Poet's words

Part 1: If you look at the hardened shape

Night Scissors / Light / Interference / Longing / Coat Room / Whistle / Prophecy / Bursting / Ebb / Lights Out / Listening Room / Walking in the Carrot Field / The Meaning of Compassion

Part 2 When it rains, you have to get rained on

Stone Hall at Night / Under the Shrub / Glider / My Seed Bolt / Ripsalis Rain / Rabbit Hole / Clematis / Adonis / Thin Leaf Oil / Yulma / The Changing Shape of Birds / People Who Share One Bird / Citrus / High Tide

Part 3 You are my softest part

Main Island / Step / Epicenter / Rabbit Play / Arctic Oscillation / Recorder / If You Ask About Winter's Whereabouts / Oblivion Takes a Walk / The Boy Playing the Drum / Magnifying Glass / Waves and Paths / Conversation at the Station / Gooseberries, Gooseberries Are Ripening / Bringing Mr. Appendix to Life / Lighting Section

Part 4: Welcome the Slow-Coming Morning

Imprint/Sculpture Park/Watercolor/The Beginning of the Wave/Sujin's Memory/It's been a long time since I lost contact with the control tower/Good news/Rounding stone/In the poison/Noctilucent clouds/Semi-dried apricots/Proposal/Blue/Undecided/Tie/Awesome life

Commentary | The Shape of Sadness and the Shape of Love_Lee Jae-won (Literary Critic)

Scissors are a cutting tool.
The scissors split the once one world in two, creating a valley of eternal night and making one person stand on a cliff and hear a voice.
Don't just turn away, I'm here, under your feet.

Even those who can't leave the cliff have scissors.
He cuts the night with night scissors.
The shell of the night is harder than it looks.
To save the night from the night, you must also endure the night.
The pain of losing skin.
But it doesn't break into pieces.
The night scissors slowly walk around the night and arrive at a plate.
Until the time of the living night opens before you.

If a bird falls at your feet for no reason, know that it is sadness sent from me.
I haven't left the cliff yet.
_「Night Scissors」Special

This work, placed in the preface, clearly shows what poet Ahn Hee-yeon is focusing on in this collection of poems.
Even if it is built on a “cliff” in the “valley of eternal night,” the attitude is to move forward slowly “until the time of the living night opens.”
Although it may not have the power to divide the world in half across day and night, it shows the earnest desire to use the scissors in his hands with the will and determination to endure “the pain of losing skin.”
What caught the speaker's eye was a 'stone'.
“Where did this stone roll from?
“I held it and it still felt warm.” At first, I thought, “It’s a poor stone.”
Because there was one.
But then another stone rolled in.
“If there is a story that must be told again and again,” these stones become “earnest stones.”
Gradually, the stone becomes a “heavy stone” and then a “terrible stone”, and the stone that falls down so much that it “collapses with a loud noise” is an “unknown stone” and an “infinite stone”.
At this point, “there must be a reason.”
It is the poet's job to look into the "will of stone" (from "Luminous Body").

To do so, Ahn Hee-yeon’s speaker “burns stones” (“Interference”).
Part 1 of "Walking in the Carrot Field" stands out for its attitude of actively questioning and examining life and the world, putting forth one's whole heart and soul.
“When I look at the hardened appearance/ I can see how he was sad/ and how he endured it” (same poem).
Therefore, the “best person who confronts the details of each day” (“Ebb Tide”) wants to plant “anything harmless” when “everything from here to there is my land.”
“When I close my eyes and open them, something starts to grow” and “I” become the one who grows it.
In that ‘carrot field’, a “long story that is just beginning” will now be born (from “Walking in the Carrot Field”).

In her last poetry collection, “Poet’s Notes,” Ahn Hee-yeon said, “I will never be able to sing anything but songs like this in my life, and now I am not sad about it at all.”
The soliloquy in this collection of poems, “I confessed boldly, but I felt a little sad,” and the existence of “you,” whom I “recognized at once,” are therefore all the more precious.
“When my heart becomes infinitely dark in front of a blank page/ You appear with the shadow of a tree as big as a house hanging behind me/ And listen to my story.”


That's when I knew
Saving one person
It is a matter of saving two people wrapped up in one person - from "The Meaning of Compassion"

Ahn Hee-yeon's narrator, who realized that "our mission" is to think of "the one person who understands our broken hearts from all the hard work" and to "become each other's witnesses," can now "smile" even when making "sad jokes." (The Meaning of Compassion)
Part 2 contains poems with impressive 'plant-speaker' themes.
The relationship between ‘person’ and ‘plant-nonhuman being’ can be summarized as “When I see/ You must have seen it too” (“Self-portrait”).


In Ahn Hee-yeon's new poetry collection, 'gaze', despite its limitations, is presented as an important method that enables communication with existence.
(…) In the places where these poems try to confront, there are not only people, but also beings who have been forgotten because they cannot speak of their own existence.
To face them, we must accept the being before us as one who can see us, that is, as one who has eyes.
When I accept him as my subject, there comes a moment when he also looks at me, a brief moment when the limitations of a one-sided gaze disappear.
At this time, the asymmetrical relationship between humans and non-humans is re-established as equal, and from that point on, ‘existence’ is experienced anew.
In the discovery that what we thought were separate are actually connected, life is experienced again with a sense of 'being together'.
_Lee Jae-won, in the commentary

There is a hanging plant that pours down like a waterfall, like rain, and says, “There are lives where the upside down is reversed / It’s a job to stretch out and get tangled,” and says, “Aren’t there me in you too?” (“Ripsalis Rain”), and there is a plant that is absorbed in “guarding his sleep” and “knows the circuit where sadness works / I call it family” (“Yulma”).
The 'plant-speaker' knows how to wait.
Because I know that “I have come across every single day until I can say that I know a being/ and that coming across means that I can never go back to where I was before.”
Now, “every time a leaf falls,” my ears also start to hurt (“A Leaf”).
The 'plant-speaker' and 'I' exchange their usual positions and communicate, realizing that "I had intended to just watch from afar, but I am experiencing it now."


Part 3, “You Are My Most Sensible Part,” filled with poems of death and loss, is of course heartbreaking.
“The scales that balance the universe / What did they gain by removing you?” (「Epicenter」) I want to ask.
He sometimes blames himself for not knowing at the time that “it was the universe’s final greeting to send off a person” (“Arctic Tremor”), and sometimes begs himself to wake up, “stop trying to forget yourself like that” (“Recorder”).
However, 'I', holding in my hand the "pebble-like words" ("Self-portrait") of the previous two parts, "Don't die, stay alive," I decide to "paint the black details anew // I pile up my broken heart here like a mountain" ("Waves and Paths").
“When I walk, imagining the forest spirit that sent me here/ I remember that I can smoothly overcome any speed bump” (from “Lit Section”).

In the fourth part, 'Welcoming the Slowly Coming Morning', which we encountered in this way, Ahn Hee-yeon's desperate yet strong heart is fully contained.
Psalms that sparkle like teardrops.
In an interview with the editor before publication, he said, “Life is wonderful, full of sparkles and ripples beyond imagination, so please stay alive.
He emphasized, “We all inevitably experience the excess and deficiency of existence, and the aftermath will be very severe. However, this was a time when the desire to awaken the sense of life and the will to live, rather than being buried in that sense of oppression, was stronger than ever.”


I don't know whose heart is inside me
Life wants me to belong to it
I want to hear the story that begins with me _ From "The Beginning of the Wave"

“Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, definitely, finally, in the end……/ I will put such words to sleep” (“Night Glow”) and “even if it is poison that will end once broken/ I will make a pledge to become a step that pushes up the green onion” (“Inside the Poison”).
It would be easy to give up or to become worse, but my determination not to do that, to stay 'in the poison' of life, gives us a humble heart.
Life is full of unknowns, many of which are difficult and harsh.
Moments that shake us up, when we feel like we've almost forgotten all the sweet and good things.
Despite this, Ahn Hee-yeon leads us by the hand towards the light.
Let's go together to save 'us/me-you' and all that is within us.

Mysterious, the woodpecker's beak
Why the unit used to count rice is 'tol'
The word ripples

I don't know what's in the pot.
Just practice changing the new to a mystery and guard the pot.
Becoming a person who never leaves
That's important to me _ from "Amazing Life"

A Mini-Interview with Poet Ahn Hee-yeon

1.
This is a new poetry collection after four years.
To me, this collection of poems reads like a pledge to “go toward the light,” “seek,” “not give up,” and “keep walking.” I’m curious about what thoughts you had while organizing the poems.


Coming down from the summer hill, I was at a loss as to where to go next.
I felt like I had been reborn, having escaped a world I had been immersed in, but I had no idea where to go next.
Still, I walked anyway.
Rather than focusing on the destination, focus on the ‘walk’ itself.
Four years passed like that.
Trying not to become indifferent, I bundled up the things the season left behind, and today is the day.
I feel like I'm standing in the dark holding a bouquet of flowers without any flowers.


Personally, I lost so many people while writing the poems included in this collection.
There were many cases where I gave up on my own life.
So I think it was very desperate for me.
Life is amazing, full of sparkles and ripples beyond imagination, so please stay alive.
We all inevitably experience the excess and deficiency of existence, and the aftermath will be immense. However, this was a time when the desire to awaken the sense of life and the will to live, rather than being immersed in that sense of oppression, was stronger than ever.
To do that, I had to become strong.
I had to build up my grip strength to pull the rope.
How can one person be two people?
Why is saving you saving me?
I held onto these sentences like a talisman.


2.
The title, ‘Walking in the Carrot Field’, is impressive.
I'm curious as to why you chose this title and how you hope it will be read.


I liked the connection with the previous poetry collection, which was that we were walking through a carrot field after passing a summer hill.
I liked the fact that the title opened up space when I read it.
If you ask why carrots, I would like to tell you that if the vegetable of your soul is purslane, you can read it as ‘Walking in the Purslane Field’.
What that means is that what's important isn't the carrot, but the fact that this world has something it's nurtured with love.
I think that when you realize that you have land you may not have even owned, that something is growing there, that blood is flowing through it… that's when the pull of life becomes stronger.


Of course, I had my reasons for wanting to be a carrot.
Looking at a carrot covered in dirt makes me feel sad but also happy.
I want to resemble it because the color is attractive and it is firm and not soft.
How dark it must have been growing up.
How many layers of time did it take to reach my table?
Whenever I feel the cosmic energy of carrots, I feel indescribably moved.
I realize how much of a flow I am in.

3.
Several plants and fruits appear in the poem.
Stones, birds, water and fire are also noticeable.
Please tell us about the beings that move your heart.


All living things are affectionate.
When I look, there are things that look at me.
These are the things that keep watching over me even when I don't try to see them.
For me, trees and stones are especially recognized as such beings.
Wood and stone can't be made in a factory.
There may be similar shapes, but no two shapes are exactly the same.
They can appear dead yet still be alive, speak without words, and make facial expressions without facial features.
I think that's what keeps me imagining.


In particular, I hoped that by arranging the plant poems in a row in the second part of the collection, a large flow would be created. I think that sometimes trees and stones can provide comfort that humans cannot.
They create waves within me.
It makes me keep writing poetry.

4.
Is there a poem in the collection that particularly stands out to you? Could you tell us why?

I would like to pick out the poem “Amazing Life” located at the end of the collection.
It is a poem that I like enough to have considered it as the title of a poetry collection.
The words 'Shin-gi' and 'Shin-bi' that appear in the poem may seem similar at first glance, but if you think about it, they are very different.
When you say something is amazing, you stand far away with your arms crossed, but when you say something is mysterious, you lean in and look inside.
Is life magical, or mysterious? I want us to lean into it.
We have to see what's there.
Because there might be something more amazing hidden than you think.

5.
Please say a few words of greeting to the readers of this poetry collection.

I wrote it, but from now on, the poems are not mine.
Pass the baton.
The reason I keep writing is because I believe in the specificity and truth of your life, coming to meet my poetry on the other side.
If we, each drifting along our own orbits at our own pace, were to overlap at some point, it would all be a matter of poetry.
Look, you and I met in the middle of the city.
What could be more amazing than this?

Poet's words

I take your left arm and feel your pulse like a sham doctor.
I think this sound is the saddest in the world.
This sound can't even be recorded later.
So let's keep walking.
Let's hear the secret of carrots together.
Between what has unfolded and what will unfold, with the heart of handing over a glass of water.

June 2024
Ahn Hee-yeon