Poet's words

The opposite of a wall is a beach.
Red spider web/ Lips speak/ Since that day/ From the attic/ Pieces/ Tear/ Sew/ The opposite of a wall/ Flow/ The community of compost/ The giant bread/ The world of leaven/ The long, narrow room

Part 2 Stains that Remove Stains
Like ghosts/ Passing by/ Turin's horse/ If you're not hungry/ Pick up/ Heo Sam-gwan's blood seller/ Standing on the line/ Asking/ Lee Deok-gu's mountain village/ People who died too late/ As if no voice could be heard/ Bloody/ That rock someday

Part 3: Only Fear Can Teach Us
Some Easter/ Things that disappear/ The dormitory/ Birds of the plesiosaurus/ Only in the bowels of a bear/ The Arctic pine/ A glacial funeral/ How far away did the rose come/ Cows/ Courtesy to the cicada/ Black leaves/ If those fallen leaves do not return/ Places of refuge

To stop a running locomotive, Part 4
Possibility/ To stop a running locomotive/ Cold, round light/ Hedgehog and fox/ A rooster/ Change faces/ Towards an apple/ When I was holding that pebble in my hand/ Thoughts of fertility in Baekun/ Their garden/ The point of parting/ The journey is over/ Crossing

Commentary | Possibilists, the Poetics of the Impossible Future
Choi Jin-seok (literary critic)

“I try to be a possibilist.
“I try to believe in the possibility of the impossible.”

Despite the lips that are caught up in the harsh reality,
A poem that calls forth the dawn from the hazy fog

Bacteria and viruses
Finally became the most feared god

Because it is invisible
Because of the power that knocks people down wherever it passes by.
Because it shows that humans are like chaff blown by the wind.

There is no evidence that bacteria and viruses have minds.
This oldest and most intelligent being
I once discovered the secret to immortality.

To gain something, you have to give up something.
What we gave up was independence,
Instead, it became possible to inhabit any living thing.
It has become omnipresent in the world
That's how the history of the billions of people began.
_From "A Certain Easter"

As the 2020s began, what came to us were “bacteria and viruses.”
In the face of the pandemic that spread across the web of relationships created by civilization, mocking human arrogance, people were nothing more than “chaff blown by the wind.”
Faced with disasters that “spread so defenselessly” and seem to repeat without end, what we keenly felt was that “humans are not separate from non-humans, and that we ultimately live in a universe that is connected without exception” (critic Jinseok Choi, commentary).
If so, the beings we must look to in order to escape despair and look forward to tomorrow are the 'non-humans'.
In poetry, those who are forgotten and hidden from the visible world finally regain their existence.

People don't see us

I only see the broom
I only see the mop
I only see the bucket

It's becoming more and more transparent
Because they don't see us as people
_From "Like Ghosts"

In this collection of poems, Na Hee-deok suggests that readers actively feel discomfort and discomfort.
Living unaware of the omnipresent alienation and absurdity might be peaceful, but is human life truly that way? Since no one exists in isolation, each person's well-being depends on the well-being of living with others.
However, people only see them for a very short time, “barely” after the beings who have been erased like “ghosts” “leave behind a will and disappear.”
So, for ghosts to truly exist, they need sentences that evoke and linger their presence, and they need language that allows them to be themselves.
The poet appeals that the possible role and meaning of poetry is to bring to light the beings we have forgotten.
In parts 2 and 3 of the collection, specific ghosts are named.
The speaker, who speaks of “the fact that there are so many long-term prisoners imprisoned in this land for over 30 years” (“Line on Line”), recalls Gwangju as “an endless field of death” and “an endless field of unanswerable questions” (“Asking”), and hears “the cries of those who have lost their kin” and “the cries of those who beg for milk” (“Lee Deok-gu’s Birth Story”) of April 3, stands for a long time “among those who died too late / among those who forgot too soon” (“People Who Died Too Late”) in a place where the traces of the Yongsan Tragedy have completely disappeared.
Among the people who live as if “no voice is heard” (“As if no voice is heard”) of the Sewol ferry disaster.
Some seek to erase the homeless “for the most certain visual quarantine” (“The Disappearing”).
We, who have gradually “come from the vanishing iceberg” (“Glacier Funeral”), following the “carbon footprint” (“How Far Have Roses Came”), are not aware that we are next.
The poet, facing refugees in Afghanistan, asks, “Where should those who have lost even their place of refuge go?” (“Places of Refuge”).
Despite this total loss of direction, at the very end of the negation, the poet discovers the will to return to our origins and begin again.

The well has dried up
On days when we run out of firewood and oil

What should I do?

Leaving like a rag in the wind
But I can't find the exit and I come back again
Closing the door to a world that is getting worse
Embracing the darkness of the sixth day

Staring into the darkness until the end

Holding a raw potato
Holding a raw potato
_From "The Turin Horse"

“How can poetry navigate this turbulent and exciting era?” the poet asks in the eulogy.
Na Hee-deok's poetry denounces the barren land and harsh reality of the world we live in.
So that the loss and absence we face become more pronounced.
But those who speak of despair are also those who cannot give up optimism.
His poetry is a determination that hints at possibility, and a willingness to push oneself toward the approaching darkness, seeking the next.
Despite the seemingly impenetrable view, the end of the dead end holds the possibility of a future.
“To be someone who says something is still possible/ Is it possible to rely on some darkness?” (“The Possibilityist”).
Na Hee-deok goes into the darkness where the possibility seems the most unlikely and draws light from it.
Perhaps this is a self-evident truth.
Because the person who goes all the way once will be able to dig up the next one.
Because for those who are less negative, what remains is only negative, not positive.
Only those who are deeply skeptical can find a sliver of hope.
“No possibility will be possible unless we accept the impossibility, the abyss of disconnection.
It is not that there is a lack because there is a fullness, but rather that there is a lack because there is a fullness, so impossibility is a condition of possibility, not the other way around.
So let's be possibilists.
“Let us once again draw the future of the impossible beginning.” (Critic Choi Jin-seok, commentary)

nevertheless,

I try to be a possibilist
I try to believe in the possibility of the impossible.

It doesn't have to be a big light
Blinking like a firefly
About the light and darkness we cannot reach
About that discrepancy
I'm trying to write with drying ink.
_From "The Possibilityist"


■ Poet's Note

A certain blood, hunger, and coldness surround life.
It came from a kind of nakedness.

blood.
sweat.
teardrop.

These three bodily fluids are constantly flowing through humans.

As your heart desires
If you follow the flow of blood, sweat and tears
I was with souls who felt pain, hunger, and cold.

Poetry is forever on the side of such beings.

December 2021
Na Hee-deok