That Summer's End

“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 Arms

“Can wind go to sleep? Can forests stand on top of each other? Can islands have babies? In the brilliant, gnomic poems of Lee Seong-bok, all manner of naturalistic miracles and interpersonal slippages are conceivable, and human consciousness itself is enlarged. Haunted by loss yet brightened by a sense of play and possibility, That Summer’s End is a significant collection by one of the leading philosopher-poets alive today.” —Maggie Millner, author of Couplets

Born 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. In 2023, Indeterminate Inflorescence, a volume of 470 aphorisms collected by his students at Keimyung University, where he has taught creative writing and French literature for more than four decades, was published.

ANTON HUR is the translator of Lee Seong-bok’s Indeterminate Inflorescence. His debut novel, Toward Eternity, was published 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.

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