Lee Si-young (born 1949) is a South Korean poet and professor.
1. Life
Lee Si-young was born in Gurye, South Jeolla Province. He studied creative writing at Seorabeol College of Arts and pursued his graduate studies in Korean literature at Korea University. Lee made his literary debut in 1969 when his sijo "Su" (수 Embroidery) won the JoongAng Ilbo New Writer's Contest. The same year, his poem "Chaetan" (채탄 Coal Mining) was accepted by Monthly Literature. Lee has published some fifteen volumes of poetry, including Manweol (만월 Full moon), Baram sokeuro (바람 속으로 Into the wind), Munui (무늬 Pattern), and Nabiga dorawatda (나비가 돌아왔다 The Butterflies are Back). Lee worked for Changbi Publishing for 23 years, and from 1988 to 1995 taught creative writing at Chung-Ang University and its graduate school. Since 2006 he teaches creative writing at Dankook University. He is the recipient of the Manhae Literary Award, the Baek Seok Literary Award, and the Chong Chi-Yong Literary Award, among others.
2. Writing
A poet of delicate sensibilities, Lee began his career depicting the gloomy everyday life under the Park Chung-hee military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s from the perspective of ordinary people—a subject he has explored with much love and sympathy. Such love manifested from his desire to seek more than mere confessional release in his poetry: Lee aims to transform his art into a song for the suffering masses. His early poems are long and even prose-like, expressing his compassion towards the poor and the weak, and at the same time, embodying his fierce determination to preserve his humanity even amidst hardships.
In the 1990s Lee's poems became drastically shorter in length. Composed of no more than two or three lines, they came to resemble Zen epigrams in their use of minimal language and compacted form to encapsulate profound meaning and symbolic resonance. Lee's poems from this period recall the fact the poet had made his literary debut with sijo, a category of traditional Korean poetry characterized by highly restricted form.
Such evolution in Lee's poetic mode indicates that the urgency and the wrenching emotions of his early years have been replaced with psychological calm and contemplative leisure. Lee has acknowledged that it is perfectly fine for him if his poems are no more than small “ripples” that carry his heart out to the readers and “lap at their feet for a moment like fallen leaves” before disappearing. Lee now hopes that in this age of excess, his poetry will remain just such small ripples. Lee's poetry is at once a gentle reproach to overly emotional poets and at the same time the humble confession of an aging poet who has weathered much hardship and has remained true to his art.
