A Lion at Three in the Morning contains about sixty poems by Nam Jin-Woo who sings of encounters with unfamiliar things. They may be animals such as a lion or alligators, a plant, a region's climate or some other strange natural phenomenon. These unfamiliar things function as a medium that takes us to another world, not this one here. They are a part of an unknown world, a mirror reflecting this world, and something other than ourselves--like sleep resembling death which is inherently a part of us but is also a very remote, perpetual force outside of ourselves.

Nam...