A ground-breaking retrospective of this major Korean writer of the modernist era, presented in English by award-winning poets and translators.

Yi Sang (1920-1937) was a painter, architect, poet and writer of 1930s Korea, when Korean peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule. Yi Sang wrote and published in both Korean and Japanese until his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 27, after imprisonment by Japanese police for thought crimes in Tokyo. His work shows innovative engagement with European modernism, especially that of Surrealism and Dada. He is considered one of the most experimental writers of Korean modernism.

Yi Sang: A Timeline (by Jack Jung)

Poem No. 1

Poems No. 4 & 5

Poems

translated from the Korean by Jack Jung

I

Bird's Eye View

Poem 1

Poem 2

Poem 3

Poem 4

Poem 5

Poem 6

Poem 7

Poem 8

Poem 9

Poem 10

Poem 11

Poem 12

Poem 13

Poem 14

Flowering Tree

This Kind of Poetry

1933, 6, 1

Mirror

Common Anniversary

Poem 15

II

* Titled * For * So * Y¿ng *

Decorum

Paper Tombstone

Paper Tombstone-The Missing Wife-

Fortunetelling

Brazier

Mornings

Family

Fortunetelling

Path

III

Street Outside Street

Clear Mirror

Critical Conditions

¿Ban

¿Pursuit

¿Drowning

¿Cliff

¿White Painting

¿Lineage

¿Location

¿Prostitution

¿Lifetime

¿Innards

¿Blood Relation

¿Self-Portrait

I WED A TOY BRIDE

IV

Paradise Lost

Girl

Paragraphs on Blood Relations

Paradise Lost

Face Mirror

Moon Wound

Yi Sang's cover design ofChosun and Architecture magazine

Reproductions of poems in Japanese: "Architecture Infinite Hexagon: Diagnosis 0:1" and "Architecture Infinite Hexagon: 22 years"

Poems

translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu

Introduction to the Japanese Poems of Yi Sang (by Sawako Nakayasu)

from Abnormal Reversible Reaction

¿Abnormal Reversible Reaction

¿Fragment Scenery

¿ ¿'s Games

¿ Beard

¿Hunger

from Bird's Eye View

¿Two People-1-

¿Two People-2-

¿LE URINE

¿Movement

from Solid Angle Blueprint

¿Memorandum on the Line 1

¿Memorandum on the Line 2

¿Memorandum on the Line 3

¿Memorandum on the Line 4

¿Memorandum on the Line 5

¿Memorandum on the Line 6

¿Memorandum on the Line 7

from Architecture Infinite Six-Sided Figure

¿AU MAGASIN DE NOUVEAUTES

¿Diagnosis 0:1

Yi Sang with writer Pak T'ae-w¿n and poet Kim So-un

Essays

translated from the Korean by Jack Jung

A Journey into the Mountain Village

Ennui

After Sickbed

Sad Story

A Letter to My Sister

Tokyo

notes

Stories

translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi and Joyelle McSweeney

Yi Sang's House (by Don Mee Choi)

Page from "Spider&SpiderMeetPigs" with original spacing in Korean and English

Spider&SpiderMeetPigs

notes

True Story-Lost Flower

notes

Afterword: Thirteen for Yi Sang, for Arachne (by Joyelle McSweeney)

Yi Sang Collage (by Don Mee Choi)

Acknowledgments