Pre-order NOW! Hocus Pocus Bogus Locus by Jack Saebyok Jung
HOCUS POCUS BOGUS LOCUS is a five-part poetic journey that moves from intimate personal memory to expansive reflections on culture, war, politics, and myth. Each section—titled as if part of a magic incantation—illuminates a different realm of “illusion” or transformation. A sense of restless seeking pervades, as the speaker mines pop culture references, religious symbols, and political upheaval to highlight the tension between private longing and communal forces. Over time, the voice ascends from grounded, everyday scenes into cosmic terrain, exploring constellations and ancient archetypes. Throughout the collection, poems continuously dismantle and rebuild reality, culminating in a final resonance that challenges conventional boundaries of origin and belonging.
HOCUS POCUS BOGUS LOCUS is a five-part poetic journey that moves from intimate personal memory to expansive reflections on culture, war, politics, and myth. Each section—titled as if part of a magic incantation—illuminates a different realm of “illusion” or transformation. A sense of restless seeking pervades, as the speaker mines pop culture references, religious symbols, and political upheaval to highlight the tension between private longing and communal forces. Over time, the voice ascends from grounded, everyday scenes into cosmic terrain, exploring constellations and ancient archetypes. Throughout the collection, poems continuously dismantle and rebuild reality, culminating in a final resonance that challenges conventional boundaries of origin and belonging.
HOCUS POCUS BOGUS LOCUS is a five-part poetic journey that moves from intimate personal memory to expansive reflections on culture, war, politics, and myth. Each section—titled as if part of a magic incantation—illuminates a different realm of “illusion” or transformation. A sense of restless seeking pervades, as the speaker mines pop culture references, religious symbols, and political upheaval to highlight the tension between private longing and communal forces. Over time, the voice ascends from grounded, everyday scenes into cosmic terrain, exploring constellations and ancient archetypes. Throughout the collection, poems continuously dismantle and rebuild reality, culminating in a final resonance that challenges conventional boundaries of origin and belonging.
About the Author
Jack Saebyok Jung studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a Truman Capote Fellow. He is a co-translator of Yi Sang: Selected Works (Wave Books, 2020), which received the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2020. His poetry and translations have appeared in Washington Square Review, Bennington Review, BOMB Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Chicago Review, The Margins, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and other publications. A recipient of the 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, his translation of Kim Hyesoon’s hybrid collection Thus Spoke Lady No is forthcoming from Ecco Press in early 2026. He currently teaches at Davidson College.