More real than dreams and more dreamlike than reality, the poems in Moon Boyoung’s Sand Bookshop Raining Sand are dry, funny, surprising, and a joy to read. Boyoung infuses ordinary life with surrealist magic, building imaginary worlds from unexpected premises, then pushing them past their logical extreme.
This English-language translation by Jack Saebyok Jung and Hedgie Choi introduces new readers to the work of one of the most remarkable South Korean poets writing today. A tree that you hug for heat, a pool too awe-inspiring to swim in, a bookstore where it rains sand—across such scenes the poet questions how memory and identity change with every passing second.
A central feature is the book’s playful uncertainty about authorship and translation—sometimes presenting itself as already “in translation” from imaginary writers, or from imaginary texts by real people. The result is a multilevel investigation of framing, perspective, understanding, and what, precisely, is an “original.”
“Einstein
worried that if he ran at the speed of light holding a mirror
the light that started from his face
wouldn’t reach the mirror
and his face would disappear from it.”
—Excerpt from “I’m Kept by Me”