I
Advice from the Station 13
Mutter on the Road 14
Traveler 15
Sleet 16
Dead Cloud 17
Common Reading 19
Contempt for Memories 20
Desert in the Water 21
It's raining lightly 23
Jealousy is my strength 24
25 Memorable Passages
The singer keeps his mouth shut 26
The Possessed 28
Black Leaf in the Mouth 29
31 that day

II
Fog 35
Expert 38
White Nights 40
Jochiwon 41
Speak badly 44
45 in college
Old Man 46
Old Book 48
One Blue Evening 50
Hope at 4 PM 53
A Rose-Colored Life 55

III
The wind blows towards you 59
October 60
Dark Window 62 This Winter
Vineyard Cemetery 1 64
Vineyard Cemetery 2 66
Forest Wall 68
Arbor Day 69
71 in front of that house
Elderly 72
Empty House 73
Dusty Blue Paper 74
Night Eye 75
Dangerous Households · 1969 76
Gypsy Poetry Collection 80
Nari Nari Forsythia 83
House of the Wind? Winter Print 1 85
Uncle's Death? Winter Print 4 86
Christmas Tree? Winter Print 3 87
Too big a backrest? Winter Print 7 89

IV
Bottle 93
Woodwork 94
Sagang-ri (沙江里) 96
Abandoned Mining Village 97
Rain 2? Red Moon 99
Wuthering Heights 102
Snow in the City? Winter Print 2 104
Rat Fireworks? Winter Print 5 105
Lamp and Bread? Winter Print 6 106
Paper Moon 107
Sound 1 111
Bone of Sound 113
Our neighborhood pastor 114
Spring Days Are Gone 116
Into my flash
Dog 118
Mom's Worry 119

V
Moonlight 123
Winter, Snow, Trees, Forest 124
Poet 2? Poet of the First Day 126
1 128 in the fall
Scarecrow? Who Guards the Empty Fields? 129
130 in the leaves, snow, and wind
How Dawn Comes 131
A lonely and majestic song 132
388 Terminal 133
Sunset 134
Rain? Narrow Gate 136
Age in the Rain? All sorrows need to be logically explained. 137
We walked through that long winter passage
I walked away 139
141 Like a needle jumping on a record
For Dorothy? Letters to Childhood 1 142
Autumn Grave? My Sister-in-Law is 144

VI
Shell 149
Return home 150
Watercolor 151
Pantomime 152
Hope 153
Father's Photo 154
Pool 156
Flower 158
Operator 159
Poet 1 160
Hey kid, where are you from? 161
Depth of Solitude 162
Promise 163
Winter, Our City 164
166 on the street
One day 168
This loneliness… … 169
A lonely and majestic song 2 170
Ice Light? Winter Print 172
173rd enlisted soldier

Preface (Lee Gwang-ho, literary critic) 177

『Muttering on the Road』(Munhak-kwa-Jiseongsa, 2019) is a complete collection of Ki Hyeong-do's poems, compiled to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death.
This book collects all 97 poems from his first and posthumous poetry collection, 『Black Leaves in the Mouth』(1989), as well as unpublished poems, and has a newly organized table of contents with the theme of ‘Imagination of the Street.’
It is well known that the poet had in mind 'Mumbling on the Road' and 'Advice at the Bus Stop' as the titles of his first poetry collection.
The secret charm of Kihyungdo's poetry, which grows thicker with each passing year, thanks to his imaginative spirit, is precisely why we constantly seek out his poetry and challenge ourselves to discover new possibilities for reading it.


“The long passage of 30 years has enriched the name Gihyeongdo rather than made it forgotten.
Some literature, some names, have a strange power to defy the forces of time that move towards oblivion.
What created that power was the burning vitality within Gihyeongdo City, and the anonymous readers who spent 30 years with the name Gihyeongdo.
Over the past 30 years, new readers have emerged and reread Kihyungdo's poetry.
Rather than being forgotten, Kihyungdo's poetry was constantly reborn.
Contrary to his line, “Memories are strangely interrupted” (from “Contempt for Memory”), Kihyungdo’s memories have never been interrupted.
The fact that a new generation of readers has continued to emerge over the past 30 years is an exceptional case in the history of Korean literature.


We are standing on the street of deformities again.
“Youth stands silently on every street in the evening” (“Jealousy is My Strength”), “Then where on earth will you go next!” (“The Traveler”), “Hope that has been wasting a lifetime on the road” (“Mumbling on the Road”), the very street where one suddenly mutters on the road “I have had my share of experiences” (“Sleet”), “All roads flow, I am already old” (“Advice at the Station”).
As in the sentence “So many distances have carried my heart” (from “The Singer Keeps His Mouth Close”), the poet encounters a certain strangeness and wonder on the street.
On the streets, he dreamed of other possibilities in life, wandering aimlessly and without boundaries.
The distance is a fluid space that neither tells us where to go nor lets us stay, but allows us to arrive at another time.
About the strange moments on the street, “They usually take place at the point where the discontinuities of some flow meet.
A world of anxiety and possibility, where you don't know which way you'll be thrown, jumps in at that moment.
Those 'moments' are dangerous and great at the same time.
“Because it is dangerous, it is judged by the senses, and because it is great, it does not exist.” (Notes on the opening of “A Certain Blue Evening”)
The deformity made the confusion and dizziness of the streets a source of new sensibility.
The distance is a space of 'placelessness' in that it cannot be fixed to a specific place and the identity of that place cannot be known, but placelessness was a paradoxical event of hope.
The street was a space of modern anxiety and a time of infinite potential.

The street of Gihyeongdo is a modern point where the poet's social experience and aesthetic sense are simultaneously involved.
The street awakened the social sensibility of the time, and on the other hand, it gave birth to a new aesthetic face of the individual as a street writer.
“For a while, I wrote poetry on the street, wary of irresponsible metaphors of nature” (Notes on the opening of ‘Black Leaves in the Mouth’), which was the problematic sensibility of Ki Hyeong-do and his generation.
The confession, “The imagination of the streets was pain, and I loved that pain” (same text), sharply reveals part of that poetic sensibility.
We could paraphrase this sentence and say:
'The imagination of the deformed was suffering, but we loved that suffering.' However, loving suffering is not the only way, and it does not require authority.
In this invisible horizon of friendship called Gihyeongdo, no one can monopolize Gihyeongdo.
There are countless ways to read the deformity even without removing the context of the 'street'.
In front of Kihyungdo's poetry, we only share the pain and love, and the secrets of Kihyungdo's poetry become richer as they are passed down through generations.
The experience of deep love does not lead to a knowledge of the identity of the object, but rather to a deeper understanding of the secret and a humbleness before it.
A lasting love keeps you reading and rereading.
It is rather a matter of discovering secret ignorance.
“I hope that through this collection of poems, the secrets of Kihyungdo’s poetry will become even more profound.” - Lee Gwang-ho (literary critic), “From the Preface”