Poet yearns for humanity in 'Wild Apple'

Poet Ra Hee-duk / Korea Times file

Cover of Ra Hee-duk’s “Wild Apple”

By Choi Yearn-hong

I received Korean poet Ra Hee-duk’s new book of poetry “Wild Apple” translated by Daniel Parker and Ji Young-shil. Ra was a visiting poet at the University of Iowa International Writing Program in 2007. She came to my town under my poetry group’s invitation in 2007 for a poetry reading and to share her views on her poetry.

She was born in 1966, graduated from Yonsei University, and made her literary debut in the Korea JoongAng Daily’s New Face Award Contest during her college days. She is now on the faculty of the Chosun University Creative Writing Program. Her poems have been translated into English under the sponsorship of the Korean Literature Translation Institute.

I still remember her speech on her youth in a Korean orphanage where her parents -- Christians seeking to carry out the teachings of their religion through communal living -- served on the administrative staff. Ra confessed that the experience of living with orphans had made her a precocious child; and the recognition of the difference between herself and her playmates early on gave her a unique perspective on the world.

Ra stumbled into the life of a poet quite unintentionally. While struggling between the religious ideals fostered by her parents and the causes upheld by the student movement she encountered in college, Ra simply came to seek salvation in poetry. Ra's poetic imagination is grounded in the force of life and growth as manifested in motherhood and plant life. Her first collection of poems “To the Roots” and the second “What Was Said Stained the Leaves” pierce the fog of hypocrisy and contradictions cast over our daily lives while maintaining a spirit of forgiveness and motherly warmth.

In the “soft earth that trembles with joy as it feeds its own blood to the tree roots,” we find an image of a mother who willingly endures much hardship to raise a child. The tenderness with which the poet embraces this difficult world stems from her absolute belief in the force of life which causes the trees to thicken and mother’s milk to flow. It can be said that Ra is constantly searching for the source of this life force. To become receptive to what nature can tell her, Ra believes that she must be able to “listen with her eyes and see with her ears.”

Such effort is detailed in her third collection of poetry “It’s Not That Far From Here” and her fourth, “What it Means to Grow Dark.” The poet uses harmonious juxtaposition of “sound” and “darkness” to signal the process of “listening” with the eyes as the “seeing” fades.

“Wild Apple” is her second book in English. In it, I see her poems have matured from her international travels and her life experiences in the hospital. She seems nostalgic for wild apples, primitive but humane society and things that existed before modern technology. Nature is what she likes to see and follow. The wild apple is ugly, sour and not marketable. Poets are nostalgic for yesterday, ancient regimes and wildlife on green meadows. They don’t want to see the growing population “bomb” and their need for mass production of goods that invited chemical civilization.

The hospital is one modern medical facility she depicted in this poetry book. X-rays and MRIs are part of modern life. Ra has written good poems from her hospital experiences. I can see her aging through her work.

I enjoy her touching poem, “Room with a View of Seolseom.” Seolseom is a small pine-wooded rock in the sea near Jeju Island. The room refers to a very small room for famous artist Lee Joong-sub (1916-1956) and his wife and two children during the Korean War (1950-53). He was a poverty-stricken artist who collected foil from cigarette packs discarded by U.S. soldiers and created paintings by etching images onto the foil with a nail. He was that poor. No canvass or paper or materials for art. He was most famous for the crabs and clams he produced on the foil. Translators provided a note at the end of the book about the background of this poem and Seolseom for foreign readers. Ra shows her compassion and sympathy for his paintings in her poem.

She also shows her sympathy and compassion to Khet Mar, a Burmese woman she met at the Iowa writing program with her poem, “We see Fireflies.” Fireflies are disappearing in cities in Korea, but are still there in countryside. Poverty and political depression in Burma depressed the Korean poet who experienced the same kind of difficult times in her life. In the first line, she finds solace in fireflies in the summer night, saying, “Don’t cry, because we see fireflies.”

In this book of poetry, her travels influence her: American Indian burial grounds in Wisconsin, a wildfire in the American West, whale-watching in the ocean, Seurat’s painting and John Malkovich. I hope she finds common ground in humanity when she crosses borders, so her poetry can become the property of humankind.

Dr. Choi Yearn-hong is a Washington-based poet and writer. He can be reached at yearnhchoi@gmail.com.