Morgue
Poetry and popular culture
This year’s poetry
Contemporary poetry and the sense of tradition
Avant-garde poetics
Contemporary poetry and psychoanalysis
Contemporary poetry and the ecological imagination
Analysis of the major poetry collections from the second half of the year
Representations of regionalism in contemporary poetry
Where are the younger poets
The status and transformation of poets
Misreadings of my poetry
Talking about “pure” poetry
Poems of mine read by literary critics
Discourse of poets from the younger generation
Analysis of the major poetry collections from the first half of the year
What’s the problem with spiritualist poetry
Poetry’s depoliticization and its problematics
The era of chaos and the poetics of salvation
Where is Korean poetry heading
Cyborg #3
–––Modified data B
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30223today’sdeadintrafficaa
ccidents10injuries107kidnap
pednakedbodyparts3103493
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139560insurancemoneywan
ted304493559203ankleselfa
mputation103921310294031
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vestorsuicidebypoison00141
0333highschoolstudenteleva
tormurderdrama1422046910
30261001510223102northko
reanrefugees9402150northk
oreanorphans2041539204958
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logyenthusiastsinafrica924ma
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hlikemachineryisprecise0110
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Won’t produce tears
Going to the electronics store
Have to upgrade
Emotions chip
Year 2050/Poet Inventory
Cyborg 001: A lyric poetry-advocating character. Powerbroker. Robot
in residence always undertaking the bestseller poetry final inspection
Cyborg 002: Called by the alias “combat cyborg,” does side projects in
all genres. Advanced electronic brain having undergone reconstructive
brain surgery. Hot tempered yet with an excellent eye for the arts.
Usually performs as a racer affiliated with the asteroid Vesta
Cyborg 003: Modified expertise. Radio wave detection, excellent radar
function, records and regenerates large amounts of information. As a
specialist in tuning a poem’s internal structure often conflicts with
cyborg 002. Bisexual, it’s widely known that it has dated many
others in secret
Cyborg 004: Manages a homepage together with cyborg 003 presenting
poetry and all kinds of information about poetry transmitted from
various planets
Cyborg 005: Has the ability to see through the publishing market.
Finishes a poetry collection to coincide with each best seller cycle. Can
be combined with cyborg 001 and can also transform into cyborg 001.
Generally is active at the center of the publishing market every 3 years
Cyborg 006: A female cyborg with the lethal power to hack into the
human soul. But every time she uses this lethal power her lifespan is
cut short by 5 years. Hangs around cyborg 008
Cyborg 007: Directly manages a large poetry factory. Large-scale
production as well as directly managed large-scale retail centers
operated on several planets. Sells not only manufactured goods but
also deals in custom-made items. Recruits various sensory robots and
devises price discrimination strategies with different small-scale
enterprises
Cyborg 008: A tormented cyborg. A subversive, rebellious idealist who
dreams about language. Remains on an off-planet star for more than
half the year engrossed in multi-angled language experiments and only
publishes maniacal, unintelligible poems
Cyborg 009: Apart from its published poetry not much is known about
this cyborg’s arcane existence. It is believed it can freely combine with
and/or transfigure into other cyborgs at will
Cyborg 010: Works as both a poet and literary critic. Even while
frequently publishing articles predicting the end of poetry in numerous
magazines relentlessly puts out stuffy lyric poetry. Wanders around with
other female cyborgs seeking pleasure
(More to be announced later)
from A Thousand Moons Float in the River Yahoo!
Yi Won
translated from the Korean by Kevin Michael Smith
Listen to "Morgue" read in the original Korean by the poet:
As the reader will quickly recognize, Yi Won’s poetry uses simple diction and mostly ordinary, everyday language. Thus, the difficulty in translating her poems arises not from word choice itself but rather from her sometimes unusual or ambiguous combinations of simple words. Additionally, she is sometimes fond of using idiomatic expressions which give subtle texture and historical, geographic specificity to her otherwise mostly abstract poems. For example, in one case I had to ask the author for clarification on the meaning of “smalltimeinvestorsuicide” in the poem “Cyborg #3,” since the original Korean literally reads as “antinvestorsuicide,” the idiom unfamiliar to me but of course drawing an analogy between tiny ants and those who invest only in small sums of money. The “northkoreanorphans” appearing in the same poem was similarly difficult to translate, since the colloquial expression refers to North Korean youths who have been orphaned and are living as vagrants, but may also refer to adults. The term literally refers to a swallow (bird, chaebi) on a flower (kkot)
Yi Won is the author of “When They Ruled the Earth” (1996), “A Thousand Moons Rising Over the River of Yahoo!” (2001), “The World’s Lightest Motorcycle” (2007), “The History of an Impossible Page” (2012), “Let Love be Born” (2017), and “I Am My Affectionate Zebra” (2018). Yi Won is currently a visiting professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She lives in Seoul, South Korea.
Kevin Michael Smith is a scholar and translator of modernist poetry. He earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature at UC Davis in 2019 and currently teaches academic English at Yonsei University’s Wonju Campus in South Korea. His translations have appeared in Modernism/modernity, Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, Asymptote, Jadaliyya, and Hyperallergic.
