Poems from an award-winning Korean poet, known for verse exploring the complexities of modern life and memory.

The title of Lee Jangwook’s poetry collection Possible Because It’s Not Eternal suggests that certain existences become possible only because they are not eternal, and certain moments hold meaning because they are finite. The absence of eternity becomes a force in these poems that triggers the "eventhood" of the moment, and the fragmentation of the self is not the fall of the subject, but a process of generating new meaning. This triggers a positive line of thought that transcends nihilism and deconstruction.

This is a poetry that navigates the absurd world of bureaucracy, contingency, rupture, and instability.

Lee Jangwook is a South Korean poet, novelist, and literary critic. He is the author of the poetry collections The Sand Mountain in My Sleep, Hope Song at Noon, Date of Birth, and Possible Because It's Not Eternal. Lee is also the author of the novels Karlo and the Cheerful Devils and Stranger than Paradise, alongside several short story collections and literary criticism. ​He is on the faculty of Dongguk University, where he currently serves as a professor of Creative Writing.

​Eun-Gwi Chung is a scholar and translator who has been instrumental in bringing significant Korean voices to the English-speaking world through her translations, which include Kang Eun-gyo's Bari’s Love Song, Shim Bo-Seon's Fifteen Seconds without Sorrow, and Lee Seong-Bok's Ah, Mouthless Things. She also served as an editor and translator for the anthology The Colors of Dawn: Twentieth-Century Korean Poetry. She has also translated English-language literature for Korean readers, including books by Louise Glück and Anne Sexton. ​In addition to her translation work, she is the author of two essay collections. A former Fulbright senior research grant recipient and visiting professor at UC Berkeley, she currently resides in Seoul, where she serves as a professor, writer, and translator.