These permutations create not only an incantatory rhythm but a reverberating web of meaning. “[S]tone,” “moon,” “water,” and “words” are defined by how far each is from itself, their distance from one another, and by the “words for” themselves. Thus their sounds may remain constant, but their meanings fluctuate as they are reiterated, or, as Lee writes, “[a]s [they] grow afar, the words float back.”
Like her recurring motifs (light, water, wind, memory, and even words), Lee’s poems are waves. They ebb and flow, wax and wane. In “Everything in the Living Room,” Lee repeats “[There] is” fifty-nine times. When she chants “In the living room is a hat. Is a pencil. Is warmth. Is a shelf. Is a regret. Is a waver,” is she describing or is she conjuring? Everything comes in and out of existence as her words touch upon it, and the intricate interweaving pulsates as one. Without knowing, the reader is there too. Lee Jenny’s poetry takes you to places. It is a state of elongated enchantment. What more could I want?
Lee Jenny is a poet who instinctively knows that, like color, words are relative and relational. The same patch of color that looks green next to magenta will look purple when surrounded by a brighter green. See the fifth stanza of “Moon and Stone,” for instance. Wait. Look at the title. Lee places “Stone” near “Moon” to see if they gel or repel. Or spark. Whatever the reaction, they are now connected. The poem becomes a means to measure the distance in between, and weigh the cognitive, linguistic, and emotional haul. Eager readers will notice that many of the sixty poems from this collection bring forth this magical juxtaposition in their titles: “Giraffes Drew,” “There to There,” “Tree’s Tree,” “Flowers and Ashes,” “Car and Ball,” “Apple and Persimmon,” “Sun Waves and Sea Waves Back.”
Now to the fifth stanza of “Moon and Stone”: The phrase “[A and A/B] are far away” repeats twelve times in this twelve-sentence stanza. These permutations create not only an incantatory rhythm but a reverberating web of meaning. “[S]tone,” “moon,” “water,” and “words” are defined by how far each is from itself, their distance from one another, and by the “words for” themselves. Thus their sounds may remain constant, but their meanings fluctuate as they are reiterated, or, as Lee writes, “[a]s [they] grow afar, the words float back.”
Like her recurring motifs (light, water, wind, memory, and even words), Lee’s poems are waves. They ebb and flow, wax and wane. In “Everything in the Living Room,” Lee repeats “[There] is” fifty-nine times. When she chants “In the living room is a hat. Is a pencil. Is warmth. Is a shelf. Is a regret. Is a waver,” is she describing or is she conjuring? Everything comes in and out of existence as her words touch upon it, and the intricate interweaving pulsates as one. Without knowing, the reader is there too. Lee Jenny’s poetry takes you to places. It is a state of elongated enchantment. What more could I want?
Lee Jenny is a South Korean poet, a singer-songwriter, and a member of the experimental text collective 루 (Ru). She has published four poetry collections and several anthologies. She has won the Kyunghyang Daily News New Writer’s Award, the Pyunwoon Literary Award, and, most notably, the Kim Hyun Literary Prize. Critics have celebrated Lee’s experimental and futuristic approach to poetry, putting to the test the boundaries of the Korean language and expanding meaning through rhythm. Her most recent collection, 있지도 않은 문장은 아름답고 (There is no sentence, and yet it still is), was published in 2019 as part of Hyundae Moonhak’s Pin Series, a project that brings light to the most noteworthy Korean poets today. Other collections in Korean include 그리하여 흘려 쓴 것들 (And Thus I Scribble to Spill, Moonji, 2019), 왜냐하면 우리는 우리를 모르고 (As We Are Others to Ourselves, Moonji, 2014), and 아마도 아프리카 (Perhaps Apeurika, Changbi, 2010). She lives and works in Geojedo.
Jaewon Che is a writer and translator. They studied physics, painting, and pig brains. They won the New Poet’s Award from Writers’ Village Books for “가장 아름다운 소년 (Most Beautiful Boy)” and eight other poems in 2019. They have translated selected poems by Lee Jenny, Jin Eun-Young, Lee Hyemi, and Park Seo-won, among others. Their writings have been published in Modern Poetry in Translation, Hyperallergic, Siphon, chogwa, and Overlap. They can be reached via email here.
