Being alive
A hill with blooming daylilies
Before I knew you, I was fine without poetry.
The Autobiography of a Thorn Tree
The oxymoron of longing
A love that doesn't want to be my love
All flowers are little nights
Hope must be held lightly
Even so
A poem for one person
Thistle Flower Butterfly Pattern Box
Song of the White Dogwood
My Tree
I wish you would come without a name
There is something to reflect on in front of the peony.
To my clothes that will outlive me
Together, alone
Laughing while sleeping
Not sick, pain
I guess I was a camel
tinnitus
fireflies
sing
resistance
To my biographer
A landscape with pods of wild chives
The train station I'm talking about is always the train station by the sea.
I picked up my wings, they were mine
Autumnal equinox
From a fixed star to a wandering star
Snail Poet
clap
At the unmanned lighthouse of sorrow
When poetry is not written
There may be no title
Glory of the Eyes
You of the world
What God has hidden
The life of irises
Bird fossils
You say we are two rivers
On the planet of geese
My eyes looking at you
hometown
Birthday prayer
Under the same star
Have you thought about it?
aperture
Maybe it wasn't love
Her response to the scar
Tangerine
Watching over an insect's death
Bird with no name
Song from the Star of the Magpie
Saviors of the World
face
To love
My heart
Poems written on the walls of tourist destinations
Today's Sea
Learning from the moon
You say you know me
Flower Meditation
Dawn, at the border
What saves us
If you don't believe in your own wings
Bird of Rain
Words of Tears
The magnolia tree on the day the person who said he had a connection with me from a previous life passed away
The weather called you
question mark
Himalayan singing bowls
Dandelion Will
Memories of birds
Don't blink
My language
thorn lotus
Saved by a bird
Greetings after the breakup
Ladakh, snow-capped mountains came into view as we crossed the pass.
Living
The spell of happiness
thorn thistle
Love in the Time of Plague
My Boy
tattoo
The Poem of Jajudalgaebi - Draft
When the world leaves you lonely
When I leave this world
To where the evening primroses bloom
Goodbye now
Do that
I'm bad at saying goodbyes

Commentary: Why We Need Three Poems: Lee Moon-jae (Poet)

'I learned poetry after meeting you'
Is there anyone you can talk to?

As the saying goes, 'It's better to write a poem that one person reads a hundred times than a poem that a hundred people read once,' there are poems that touch the heart differently each time you read them.
When you write poetry about feelings you can't express to others, you connect with people who live with feelings they can't express to others.
Living is about moving between question marks and exclamation points, and reading poetry is about awakening a wave in the heart.
Is there anyone to whom you can say, "I discovered poetry after meeting you"? Ryu Si-hwa's poetry possesses a magical power that makes you return to the path of longing time and time again.

I read poetry late into the night.
I think you are the reason
The smallest unit of solitude is not being alone
That there are two
I just realized it now
Compared to the longing after meeting love
It's also said that previous feelings were nothing

There's no place to talk about you other than poetry
In me you become a metaphor
It becomes a sentence that has never been underlined before
It's a sleepless night
Before I knew you
I got along fine without poetry
Before I knew you
I've been doing fine without you
- "Before I knew you, I was fine without poetry"

A poem read by a hundred people once
A poem that one person reads a hundred times

A fascinating new poetry collection that will make you love more and more poems the more you read it.
Poems that appeal to your emotions no matter where you start reading them.
Each poem is vivid, colorful, and full of a sense of longing.
Some of them shake our existence and strike our hearts like lightning.
It is a rare experience to truly feel the power of language through poetry.
Flowers, birds, thorns, and sometimes even fundamental themes like life and death make me think that sentences that have emotion are so beautiful.
It is beautiful even when it questions the trials of existence and farewells in a tone of sadness.

This poetic self-confession, which contains a life that must be lived in the flesh, a life that cannot avoid death, a life that is both painful and full of wonder, resonates.
It's as if the poet himself comes up to the reader and reads the poem.
It's also fun to find yourself stepping out loud to the rhythm.
Bringing a good book of poetry into one's life is like blooming a flower of tranquility on the edge of anxiety and despair.
Ninety-three pure poems depicting love and loneliness, hope and loss, and the wonders of time and fate.

A fish caught on land
Throw your whole body
Like hitting the floor
So despair filled my whole body
Have you ever hit rock bottom?
A bird caught in a net
So that the beak breaks
Like tearing a mesh
Such sadness of a being
Have you ever torn a scale?
Being alive means
That's what I'm betting my whole life on.
Even if I fail, I throw my whole body into it
It's a failure
Without time to turn back
It's a terrifyingly urgent matter.
- Specializing in "Being Alive"

A delicate and insightful poem
Poet Ryu Si-hwa's new poetry collection, which has moved countless readers

The characteristic of Ryu Si-hwa's poetry is his ability to express the various emotions deep within human beings through poetry.
Poet Lee Moon-jae, who wrote the commentary for the poetry collection, said, “I must confess that I was transfixed by the sentence, ‘Before I knew you, I was fine without poetry.’
It felt like I was shocked by high voltage electricity.
“For a while, no other poem caught my eye,” he says.
In addition, “at this time, ‘you’ could be a lover, a friend, an absolute being, or a sudden illness or misfortune.
“Whoever and whatever he is, we have an ‘event-like you’ who brings about a decisive change in our daily lives,” he explains.

There are days in life when you get close to your in-laws.
There are times when I am moved and sympathize with the resonance of the words, even though I cannot remember the poet's name or the title of the poem.
In that way, our own 'you' brings us back to poetry.
As the poem goes, 'You are the door that leaves yourself/ and the door that returns to yourself', we leave ourselves and then return to ourselves.
There are often poetry collections written or translated by poet Ryu Si-hwa placed next to it.
Each poetry collection he publishes adds depth and offers new insights.
The poet realizes that he is writing now what he could not have written at any other time in his life.
He suddenly speaks to the reader.
“Now I have to know/ Do I really love this life/ What it is that never leaves my heart/ And if I can endure loneliness for it.”
He is one of the few poets with a unique presence that makes you want to read his new poetry collection every time it is published.

Why was the bird flapping its wings inside the stone?

The feathers attached to the wing bones are all falling off.
Desperately
Where were you flying towards?

Still with his head up

beautiful
I'm so skin-deep that my bones are clinging to me
With all my being
I've never flapped my wings
They must empty their insides to fly
In a desperate struggle
I've never broken it again

I'm just trapped in a stone
I only flew in my imagination

Flapping its wings for tens of thousands of years
Finally split the stone in half
Out of the world
bird
- Specializing in "Bird Fossils"

Not a thorn in yourself
A person with poetry

I like people who have poetry in them, not thorns, or even thorns but poetry in them.
It's good to be stabbed at that time.
At that moment, emotions that you didn't even know were inside you come back to life.
The thorns of sorrow and loss are proof that you loved someone and loved life.

The rose blooms amidst so many thorns
I have never pricked my flower with my thorns.

The tangerine tree opens amidst so many thorns
I have never stabbed my heart with my own thorns.

Look at the thorn tree as if you were looking at me
Were you trying to stab the world or were you trying to stab me?

It hurts when I get close and it hurts when I come close
Why did I grow thorns?
- Full text of "Autobiography of a Thorn Tree"

Once in a lifetime,
A poet who makes you want to write poetry

Ryu Si-hwa is a poet who makes you want to write poetry at least once in your life.
His long legs and gait give the impression that he is climbing the hill of life, even though the road is flat.
As poet and novelist Charles Bukowski said, poetry isn't written by just anyone, but it's also not read by just anyone.
The joy of reading poetry is finding a poem that resonates with your emotions.
It has been said that poetry reaches out to the speechless human soul.
Having published 『I Miss You Even When You Are By My Side』, 『The Love of a One-Eyed Fish』, 『My Wounds Are Stones, Your Wounds Are Flowers』, and 『If You Sway in the Spring Breeze, You Are a Flower』, he captures the sense of life in words as if fixing light on photographic paper.
In this way, Korean, which was an ordinary everyday language, is transformed into a special poetic language.
Just as the first sentence is written by the poet, but the subsequent sentences are written by the reader with their hearts, poetry has a long conversation between the writer and the reader.
When you read it out loud, the poem flies into the sky.
Come to think of it, a windy day was good for reading poetry.

Love that doesn't want to be my love
A heart that doesn't want to be my heart
All I have is a broken note
A song that doesn't want to be my song
It was fire, then ice
My life that doesn't want to be my life
Half love, half hate
It was positive, then negative
My dream that refuses to become my dream
Doesn't want to be mine
My everything
My unfamiliar face that doesn't want to be my face
My clumsy love who doesn't want to be my love
- Full text of "The Love That Doesn't Want to Be My Love"