Poet Jeong writes about sorrow, love

Poet Jeong Ho-seung, 66, is a representative lyrical poet of Korea. / Courtesy of Jeong Ho-seung

Jeong’s collection “To Daffodils”

Jeong’s collection “People I Love”

A Spanish version of “Dying After Having Loved”

By Kim Ji-soo

Korea’s representative lyrical poet, Jeong Ho-seung, is well known for his poetic inspiration that comforts the readers.

“Of the many roles that poetry has, I believe the ability to give comfort is the most precious,” Jeong said.

The beloved 66-year-old poet, who debuted in 1973 with the poem “Cheomseongdae,” enjoys a broad base of readers in Korea. The Cheomseongdae is an ancient astronomical observatory inGyeongju.

For a poet whose works — for example his 1997 collection “Dying After Having Loved” that sold about 100,000 copies — have provided solace to readers, Jeong is neither a romantic nor a dreamer. He wants his readers to face the inevitable sorrow in human life, to find hope and rapture in it.

“People’s lives behold the tragedy; that’s what makes for art, I believe,” Jeong said. “The joy, the rapture, the happiness in people’s lives ... they are tragic joy, tragic rapture and tragic happiness,” he said. “There are some tragedies that even the gods are amazed at,” he added, quoting from one of his poems. “I mean to share ... to affirm and to understand this sorrow,” Jeong said, describing the aim of his works.

To that end, he often employs stars, flowers, hands, a mother and a never-melting snowman to realize and embrace the suffering in human lives. One of his best-known works, “The Daffodils” begins as follows:

“Don’t cry.

To be lonely is to be human.

To go on living is to endure loneliness.

Do not wait in vain for the phone call that never comes.

When snow falls, walk on snowy paths,

when rain falls, walk on rainy paths.

A black-breasted longbill is watching you from the bed of reeds.

Sometimes even God is so lonely he weeps.

Birds perch on branches because they are lonely

and you are sitting beside the stream because you are lonely.

...”

Jeong, a Catholic, is known for using relatively familiar words in his poems, which may explain his popularity among readers from all walks of life and from different age groups. “Every word in this world can be used in a poem,” he said.

Yet, there is a powerful paradox and irony in his poems that often coaxes ones lips into a smile. “Well, all these things should harmonize in a poem,” Jeong said.

Born in Hadong, South Gyeongsang Province, and raised in Daegu, Jeong studied the Korean language and literature at Kyung Hee University. He has cited Beomeocheon stream, “where I met people and nature,” as source of inspiration. The city of Daegu has erected a monument at the stream in his honor. He constantly takes notes, which provide him an impetus to write poetry.

Jeong’s first poetry book, “From Sorrow to Joy,” published in 1979, has a far more raw edge than his more recent ones. The “From Sorrow to Joy” is also the title of his poem. He said the poems in that book were written in his 20s, and accordingly, were more passionate and critical of the times, that is, the volatile late 1970s South Korea.

The politically and socially oppressive atmosphere of the late 1970s of South Korea prompted some poets and writers to incorporate social issues into their mass-oriented works. Jeong embraced part of that too because he worried about how to live as a Korean poet during a turbulent time in his homeland.

“But I made sure to keep to the lyricism of poetry and not use the raw voice too much,” he said. According to Brother Anthony of Taize, who is currently translating Jeong’s poems that have been published in The Korea Times, Jeong’s poem the “From Sorrow to Joy” contrasts the selfishness that results from the quest for happiness at all costs with the realization that love goes hand-in-hand with sorrow, since love is expressed through compassion. The poem has also been published textbooks.

But Jeong said his works, like himself, have changed with the passage of time.

“It is about perspective. I used to be interested in, let’s say, if there was an island, what was beneath the island. Now I am interested in the island itself. Let’s compare that to a flower. Whereas I was interested in the roots of a flower in my younger days, I am now looking at the flower and more so at the fruit it bears,” he said.

“The island, the trees, the flowers,” their passage or evolution is just like his poetry, he said. In addition to poems, he has written several essays and a novel, “A Memorial Service for the Departed” in 1982 as a submission to a Chosun Ilbo competition. In fact, from 1990 through 1997, he concentrated on writing novels. “I found out the hard way, time and economy-wise, that my literature temperament was suited more for poetry,” Jeong said. “What I can say in a word in poem, I had to write in specific detail and development for a novel,” he added.

His essays fared better than the novels. The essay “The Words That Gave Me Comfort” published in 2006 sold 300,000.

So in 1997, he returned to his first love, poetry. Jeong has won numerous awards, including the So Wol Literary Award, Jeong Ji-yong Literary Award, Sanghwa Poetry Award and Gongcho Literary Award. He is currently an active speaker on cultural issues, specifically on issues that are central in life and that can be expressed through poetry.

“That breaks up my routine of writing poetry at home and at my office,” he said.

The poet did not reject the assessment that he overcomes the sadness, the tragedy in life through positive energy through his poems. It is the tragedy in human life that makes for a poem or art, he said. When asked if art was not about freedom, Jeong paused before saying “Human are fatalistic beings. Whatever freedom we have, it is limited,” he said.

Ultimately, he wants to sing about love through poems; a poem is all about understanding humans and nature, he said.

“A poet is your ordinary man or woman, but he or she cannot write a poem without love for humans, nature and other things,” the poet said.

“It is the ability to see and identify the pain, let’s say, of a worm that crawls out after the rain only to find his body withering under the shining sun. “If you don’t have that love, or the sensitivity to feel that, you cannot write a poem,” he said.

He recently finished selecting poems for publication this year. He originally wrote more than 100 poems but excluded tens of them, for now.

“I was not satisfied,” he said. “You know when a poem has achieved that poetic formulation, which is kind of hard to explain,” he added.

The upcoming collection is tentatively titled “I Reject Hope.”

“The first line from that is ‘I reject hope that is without hope,’” Jeong said. He explained that nowadays, hope without hope translates into more anger due to waiting rather than into the joy of waiting. “That rage could put people into hopeless despair,” Jeong said.