That Summer's End

One hundred and six poems of self-reflection and exquisite beauty—an intoxicating blend of Seon Buddhism and French Symbolism from one of South Korea's most celebrated and influential poets

That summer I stood in the centers of storms   That summer my despair burst out into crimson but still I weathered the wind and rain

Mountains, rivers, trees, flowers, the dark, a cat, a train. In the elemental forms and figures of our world, Lee Seong-bok finds repositories for thought, sounding boards against which he can test his reflections. Again and again, in sequences, he probes his subjects—five “Mountain Path” poems, three “River” poems, three commentaries on the I Ching— not to solicit answers, like Moses impatiently striking the rock for water, but to savor the muted tones that echo in response.

After one ruckus / begins another / The silent forest vibrates // Suffering was always / new suffering

The poems of That Summer’s End, though acutely conscious of the self, are free of an inhibiting self-consciousness, speaking directly of youth, love, fear, family, grief, old age, impermanence, and all that’s central to life. As enticing as they are profound, Lee Seong-bok’s poems have made him not only a poet’s poet but a favorite of RM, leader of K-pop superstars BTS, whose support of his work on social media has brought him international attention.“Lee Seong-bok’s extraordinary poems feel etched in stone but gorgeously diaphanous, light as air. Contemplative, romantic, wise, he traces mountain trails and the contours of a mind. ‘All day I am filled to the brim with thoughts of you,’ he writes, ‘Is there an end to this path[?]’ I savored every page of this first encounter, in Anton Hur’s brilliant translation, of this poet’s restless and reverberating music. I was filled with longing for the next poem.” —Richie Hofmann, author of The Bronze ArmsBorn in Sangju, South Korea in 1952, LEE SEONG-BOK is the author of eight poetry collections, as well as works of literary criticism and essays on photography. He made his English-language debut with Indeterminate Inflorescence (Sublunary Editions, 2023), a volume of 470 aphorisms collected by his students at Keimyung University, in Daegu, where he has taught creative writing and French literature for more than four decades.

ANTON HUR is the translator of Lee Seong-bok’s Indeterminate Inflorescence. His debut novel, Toward Eternity, was published by HarperVia in 2024. In 2022 he was double-longlisted and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and in 2023 his translation of Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny was a finalist for a National Book Award. He lives in Seoul, South Korea.