Aphorisms on Poetry
.
Reproduced from Indeterminate Inflorescence by Lee Seong-Bok (Allen Lane, 2024).
.
The poetic comes from deviating. Neurosis isn’t automatically poetry, but poems are neurotic. A poem is a coherent rambling. If there is only coherence or only rambling, poetry disappears.
*
In America, they have trees that are up to 150m tall. They don’t absorb water from their roots but through their leaves and stems. They drink from the fog at dawn or from clouds. Poems are like this. If there is a tree that flowers in the roots and not the stems, poetry is probably something like that.
*
The rhythm of poetry is like that of a mourner’s. Two steps forward, one step back… the fluttering funereal banners and the colourful paper flowers… listening to the sad singing and the sound of ghosts.
*
When we write a letter, we experience a strange space. To the friends and spouses we use the most informal language with, we suddenly become very formal. I wonder if the poem’s speaker also lives in such a space, a space that is of our daily lives and yet is separate or different from it at the same time. A space where age, gender, or the binary of life and death have either untouched or retreated from – a space only the speaker can enter.
*
Because poetry must use language, which is inherently opaque and unstable, it has to be more precise than mathematics. For poets, there is no higher morality than precision.
*
Poetry is the restlessness before realisation. The things that excite us are what we do not know, things we accept but cannot interpret. Things that cannot be passed even between parent and child, wife and husband. Think about why, when given the praise we’ve craved, we burst into tears.
*
Poetry is not emotion or metaphor but patterns. Patterns are retrospective and predictive at the same time. There are no patterns without metaphoric meaning. Patterns both come from and enable metaphor.
*
Poems are like transferring in public transportation. For example, in order to get here, take the bus from Jisandong, get on the subway at Manchon Station, and get off at Gangchang Station. Normally there are two, at most three, transfers per trip and no one transfers five or six times. Poems also need just that amount. Too many transfers mean there was never a destination to begin with.
*
Words dragged by force from the brain are stiff and devoid of feeling. Instead, your words should be a beat ahead of your brain. Like a child rolling a steel hoop, the words will come alive only if they roll on ahead of the brain.
*
Always rely on the spoken word. It’s precious because it’s light and disappears easily. Like our lives…
.
.
Lee Seong-Bok often referred to as a poet’s poet, was born in Sangju, Korea. He managed to enter the prestigious Gyeonggi High School in Seoul where he was inspired to write by his Korean teacher, the poet Kim Won-ho, as well as the work of poet Kim Soo-young. After graduating from Seoul National University with a degree in French, he worked at Keimyung University in Daegu for forty years, interrupted by a stint of living in Paris, where he studied the poststructuralists as well as the tenets of Seon Buddhism. He has written eight collections of poetry and numerous other books including academic and mainstream literary criticism, creative writing and two books of essays on photography.
Anton Hur is a translator and author working in Seoul. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, and raised in British Hong Kong, Ethiopia and Thailand, but mostly in Korea. Author of Toward Eternity (HarperVia) and No One Told Me Not To (Across Books).
To read this and more, buy our latest print issue here, or subscribe to receive a copy of The London Magazine to your door every two months, while also enjoying full access to our extensive digital archive of essays, literary journalism, fiction and poetry.