DDungDDang FamilyA Review of Baek Mu-san's Poetry Collection 『Someone Is Keeping Me Alive』
Hello, this is the Ddungddang family. Today I'd like to leave a review of poet Baek Mu-san's collection 『Someone Is Keeping Me Alive』, which stayed with me for a long time. The woodcut-like image on the cover was already striking, and it was a collection that kept me sitting blankly with the book closed for a while even after I finished it. I'll share my impressions focusing on the four poems that especially caught my heart. About a Train – Why Are We Running Like This
Hello, this is the Ddungddang family.
Today I'd like to leave a review of poet Baek Mu-san's collection 『Someone Is Keeping Me Alive』, which stayed with me for a long time.
The woodcut-like image on the cover was already striking, and it was a collection that kept me sitting blankly with the book closed for a while even after I finished it.
I'll share my impressions focusing on the four poems that especially caught my heart.
Someone Is Keeping Me Alive — Baek Mu-san2025Changbi
About a Train – Why Are We Running Like This
The first poem I'd like to introduce is 「About a Train」.
I see a running train, a train that does not stop it does not stop, so not just anyone can get on a train you cannot get off even if you want to get off
The moment I read this passage, our lives overlapped with it exactly. Without knowing when, we're on this train,
and even if we're exhausted and want to get off, the train won't stop for us.
The poet says this too.
The reason the train cannot be stopped is that the train’s destination is inside the train
That the destination isn't somewhere outside the train but inside it — in the running itself — came across as truly chilling.
I wondered if this isn't a life where, without even knowing where we're going, the running itself has become the destination.
At the end, the poem asks this.
Why is that train there for us so much that no one asks about the destination we are riding a train we cannot get off
While reading, I kept asking myself. "Why am I running like this right now?"
The answer didn't come easily, which is why the poem stayed in my head even longer.
The Road I Could Have Taken – About the Countless Versions of Me I Didn’t Choose
The second poem that struck me was 「The Road I Could Have Taken」.
Having lived a certain amount of life, I found myself realizing anew that the person I am now is ultimately the result of the countless choices I've made along the way piling up.
At the same time, regret over the countless roads I never got to walk because I didn't choose them came rushing in as well.
Those answerless questions, like 'if I had made a different choice back then, what would I be like now'.
It was an emotion closer to a slightly wistful longing than to regret.
The poet doesn't force those countless possibilities into regret, nor does he romanticize them — he seems to just quietly leave them be,
and that made it a poem that left me wanting to gently embrace the road I've walked so far.
For a Society of Respect – Honestly, It Makes Me Furious
The third poem, 「For a Society of Respect」, made me angry the whole time I was reading it.
It's said to be based on something that actually happened,
the story of making cleaning workers take written exams in English and classical Chinese and factoring those scores into their personnel evaluations.
You should at least be able to write the names of cleaning areas and facilities in English Writing them in classical Chinese is basic
Reading this passage, I was dumbfounded — what on earth does cleaning labor have to do with English and classical Chinese exams, and why should respect be decided by exam scores?
The poem says this too.
You need to know that there are things more important than cleaning we respect our staff teachers workers are hidden patriots, they deserve respect
This double standard — saying you respect people on the surface while actually ranking them by exam scores — seemed to be revealed all the more clearly through the poem.
I believe that no matter what work someone does, everyone deserves respect simply for being themselves.
The clean spaces we use every day exist thanks to someone's labor,
and treating that labor as trivial and even tearing the people down along with it strikes me as truly shameful.
Silla’s Moonlit Night – Thinking of My Late Father-in-Law
The last poem I'd like to introduce is 「Silla's Moonlit Night」.
It begins with the speaker watching a middle-aged couple eating a late dinner at a quiet restaurant at the foot of Namsan in Gyeongju.
Looking closely, the wife is pale and the man is serving her, moving things for her, adjusting her posture and looking after her,
yet the striking description is that the one actually leading all along seemed to be the woman, not the man.
The moon rises over Namsan, and in the empty seat they left behind, the speaker quietly faces his own "disability."
To it, which I have never supported, shall we go home now? I speak to my own disability, which has been supporting me
Honestly, I still don't quite know exactly what this poem is trying to say.
But all the while reading it, my late father-in-law kept coming to mind.
He was someone who lived his whole life hard, as a disabled person and an orphan.
He must have endured a life more exhausting than I can imagine,
and the traces in the poem of supporting someone and being supported by someone
seemed to overlap with his life.
I thought this might be exactly what the power of poetry is.
The power that makes each reader recall a completely different person and memory from the same poem.
In Closing
Someone enduring a life like a train that cannot stop,
another version of me walking the road I never got to take,
the workers who keep the clean spaces we take for granted,
and those who quietly endured a hard life and are still here beside us.
Baek Mu-san's poems felt like they were calling out that 'someone' one by one.
That's why, all through reading, my heart grew uncomfortable, then warm, then quietly ashamed.
If you're feeling a little worn down these days, or suddenly wondering why you're running like this, I recommend reading this collection slowly, one poem at a time.
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