Cold Candies

by Lee Young-Ju, Jae Kim (Translator)

Cold Candies encapsulate the saccharine strangeness of a woman’s life. Fragments of narratives about girls, dolls, sisters, mothers, men, lizards, the moon, and pillows are brought together into otherworldly images that are devastating, yet familiar. Lee Young-ju is one of South Korea’s most original minds, and this collection, curated and translated by National Endowment of Arts Fellow Jae Kim, features a selection from her extraordinary body of work. These prose poems are often self-portraits, and together, they are as much an account of her life as it is an attempt to understand it. Pulling out threads from her past, she examines its traumas and tragedies and unravels a haunting dreamscape of intimacy and kinship.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2014

About the author

LEE Young-ju (이영주) is the author of four poetry collections. Her work has received support from the Arts Council of Korea and the Seoul Foundation for the Arts and Culture. She is also an essayist and a playwright. She lives in Seoul, South Korea.

Reviews

[Breanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

every time i thought i found a new favorite, there was literally still another one waiting to be found. reading this collection made me feel like i was following a string through each of the smaller collections in the book. such a wonderful read and definitely something to revisit. i feel like there was so much to unravel with each poem. SO GOOD🕺

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

gosh, this one. cohesive & expansive, these poems are genuine gems of perspective & distortion. the poem about welcoming guests into a home which has, within the space of the poem, already turned into ash? or the one where the speaker's mother mends wings left behind by the dead back into herself? or the couple of poems that trace a shoreline of infinite weeping? hello?

"we came walking out of our thoughts to be loved"

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

The opening poem is so compelling - Mama's Marmalade. Loved the descriptive words. The rest of the poems just did not click with me. It felt like they were missing every other sentence/line - not coherent or enjoyable to read.

[Kara Nevle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous, haunting imagery that’s somehow softened through the surrealist imagery that Lee conjures. Throughly enjoyed this, would recommend to horror fans

[sisi · Rating 4 out of 5]

this collection reads a lot like a feverish dream: sporadic, vivid, scattered, in perpetual balance between reality and other worlds. lee’s poems mostly center around the themes of home, femininity, family, dreams, love, life … although it had a bit of a slow start to me and some poems felt a bit out of place, overall this was a collection that i enjoyed a lot :)

some of favorite poems: dinnertime, nine steps, sealed, the stonemason’s yard, heat wave, arson