SELECTED WORKS

Published by Wave Books

www.wavepoetry.com
Translation copyright © 2020 by Jack Jung,
Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi, and Joyelle McSweeney
All rights reserved
Wave Books titles are distributed to the trade by
Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
Phone: 800-283-3572 / SAN 631-760X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sang, Yi, 1910–1937, author. | Choi, Don Mee, editor, translator. |
Jung, Jack (Jack Saebyok), translator. | Nakayasu, Sawako, 1975–
translator. | McSweeney, Joyelle, 1976– translator.
Title: Yi Sang : selected works / edited by Don Mee Choi ; translated by
Jack Jung, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi, and Joyelle McSweeney.
Description: First edition. | Seattle : Wave Books, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020015634 | ISBN 9781950268085 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Sang, Yi, 1910–1937—Translations into English.
Classification: LCC PL991.9.S3 A2 2020 | DDC 895.73/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015634
Designed by Crisis
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Yi Sang: Selected Works is published under the support
of Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).
Poem No. 1
 CROW’S EYE VIEW
POEM NO. 1

13 children speed toward the way.

(For the road a blocked alley is appropriate.)

The 1st child says it is scary.

The 2nd child says it is scary.
The 3rd child says it is scary.
The 4th child says it is scary.
The 5th child says it is scary.
The 6th child says it is scary.
The 7th child says it is scary.
The 8th child says it is scary.
The 9th child says it is scary.
The 10th child says it is scary.

The 11th child says it is scary.

The 12th child says it is scary.
The 13th child says it is scary.

Among 13 children there are scary children and scared children and they are all
they are. (It is better that there is no other excuse)

Of those it is fine to say that 1 child is scary.

Of those it is fine to say that 2 children are scary.

5
 Of those it is fine to say that 2 children are scared.
Of those it is fine to say that 1 child is scared.

(For the road an opened one is appropriate.)

It does not matter if 13 children do not speed toward the way.

24 July 1934

6
* WORDS * FOR * WHITE * FLOWER *

1
My face becomes a strip of skin before your face in moonlight
my words of praise for you are left unsaid but like a sigh they
tickle open a sliding paper door and creep into your hair smelling
like camellia fields and transplant seedlings of my sorrow

2
Wandering in a muddy field your high heels made holes
it rained and the holes filled with water and your lies and jokes
deepened my sorrow which I had prepared as a cup
of wine and a song for heaven which was ruined by your steps

3
When the moonlight sits on the straw mat on my back my blood
shaped like peppers trickles out from my shadow and my body’s water
startled by moonlight turns into dewdrops in my arteries my raggedy
heart swallows bricks and you peer into it and call it a fish bowl

September 1934

The original Korean title is So Yŏng Wi Je. This characters for the name are 素 (So) and 榮 (Yŏng).
translates to “Title (or Words) for So Yŏng.” The former character can mean “the first,”
This particular name is not mentioned in any “origin,” “foundational,” “white,” and the latter
of Yi Sang’s other writings. Literary Chinese can mean “glory,” “honor,” “flower.”

31
  MOVEMENT

I climb up above the first floor to the second floor to the third floor to the rooftop
garden and look to the south and there is nothing there and look to the north and
there is nothing there and so I go down from the rooftop garden to the third floor
to the second floor to the first floor and the sun that rose in the east has set in the
west rose from the east and set in the west and rose from the east and set in the
west and rose from the east and it is in the middle of the sky and I take out my
watch and look and see that it has stopped although it is the correct time but the
watch is younger than I am or rather I am older than the watch is and it can’t be
helped that that is what they will think of me because that is probably the case
and so I threw away the watch.

1931, 8, 11

102
 DIAGNOSIS 0:1

Problem concerning the condition of a certain patient.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 •
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 • 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 • 9 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 • 8 9 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 • 7 8 9 0
1 2 3 4 5 • 6 7 8 9 0
1 2 3 4 • 5 6 7 8 9 0
1 2 3 • 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
1 2 • 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
1 • 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
• 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
Diagnosis 0 : 1
2 6 • 1 0 • 1 9 3 1

End of Document Attending Physician: Yi Sang

117
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W AV E   B O O K S

YI SANG SELECTED WORKS

Formally audacious and remarkably compelling,

Y I S A N G ’s works were uniquely situated amid

the literary experiments of world literature in

the early twentieth century and the political

upheaval of 1930s Japanese occupied Korea.

As Joyelle McSweeney has remarked, his poetry

“seemed to deny the prerogatives of the mundane

SELECTED WORKS
world while being saturated with the alienation

and horror of the Occupation.” Today, Yi Sang’s

work endures as one of the great revolutionary

legacies of modern Korean literature.

W AV E   B O O K S
268085

I S B N 9 78 - 1 - 9 5 0 2 6 8 - 0 8 - 5
9 781950

$25.00