By Mark Peterson
Last week I wrote about the sijo contest hosted online by the Sejong Cultural Society based in Chicago. And I've heard rumors of another sijo contest being organized in Southern California. This gives me hope that the "sijo movement" that I've been waiting for is getting off the ground! The response from the article last week was welcoming, so I've decided to write a little more about the winners in the contest.
I've written several articles about sijo in the past year, and during that time I see several signs that there is more interest in America in the sijo as a widely-known, widely-practiced poetic form. Why have I termed an interest in sijo as a "movement"? It's because I see us in Korean Studies in the U.S. as playing "catch-up ball," in regard to catching up to the popularity of haiku.
Japanese haiku is well-known in America, and it is well-practiced ― meaning that all students in the last 30 years or so have been studying and writing haiku. That's the thing! Haiku is not just an abstract or object of study, but students actually compose haiku. By contrast, because of the cultural cold war going on between Korea and Japan, most Koreans do not know what a haiku is. And yet every American student that has completed the third or fourth grade knows what a haiku is and has actually written a haiku or two.
I am dismayed that in the Korean educational system, sijo are portrayed as an ancient and dead form. The classics are taught but new sijo are not assigned, not written. Sijo is a dead form in Korea, but it's a living form in America!
It's a strange question, but I often ask college students and sometimes some college graduates if they wrote a haiku when they were in school. They almost always say yes (some can't remember anything that far back), and then I've asked them if they can repeat the haiku they wrote back then. Most cannot. But once in a while one will say well, it was about my dog, or about summer, and then it's interesting to see some people pull their haiku from their memory and recite it.
The Korean saying to express jealousy is: "my cousin bought some land, and I got a stomach ache." Well, I have a stomach ache about the Japanese culture's success in getting haiku planted so firmly in American culture. As a Korean studies specialist, I hope to see sijo, as a representative of Korean culture similarly planted in American culture. It's starting to happen.
Last week I shared with this readership some of the prize-winning sijo from the Sejong Cultural Society's contest. I found myself focusing on the winners of the "Adult Division", now in its second year. The adult division, as you would expect, shows mature and moving sijo, as I indicated last week. But the student's sijo are in some ways as remarkably mature and moving.
I mentioned that most of those who enter and win the contest in recent years and been non-Korean-Americans, but one of the best poems this time was a Korean-American who writes of her experience as a young Korean-American. Her name is Esther Kim from Maryland. Her poem:
"In Middle School"
I thought that beauty meant
discarding my Korean self.
I wished to leave my yellow skin,
but my umma comforted me;
she said, "Yellow is the color
of forsythias, bright and beautiful."
A similar poem dealing with ethnicity of a Black American's experience was submitted by Briaja Brooks from Cleveland, Ohio.
My skin is light, my eyes are hazel and my hair is blonde
I'm one of a kind, But it is not what it seems
I am just as colored as my mother's blueberry black skin.
A student from Albany, New York, Riley Taylor, in her bio that accompanies the winning sijo on the Sejong Cultural Society's webpage explains that her older sister, who was born prematurely, but whose goal in life is to be a nurse in the neo-natal ward is the inspiration for her poem.
Inhale, exhale, healthy newborns;
a mother watches through the glass.
Angelic little humans:
so precious, so fortunate.
She then walks to her fading newborn,
why is this life so unfair?
Young students write in mature terms beyond their years. Another poem of life and mortality was written by Trace Morrisson from Hartland, Wisconsin, who is planning to enlist in the Air Force and hopes to be a pilot. Given his own plans, his poem about a serviceman coming home carries a powerful impact.
"Coming home"
Air felt lighter, food tasted better, music more upbeat, sun brighter.
Not seeing my brother in two years, I remained eager.
But he came home in a plane, in a pine box, covered in a flag.
It is my hope that you have enjoyed these poems, and that you can join the movement and help spread the good word about sijo.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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I've written several articles about sijo in the past year, and during that time I see several signs that there is more interest in America in the sijo as a widely-known, widely-practiced poetic form. Why have I termed an interest in sijo as a "movement"? It's because I see us in Korean Studies in the U.S. as playing "catch-up ball," in regard to catching up to the popularity of haiku.
Japanese haiku is well-known in America, and it is well-practiced ― meaning that all students in the last 30 years or so have been studying and writing haiku. That's the thing! Haiku is not just an abstract or object of study, but students actually compose haiku. By contrast, because of the cultural cold war going on between Korea and Japan, most Koreans do not know what a haiku is. And yet every American student that has completed the third or fourth grade knows what a haiku is and has actually written a haiku or two.
I am dismayed that in the Korean educational system, sijo are portrayed as an ancient and dead form. The classics are taught but new sijo are not assigned, not written. Sijo is a dead form in Korea, but it's a living form in America!
It's a strange question, but I often ask college students and sometimes some college graduates if they wrote a haiku when they were in school. They almost always say yes (some can't remember anything that far back), and then I've asked them if they can repeat the haiku they wrote back then. Most cannot. But once in a while one will say well, it was about my dog, or about summer, and then it's interesting to see some people pull their haiku from their memory and recite it.
The Korean saying to express jealousy is: "my cousin bought some land, and I got a stomach ache." Well, I have a stomach ache about the Japanese culture's success in getting haiku planted so firmly in American culture. As a Korean studies specialist, I hope to see sijo, as a representative of Korean culture similarly planted in American culture. It's starting to happen.
Last week I shared with this readership some of the prize-winning sijo from the Sejong Cultural Society's contest. I found myself focusing on the winners of the "Adult Division", now in its second year. The adult division, as you would expect, shows mature and moving sijo, as I indicated last week. But the student's sijo are in some ways as remarkably mature and moving.
I mentioned that most of those who enter and win the contest in recent years and been non-Korean-Americans, but one of the best poems this time was a Korean-American who writes of her experience as a young Korean-American. Her name is Esther Kim from Maryland. Her poem:
"In Middle School"
I thought that beauty meant
discarding my Korean self.
I wished to leave my yellow skin,
but my umma comforted me;
she said, "Yellow is the color
of forsythias, bright and beautiful."
A similar poem dealing with ethnicity of a Black American's experience was submitted by Briaja Brooks from Cleveland, Ohio.
My skin is light, my eyes are hazel and my hair is blonde
I'm one of a kind, But it is not what it seems
I am just as colored as my mother's blueberry black skin.
A student from Albany, New York, Riley Taylor, in her bio that accompanies the winning sijo on the Sejong Cultural Society's webpage explains that her older sister, who was born prematurely, but whose goal in life is to be a nurse in the neo-natal ward is the inspiration for her poem.
Inhale, exhale, healthy newborns;
a mother watches through the glass.
Angelic little humans:
so precious, so fortunate.
She then walks to her fading newborn,
why is this life so unfair?
Young students write in mature terms beyond their years. Another poem of life and mortality was written by Trace Morrisson from Hartland, Wisconsin, who is planning to enlist in the Air Force and hopes to be a pilot. Given his own plans, his poem about a serviceman coming home carries a powerful impact.
"Coming home"
Air felt lighter, food tasted better, music more upbeat, sun brighter.
Not seeing my brother in two years, I remained eager.
But he came home in a plane, in a pine box, covered in a flag.
It is my hope that you have enjoyed these poems, and that you can join the movement and help spread the good word about sijo.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
