The Wet Hex
Sun Yung Shin
Reviewed by Jami Padgett
“Everything was white. My footprints—wet, then white. My shadow—west, then white.”
In their new collection, The Wet Hex, 신선영 Sun Yung Shin, born in Korea then adopted and taken to America at a young age, leads their reader through the Underworld, to the nature reserve that is the Korean DMZ, and along the shores of Christopher Columbus’s journals (juxtaposed with their own immigration documents). The book navigates Shin’s identity—or, identities—as well as womanhood, tradition, what it means to be cast away, and the parts of you that (could) die in the process.
These poems offer more than just the romanization of featured Korean words—they’re accompanied by the Korean spelling in Hangul. Similarly, one of the aspects I loved most about this book is its appendix of familial terms in Korean, under the title “L’Etranger | An Unburial | A Funeral.” The collection as a whole superimposes the words’ iterations, which Shin themself bridges. It is a “map of what could have been,” as Shin writes, and mourns.
It reminded me a bit of Mary Jean Chan’s Flèche, which sometimes substitutes Chinese characters in place of their English counterparts to form a language barrier, a blending; to put the reader in that place. Here, though, we learn the words along with Shin—an experience complementary to the tensions in the poems.
Swatches of Korean folklore illuminate the many narratives of the book, and Shin in turn shucks Western religion—namely its God—in favor of Korean shamanism. In their poem titled “Gaze_Observatory_Threshold: A 바리데기 Baridegi Reimagining,” accompanied by the art of Jinny Yu, they highlight the tale of Princess Baridegi, known in Korean mythology as the first shaman.
Shin’s retelling forefronts the abandonment of the shamanist “foremother” by her parents (she was one girl too many, born into the royal family), and its consequence once the king falls ill: “A king does not need a princess. Until.” Meanwhile, with a series of black and white and gray shapes, entrances and exits and pure space, Yu’s art enraptures the reader, the sections of the poems almost labyrinthine.
The image work in The Wet Hex is to be gnawed on, deserving of attention and study—and readers will find this worthwhile if they want to make a dent in all the bones laid by Shin’s juxtapositions and syntax, and all that’s in between. The stacked images at times reminded me of incantations or ingredients for rituals, for potions—linked back to the word “hex,” which—as we’re told—has no male cognate.
This is a collection that can teach anyone, especially a poet, plenty about themselves and their art—that can teach anyone to interrogate their place in the world. Spend some time with this one.