Mr. Poet Euisu Byeon (卞義洙) is a Korean poet. He published his first poetry book, “The Distant City of Memories,” in 1991. In February 1996, he began his official career as a poet with the publication of his works in “Modern Poetry Studies.” Since then, he has been a leading figure in unconscious symbolism, with his second poetry book, “When the Moon Rises, Trees Have an Arched Chest,” published in 2002, and his subsequent work on unconscious symbolism. He published his third book of poetry, a collection of long poems titled “The Symbolism of the Unconscious: Nature, Spirits, and Symbols,” in 2008, followed by his fourth poetry book, “The Parrot in the Black Sun,” as well as his first book of literary criticism, “Waiting for a Flock of Fantasies: The Symbolism of the Unconscious.” He has also written a collection of essays on symbolism and symbols, titled “Symbols and Symbols, Invasion and Resistance.” Since then, he has focused on “meta-semiotics,” an extension of unconscious symbolism. He published his second and third books of literary criticism, “Artists Called by God” and “Schizophrenia and Poets,” in 2009, as well as a book on art criticism titled “Understanding Seo Sang-hwan and Contemporary Art” in 2010. In 2013, he published “Seo Sang-hwan’s Art Symbols: Meeting Park Sang-ryong’s Novels and Byun Yi-soo’s Poems,” a book of art criticism. He also published “Convergence Studies: Symbolism” in two volumes in 2015, in which he presents “symbolism” as an independent emerging academic field. He led a joint poetry creation project in 2019 with Ju Won-ik, Kang Seo-yeon, Park Yi-young, Seo Sang-hwan, and Lee Chae-hyun, among others. In 2021, he founded and served as editor for the poetry magazine “Symbology Institute.”
THOUGHTS OF A REED
From somewhere,
the sound of houses being moved,
amidst the golden sunlight,
the reed’s stature has grown so tall.
Autumn swells like a seed,
firm and strong.
This village has fallen into autumn.
Cars are already running southward.
With the wind, dragging shadows,
warm sunlight falls like the last fruit, ripe.
The towering sky, wetting the feet,
is just a thought,
but no matter how you turn it, the heart remains unchanged.
This morning, the village bustles with people seeking train tickets.