Part 1: Can't we all cry at once?

baptism
bruise
Sora's Diary
The Room to Become a Woman
ears and horns
trap
blank
music box
glass dice
Just as sadness is not sadness if you let it be
Island that blinks an eye(?)
Will it be the first time I sneeze under a poplar tree?
Dream bookmark
Colorful
Winter Jenga
Dreams and Hearth

Part 2 Resting my chin between time and shade

Snail Farm 1
Fortune-telling
sunset
evolution
Baptism 1
peach blossom
Snail Farm 2
Blue Order
Weekend masterpiece
Goblin Needle
When God comes to kill us
The Secret of Angles
Myo Myo
The Sounds of Silence
Roseville
Ortolan
Function of the navel
How do I call someone whose face I can't remember?

Part 3: The Boy and the Water Splash

mermaid
If you swallow a spoon while swallowing a grain of rice,
Kang Shin-moo
forgiveness
For those without anus
Can't people breathe underwater like fish?
genesis
Drawer layout
Salt Moon
Baptism 2
Book of Glass
Palm
The Forest Where Mermaids Cry
Snowball
Munjo (文鳥)
The back side of love
ink and wash painting
Oh, that word

Part 4: Summer Carols

Picked flowers
Winter ears
Ghosts of the Tundra 1
Ghosts of the Tundra 2
ask
giant
The Vanishing Night
Oversleeping
Ophiuchus
The Land of Clothes
The end
freezing point
I want to live in a place where cotton blossoms
boy's attitude
Summer Carol
Fukushima

Commentary | Kim Eon
Poet's words

If you are caught doing something wrong, it becomes a mistake,
Just as sadness is not sadness if you let it be

Jeong Hyeon-woo's poetry is filled with 'sadness'.
The true nature of the “unerasable sadness” (“Oh, the Word”) is not clearly revealed, but as seen in the expression “Just as a mistake becomes a mistake when it is discovered, and sadness is no longer sadness when it is discovered” (“Just as sadness is no longer sadness when it is discovered”), we can only feel the existence of sadness that disappears or is denied the moment it is revealed.
The poet who says, “When I was born/Half the world/was filled with cripples blinded by plague” (“Baptism”), even “mourns scenes he has never seen” (“Baptism”).
Likewise, if “having sadness” is “the number of cases for becoming human” (“Glass Dice”), the poet who asks “Can’t all sadness be cried out at once” (“Dream and Hearth”) endures the pain and sadness of life by engraving “unspeakable sadness” in his heart as “sadness that can only be spoken” (Kim Eon, commentary).
Thus, even in the shady landscape of life, which is “just a puddle and a shadow filled with each person’s sorrow” (“Just as sorrow is no longer sorrow when it is discovered”), the warmth of “love and joy” (“Winter Jenga”) that “licks sorrow with a burnt tongue” seeps in.

But “How much sorrow must be broken/For a person to become human” (“Glass Dice”).
The poet, in the midst of an inner sadness that cannot be explained in conventional language, “recalls things that were born wrongly” (“Freezing Point”) and explores a dark, labyrinthine world in search of his origins.
The poet's anguish about his own identity never ends in the midst of questions like, "Two people sleep together/Why can't we have two sexes?" (Baptism 1) and "When a person dies, is he a woman or a man?" (The Room That Becomes a Woman).
The poet seeks to break free from the shackles of existing systems and language and embrace the “color of wanting to live” (“Colorful”) as “me” among the “colors that humans can have.”
It is the poet's immediate reality and the most urgent existential problem.
The poet breaks down the boundary of “time that divides men and women” (“Human-faced Fish”) with “black scissors that cut the light” and sometimes “becomes a thoughtful woman” (“For Things Without Anuses”).

Jeong Hyeon-woo's first poetry collection, "I Learned to Speak from an Angel," is a lament that comforts the wounds of young souls living in a chaotic era "filled with bruises" ("Bruises"), and a confession about the essence and identity of human existence.
The poet concludes his confession with a “sinless prayer” (“Forgiveness”) to “a god I do not believe in” in this collection of poems.
But we will not turn back or stop here.
Reality is as bleak as “the night when the wrongs outweigh the right ones” (“The Room to Become a Woman”), and life, a continuation of suffering, is like “a future without light” (“Baptism”), but because “what is dangerous is beautiful” (“For Things Without Anuses”), the poet will “look into my trapped insides for a long time” (“The Trap”) and sing of sorrow with the voice of a holy angel toward the lowest place in the world.
“We will become one with the circuits of the void, drifting sadly, tangled, without a name, and we will live by burning each other.” (Lee Byeong-ryul, Recommendation)

A Brief Interview with Poet Jeong Hyeon-woo (Questions: Editor)

―I’d like to hear your thoughts on publishing your first poetry collection.

I am happy that I was able to bring into the poem all the people and beings that I could not touch, and I am touched that I will be able to meet them again.

―I understand that you are active in both literature and music.
I'm curious about what your daily routine is like when you write poetry.


I'm in charge of vocals in a team called 'Poet's Instrument Shop'. When I can't write poetry, I live by making music, and when I can't write music, I live by making poetry.
These days, I think the poet's identity is so strong that he has lost his ability to compose.
I'm thinking about leaving the composing to another member of my team. (Laughs)

―What was the most important part or feature you considered while compiling your first poetry collection?

I wanted to speak on behalf of those who are not called out and who are marginalized.
Above all, I had a strong desire to take the side of poverty, and it seems that the emotions and fantasies I felt while going through my impoverished childhood were born into poetry.


―If there is a piece in this collection that you feel particularly attached to, please introduce it and explain why.

The first poem is called "Baptism" and the last poem is called "Fukushima."
Society today is emotionally and physically bare.
I think that the strongest weapon for humans is tears.
Because we are human, not stones or trees, we can feel countless emotions.
I hope you can grieve with all your might when times are tough.
Beyond religious meaning, I hope that this situation will be washed away quickly and that we will overcome it.
More than anything, I hope that a world will come where people feel deeply moved.

-I'm curious about your future plans.

I want to be someone who writes poetry for a long time.
I think I'll work hard on the album that's currently on hold.


Poet's words

Don't die, don't fall, there's nothing
You can't even taste the watermelon you eat in the middle of summer.
We have to choose what kind of mind we have until the moment of death.
It's also sad to have sad eyes at night
It is also a beautiful thing to believe that there is a heaven.
You don't, why do humans cry? Can I lean on your sadness?
I blew my breath on the window of the bus.
I drew your eyes, they keep getting erased, but that kind of sadness is cruel

(…)

When did time begin? Where does space end?
Things that make you kneel between darkness and light
Brilliant sorrow, dark joys… …
If everything I hear and say were to rot away
Just, a sad leaf, dazzling
I'm okay with being blown away by the wind
Just, this kind of trivial feeling, so
This is my last letter
I won't ask you anymore
Neither praying for your sorrow nor comforting you

I haven't become a human yet
So you became human?
Will it snow where you are?
I'm crazy curious
No, you need any questions or anything
Okay, I tried to hold on, with joy like your eyes