Poetess reminisces about youth's dreams

Kim Joo-ha

By Choi Yearn-hong

The first poetry book is special to each poet or poetess, because it contains his or her debut poems, usually the best poems in his or her career. Many famous poets have been remembered with their first poems in their literary debut. The first poetry book of Kim Joo-ha, a retired school teacher, conveys her youth’s dreams, hope, love, family, hometown, flowers, four seasons, nature and travels in and outside Korea. Her poems are as colorful as the flowers decorating the four seasons in her sketches as a young girl. Among the flowers, she seems to like the spring flowers best, because they present bright colors on the long barren winter field. However, she portrays all kinds of flowers in her poems, including azaleas, roses, lilies and chrysanthemums, among others.

Among the many flowers in her poetry book, I was most touched by the tragic death of Lilan Kurudi, a young Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. She laments about the war in the Middle East as a crime against humanity in her poetry book. Good poets are humanitarians. Poetry reflects a poet’s daily life and views based on world news, both pleasant and tragic. I wish her flowers covering an innocent child’s death with her sympathy and compassion.

Her poetry book starts with an English version of her title poem, “Spring Festival Within a Stone,” and a Japanese version of another poem, “Mountain Jiri.” The title poem was translated into English by my friend, Ko Chang-soo, a fellow poet and a diplomat. These two poems, which were translated into English and Japanese, indicate Kim Joo-ha’s openness to the outside world. Literature is supposed to be transnational. In this modern age, many Korean poets dwell in their national geographic boundaries. In the brief introduction, she declares that she is sailing into the blue ocean and she wants her poetry to be a lighthouse for her life sailing. She hopes that her poetry will be her lighthouse.

I introduce her opening poem, which is a prose-style poem translated by Ko. I revised it more for the original Korean poem. It is a good tribute to spring.

I walked a trail where spring rain fell. My feet tripped on a stone. I picked it up the stone carefully and looked at it. A lake entered inside. Goldfish were swimming in it. I whispered, marveled well. A water-soaked stone glittered by the lake. I picked it up. Then, a blue sky entered therein. Swallows come down to meet spring, fluttered down. They swallowed the spring. The swallows have built a nest in me, they sing in chorus. I looked in the swallow’s nest. I saw a long white sand beach inside. I could also see the clean, see-through blue sea and the breakwater wall. I was none other than the spring itself.

Her poem is a fantasia in orchestra. Finally, she explains that she is the spring itself. She must have been a good elementary school teacher. She must have raised young children in her classroom to be exposed to poetry, dream and beautiful fantasy. Imagination is a powerful educational tool to the young children. I found many fairy tale-like poems in this book. They are needed in the hearts of schoolchildren. Kim must have shared it with her students. The locations mentioned in her poetry refer to the locations of the schools in which she taught. Inchon seemed to be her base. Therefore, the West Coast and Yellow Sea scenes, along with four seasons, appear often in her poems.

The locations went beyond Inchon: her country house in the hometown of her memories, various places inside Seoul, Mount Jiri, the 155-mile demilitarized zone dividing Korea into two, Siberia, Amur River, Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, the smallest church near Niagara Falls, the United States, cities in Vietnam, England, Turkey and Spain all appeared in her travel poems. Life is a journey from one place to another. The journey makes good poets. All travelers are romanticists, and she is one of them.

Her family ― mother, father and grandparents ― are affectionately mentioned in her poems. In a sense, her poems are family-oriented. As a mother, she must have nurtured her children in loving care.

Her favorite stone may be “ruby,” which is a part of her email address. I hope her poems are as bright as spring flowers and as shiny as a ruby, the mysteriously dark red stone. One of her poems, “In My Dictionary” (page 25), convey many good things, such as hope, pleasure, love, oxygen and warmth. In the following poem, she prayed for God’s guidance for constantly improving her life. She must be blessed in bliss. I hope she presents her next poetry book with more subtle and mature poems that will continuously comfort her former students, who are now adults, and enlighten her neighbors.

Dr. Choi is a Washington-based poet.