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PROFILEKim So Yeon

Kim So Yeon has published four poetry collections, two essay collections, one children’s book, and one picture book. She has received the Nojak Literary Award and the Hyundae Literary Award for poetry. Her poems have appeared in Mānoa.

INTERVIEW

Poet Meets Poet: Kim So Yeon and Dan Disney Vol.24 Summer 2014

Poet Kim So Yeon (Korea) and Dan Disney (Australia), participants of the 2014 Seoul International Writer’s Festival (SIWF), ask questions about each other’s poems. Kim So Yeon was born in 1967 in Gyeongju. She was educated at the Catholic University of Korea (BA, MA, Korean Literature). In 1993, she published her first poem "We Praise" in the quarterly Hyundae Poetry and Thought . She has published the poetry collections Pushed to the Limit, The Exhaustion of Stars Pulls the Night, Bones Called Tears, A Mathematician's Morning, and the essay collections Heart Dictionary, The World of Siot. She is the recipient of the Nojak Literary Award (2010) and the Hyundae Literary Award (2011). Dan Disney Alongside poems, Dan Disney’s great love is wandering, which often leads to places of sublime strangeness—the docks of Casablanca, where he felt like a morsel in a lair; drinking ‘til sunrise with the king of a wind-bitten, northwestern Irish island; collectively seasick with 300 Russian pilgrims on their way across the White Sea. He was arrested in Prague when it was the capital of Czechoslovakia, and has been interrogated by border guards in Turkiye, Belarus, and Laos. He has stood at the foot of Immanuel Kant’s statue and watched an undercover drug bust, and sat on the doorstep of Martin Heidegger’s Black Forest hütte in the rain. Disney grew up in the mountains in Australia; he has worked in paddocks, warehouses, and psychiatric institutions. Currently, he teaches 20th century poetry at Sogang University. Dan Disney: What happened in these places to precipitate this poem? Kim So Yeon: I was in Bangkok as a tourist when I saw the news about the revolution in Tunisia on TV. The name of the revolution, “Jasmine Revolution,” inspired me to write this poem. When I was traveling in Okinawa, I picked up a hermit crab that was carrying a jasmine leaf like a backpack. I brought it back to the hotel with me, thinking it was just an empty shell, and played with it for a while. When I woke up the next morning, the conch shell had disappeared. I searched for it and found it on the edge of the terrace. There was a live hermit crab hiding inside it. I think it tried to make a run for it, and in the process lost a leg I found lying on another part of the terrace. I felt guilty, so I ran back to the beach with the hermit crab and set it free. The word “jasmine” reminded me of the incident. Because of that I was in Bangkok, but also in Okinawa, and formed a link with the developments in Tunisia. Dan: How do you typify what are trying to do with a poem? Are you trying to find the sublime in the mundane? The universal in the particular? Kim: I like to look for the sublime in the mundane, and return to the fact that the sublime is nothing extraordinary but common and down-to-earth instead. U hope to reinterpret the mundane as sublime, and transform the sublime back to the mundane.. Kim: I enjoyed this poem. It seemed like a bird’s-eye view of a structure with a courtyard. Perhaps a historic site, maybe a temple, and I imagined a sculpture of a deity placed in the center. If you would humor my imagination, which temple in which city and country would you say this place was, and why? Dan: Wonderful—I had no idea someone might read this as a situated text, and a temple no less! In his Critique of Judgment, Kant names the following inscription above the temple of Isis (Mother Nature) as the most sublime thought ever expressed: “I am all that is, that was, and that will be, and no mortal has lifted my veil” (§49, footnote 51). What is that sentence if not a humanly-constructed cry across the meaningless, primordial bounds of our world-as-dwelling? Someone from antiquity has been a clever ventriloquist in mouthing the words of Isis, to remind us how we perform ourselves using particular modes of consciousness, contained by language while the world-as-dwelling endures and simply exists outside every meaning-making system we’ll construct. We build these architectures to the gods as spaces in which to perform our hopefulness that they’ll grant us meaning ... what we cannot attain, though, is an extra-linguistic or revelatory, authentically pan-systemic view of everything. Simply, there is nature—ultimately unknowable and unattainable—and us. I have been to two temples dedicated to Isis: firstly in Pompeii (Italy), and then in Ephesus (Turkiye). The former is next door to an ancient precinct of bordellos, the latter not much more than a frog swamp. I love the fact that there were communities, once upon a time and (comparatively) not so long ago, that used these places to formally worship nature; and I love that inscription, which reminds me how it is so often human nature to fall (interesting that we use that verb) into the worship of something or other. Kim: I focused on two terms that represent crowds of people, “folk” and “tourists.” What would you say is the point of divergence between these two kinds of crowds? Dan: In this text there are “tourists,” “folk,” and “customers”: I was brought up by a religious mother, and she participated in an offshoot of the Christian church that believed, among other things, that miracles were being performed by the cult’s two charismatic leaders, who were regarded not only as teachers but unimpeachable saints. It was a strange environment, growing up in a household that understood as fact the fantastic logic of wish-fulfillment and magical thinking. One of the leaders of the sect died, and the other was found a little later to be engaging in ritualized, group masturbation with young male members of his congregation; for whatever reasons I was never invited to those particular sessions! Suffice to say, though, scandal ensued and the group quickly imploded in a maelstrom of accusation and counter-accusation, etc. My feeling is that even ideas are commodities, fetishized and peddled amid particular communities ... in this sense we are all tourists, collectively “folk,” acquiring our ideas around meaningfulness. We have to exercise caution around what we choose to regard as truthful, though: believe anything, but not everything. Rather than differentiate between “folk” and “tourists,” I invoke the word “folk” intentionally in this poem, suffused as it is with associations of a particular ideology being delivered en masse, not so long ago by a particular charismatic leader (i.e. a Führer). There is no direct commentary or critique of Fascism here, but more an associative linguistic resonance with the idea of how ideas can travel (sometimes quickly, persuasively, and indeed dangerously).

FICTION

Dictionary of the Mind Vol.34 Winter 2016

Loneliness The word “lonely” is not an adjective. It is an action verb that moves energetically. People seek the words “I’m lonely” when they can no longer bear how empty they feel, and then release the words. Already within loneliness is a stirring energy unable to cope with itself. That energy transforms the state of loneliness into an action verb. Melancholy Compared to the word loneliness, “melancholy” reacts more to the environment outside the self than to the inner self. More precisely, it is a reaction to the relationship between the mind and the environment outside the self. If loneliness gazes at its surroundings, melancholy investigates those surroundings. After investigating what surrounds the heart, the drop in the heart’s temperature as it absorbs the environment’s own low temperature—that is melancholy. Weariness Life can continue onward from the edges of loneliness and melancholy, but not from weariness. Being consumed by solitude while gazing up lazily at yourself being consumed, without recourse: this is weariness. Because it doesn’t diagnose the problem or try to act, weariness continues to grow meekly. The best that weariness can manage is to gaze at the ceiling, and one by one, follow the repeating pattern of the wallpaper. It doesn’t even possess the feeling of pain that attends loneliness and melancholy. Because weariness treats agonizing situations as if they weren’t agonizing, it is a little more dangerous. One can recover from loneliness without medication (more accurately, one might not recover but symptoms will disappear without medication) but when weary, one must change into the garment of loneliness for any sign of recovery. Boredom This is the most naïve form of loneliness. When children feel lonely, melancholy, weary, empty, or hollow, they think they are bored. If a child realizes what loneliness is and expresses this loneliness, she is no longer a child. Just as people seek food when they feel peckish, they look for something to do when they are bored. Whether they listen to music, go on a walk, or meet a friend, they find something. Because of boredom’s resolve to be occupied, it is already approaching and gesturing toward its object. Some things that approach when boredom gestures them over include creativity and invention. Tedium Tedium exists between boredom and loneliness. This isn’t to say that boredom progresses easily to tedium, and tedium to loneliness, but that while boredom gestures outwards, tedium hasn’t reached the stage of gesturing just yet. The inability of loneliness to endure itself possesses a dynamic energy, but the passive state of tedium lacks all energy. Tedium makes no effort because it has long forgotten how to approach and make that gesture, and because so far no other form of energy (such as the dynamic energy of loneliness) has replaced that forgotten knowledge. Therefore tedium continues murmuring and ruminating with its empty mouth. Emptiness Emptiness resembles a sense of loss. The state of something that once was. Or the desire for something that doesn’t exist. The only thing left hanging from emptiness is an arm sagging after letting go, and a hand that remembers only how it had once grabbed onto that arm. Hollowness If emptiness is a hand that remembers the feeling of once holding onto something, hollowness is the hand that struggles to hold on. Further, it is regret gazing vacantly at that hand. All the countless whirling hands, and their energy, hover like halos behind hollowness because their retreating effort, like a low tide sucking back a wave, leaves an impression. Those hands that strained to grip something are stained with hollowness. Whether it was in vain, or something you caught wasn’t what you had wanted, or though you had seized a desired object, it looked meager in your unclenched fist, or even if what you grabbed was what you had wanted, hollowness rests in all these hands. Despite the mind’s whirling hand, and all that the hand attempts, the feeling of hollowness lies in ambush. For that reason, hollowness is far more absolute than emptiness, and philosophically achieves a far more complete state of lack. Desolation The most concentrated form of loneliness. Desolation is not relative but unconditional. If emptiness is the hand that lost hold of what it was grasping, if hollowness is the mind gazing at the futile efforts of the whirling hand, then desolation is the body that has cut off its hand. Each moment, each object, surrounds it at all times like prison walls. It doesn’t even draw itself a narrow radius, but one from a distance, a vast dreary distance. Though its temperature is as chilly as death, desolation continues knitting with each minute to achieve its temperature. With each and every step, and each inhale and exhale of breath. In this way it continues. Like Sleeping Beauty’s finger, the hand is pricked and swells up with blood. Still it remains unaware of its pain and suffering; it is enacting the exalted ritual of knitting together the ruins of time and space. Lacking Lacking exists at the opposite pole of emptiness. Hollowness and lacking both conclude with “not being full,” but their course is different. If hollowness is when all that is meaningful slips like sand through a clenched fist, to lack is the meaningful escaping through a hole in a worn coat pocket without our knowledge. Hunger A state of desiring something different. In the end “lacking” isn’t able to digest anything and becomes ill, but “hunger” digests everything all too well. Like a jar that has lost its base. Faced with a morsel tossed in front of it, hunger nods and says, This is exactly it!, then swallows and digests it too quickly, or after eating, hunger says, No, this wasn’t it, and sadly shakes its head. So hunger asks for more. Lack doesn’t devour our lacking selves, but hunger readily devours our hungry selves. A robust digestive capacity, a neverending meal. “Lack” can escape for a moment just by chewing on a piece of gum, but hunger remains unsatiated even while chewing steak. Hunger is the heart’s energy reaching a negative surplus, and the realization that it will never be full. In that sense, hunger is the most conclusive. Peace Genuine moments of peace are brief. A sense of peace is the eye of a cyclone, the safety zone. A heavily armed cyclone surrounds this peace. This space is just large enough for the mind to squat. Of the states freest from tension, the time when you feel at peace is the purest; but for me to feel at peace, the universe surrounding me uses up a colossal amount of energy. Since this sense of peace stays alert in order to maintain its state, it soon exhausts itself. Therefore, peace shatters at the slightest disturbance. Then evaporates. Continuity cannot exist for peace. For soon after, peace degenerates into indolence or transforms into melancholy. Just as still water goes stale, peace also stagnates. A sense of peace doesn’t break up loneliness or make it visible, and arrives as you attentively care for loneliness, but it is less honest than dynamic loneliness, and like a frigid corpse, is merely a brief respite before decomposition. pp. 91-106 Translated by Krys Lee

REVIEWS

[JAPANESE] One-letter Dictionary: The Emotional Lessons of Poetry Vol. 63 Spring 2024

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