Prologue: When you approach with a candle

1.
Words like the only match left in a matchbox
antagonism
scale
Accumulated temperature
playing music
Cuttings
Lape
mold
Buzzer Beater
Brightness
Jannabi Girls' High School
muck
film
Bligessen

2.
Words like a face made alone
anvil
Yuru
load-bearing wall
lure
Black gun
Coming and coming
Thorn hand
Vineyard
Acquisition
Home quality
seongmangseon
Haunting
Foil
Add-on
Tangzhong
Puppet

3.
My Little Horses' Playground
pigment
Takseong
Lightning strike
communism
Milkomeda
Tomb
Farming
Baseline
neon
Boolean
Bread
Seed bolt
buck
Fairy Circle
weights and measures
End

“Look at these words full of incontinence.
“Something is about to be born.”
An endless game of dominoes, sliding from word to word

An Hee-yeon usually introduces herself as 'a poet who writes poetry,' but in this book, she refers to herself as 'a word-lifer.'
He turns on the TV and cooks, walks down the street and looks at signs, meets the laundry man who comes to collect his laundry, and suddenly stops in his tracks because of words that color his surroundings.
And the words are 'farming' (the act of collecting items to increase a character's abilities in a game).
“Even though carrying a bundle full of holes and dropping things is a daily occurrence, I hope that the contact area between my soul and the world will gradually expand” (p. 205), and I pick up scattered words.
In the weather section of the news, I came across the term "accumulated temperature," which refers to the amount of heat required for crop growth, and I thought about the meaning of "saving temperature."
“If all beings are flowers, how much time will it take for me to bloom?” (p.27) The history of friendship built through memories of ‘absence’ with friends without fathers or mothers is also connected to the architectural term ‘resistance wall.’
“It looks like someone is standing with their arms raised to support their sorrow, like a load-bearing wall, the last bastion that cannot be torn down no matter what happens.
He defines a friend as “two parallel pillars” (p.101).
Even in the part where the relationship between myself and others is reflected in the concepts of ‘brightness’ and ‘illuminance,’ we can see Ahn Hee-yeon’s characteristically clear and thoughtful perspective.
After distinguishing between illuminance, which refers to the amount of light directly reaching a specific area, and luminance, which measures how much of that light is reflected and reaches our eyes, we gain insight into how people relate to each other in terms of 'luminance'.
“I don’t love you because I’m here.
“Because you were there first, I can be captured in your eyes like this.” (p.62) Just as you see me through yourself, Ahn Hee-yeon sees ‘life’ through ‘words’.
The domino game of sliding from word to word continues, drawing colorful patterns in everyday life.



Art can be achieved through fidelity to life alone.
In my little horse's playground

An Hee-yeon, who lives in the "House of Words," is a person who is too busy worrying about what to eat for dinner tonight before she becomes a "literary person."
A bunch of green onions costs 7,000 won. I mutter that this is the worst possible time, and when I hear that sewing a button costs 6,000 won, I carry my heavy winter jacket back home from the dry cleaner.
He has a knack for breaking things just by touching them, and when a salesperson asks him what specifications he needs for a laptop, he replies that he needs Korean language support and internet access.
He shows the poet's day, a day of daily struggles in life, with candid sincerity.
After learning the baking term 'Tangzhong', I realized that bread made using the Tangzhong method resembled the life I wanted to live. It was chewy and moist, just like the texture of Tangzhong bread.


“It is said that bread made using the Tangzhong technique has a particularly excellent texture, tears smoothly, and slowly returns to its original shape when pressed with a finger.
These sentences captured the image of the life I wanted.
“A life that is flexible enough to tear gently even when torn, and has sufficient resilience.”_pp. 161-162

Among the people cheering that it was going to snow and running outside with their hats and gloves, the memories of nights when the car headlights seemed to scold us as if they were all eyes of reproach, locking the windows and drawing the curtains, touch the sadness of 'ordinary us' who each carry their own losses and regrets, and offer a quiet comfort.
At the same time, these 'private' stories themselves demonstrate the author's philosophy that "without drama or myth, we can reach the world of art with just a healthy fidelity to life" (p. 140).
There are only words like 'play' that comfort oneself from time to time in a healthy faithfulness.
Some words were slides with a steep slope, and some were seesaws that could not be ridden alone.
Readers who look into “The House of Words” will naturally realize that there is poetry and literature in the sand of that playground.
It is also open to everyone, without any threshold.



A life of writing, teaching, and pledging
Towards opening the door to all the words that exist in the world

The author, who won first place in the poetry category in the 2018 Yes24 online bookstore poll for "Young Writers Who Will Be the Future of Korean Literature," was appointed as a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the Korea National University of Arts in 2020, where he is nurturing cultural artists with contemporary concerns and sensibilities.
In the first class of the new semester, he gives three words instead of introducing himself.
‘Melting point, freezing point, boiling point.’ (p.171) Teachers and students use these three words as a bridge to share their temperatures and colors.
It's not about where you live, your age, or your education level.
Although these are terms used in science, at this time, more than anything else, they are words that open the way for the literary soul to enter.


“The sound of a pencil clicking.
Tendons that grow on the back of the hand.
A focused mouth.
I am now facing the most beautiful scenery in the world.
The mere fact that we are placed within the magnetic field of literature often creates a strong sense of connection with people we have never met before.
Why literature of all things?
“There are so many interesting things in the world.”_Page 172

The author says that when you make a living writing poetry, there are many times when words feel like they are not just words, but like the flesh and blood that makes up who you are.
Sharing that feeling with those who come to me, saying they want to make a living writing poetry, is also a great joy of living at the House of Words.
He is a teacher who tells students who say they have run out of things to write about that they can't write, "If you are a good enough poet, you will bring out poetry even from such insignificance" (p. 204), while at the same time looking at their faces from time to time to wonder if he himself is living a life of inertia, like a recorded video being played over and over again.
Whenever the title of teacher feels like a paper tiger, I feel a deep and beautiful heart as I recall the words of the teachers who made me live as a 'poet' and the moments when I filled the blank page with those words and moved forward.

“I remember my poetry teacher’s words: A general is not born a general, but is a general because he makes up his mind at every moment.
I reread that saying, “Confidence will never come, so let’s try to increase the size of our faith instead.”_Page 167

In her poem “Sentences of a Debtful Heart” (included in “Inside Things Called Night”), Ahn Hee-yeon wrote, “I hope my poetry moves toward opening the door to all the words that exist in the world.”
He still aims to expand the list of words discovered and invented in the course of life and added to his own dictionary.
As the list grows, the secrets of the world are revealed and the universe expands.
The possibility of swimming 'towards beauty' increases.
This is why Ahn Hee-yeon invites readers to 『House of Words』, which contains the other side of the world she witnessed.