More American sijo

By Mark Peterson

Last week, I wrote about high school students in America writing sijo in English ― and I gave several examples. That point was that sijo, basically a dead form in Korea, is alive and well in America.

It's truly sad that most Koreans have learned the half-dozen Korean masterpieces, but no more and think the sijo is an archaic form, a dead form. For high school, and even most college students, that is true. There are, of course, some poets who write sijo today. You can find some sijo written today, and some publications, but sijo is not taught as a living art form in Korea. This is unfortunate.

In America, sijo is starting to be taught, not only as a classic Korean art form, but as a poetic form that can be used today. In English.

Last week I gave several examples from the Sejong Cultural Society's webpage (sejongculturalsociety.org) of contest winners from secondary schools all across America. The contest has gone on now for 11 years. In the early years, there were not many applicants, and most were Korean-Americans. Now there are over 1,000 applicants, and most, by 80 percent or 90 percent, are non-Korean-Americans. Sijo is starting to take hold in America.

Today I'll give you some examples of my college students original sijo. I require them, unlike the high school students who only write in English, to write their poems in both Korean and English ― they have to translate their own poems! Here I'll show you some of their poems, but only the English versions. And then if modesty does not prevail, I'll give you some of my own.

Here is one by Mark Sawyer, written as an undergraduate who was very much in love, and now a practicing MD, married to the women for whom he wrote the poem, and father of two young children. It's a love poem, untitled:

Winter snow falls from heaven,
but to melt in the spring sun
Autumn leaves drift down from trees,
revealing barren branches
But your love, springs forth unceasing,
from em'rald pools in your eyes

It's a beautiful poem that is in perfect conformity to sijo structure. I like the way he economizes on syllable count by making a contraction where one ususally does not ― "em'rald." It's really very clever. It also observes the three-line rule, by making it appear as six lines ― but it is really three lines with the second half of each line wrapped into an indented line.

Love poems are wonderful, loving, full of inspiration. Unless they are not! Here is a story of a love that failed, bitterly. I don't know if Brett Holden, the author, had experienced such heartbreak or whether he imagined it ― or maybe heard it from a friend, but the poem makes you want to cry?

I have not slept a single night in over a month running.
My mind still dwells on the moment that you left.
Will I ever be able to rid myself of you and your poisoning memory?

Mr. Holden submitted the poem with the extra spaces between the segments to emphasize that structural element. The content is the thing though. The bitterness of the heartbreak is captured in the awful phrase "poisoning memory" ― it's really very powerful.

Okay ― modesty will not prevail. I will give you a few of my own.

Here is one where I preach the thing I'm trying to say, about the need to teach sijo in American schools, within a sijo:

All students in the U.S.
learn haiku in their schools.
Three short lines, regular rhythm;
five, seven, five beats to the line.
Now sijo needs to be planted in the curriculum.
It's the next step for us to take.

This next one is a true story captured in a sijo, a piece of my own biography:

Marathon!, what a thrill
to train for and then to run.
Miles and miles of training
to reach an impossible goal.
Knee surgery!, and now that great goal
is just a distant memory.

Yes, it's true. I've run three marathons and several half-marathons, but knee surgery on both knees has brought those days to an end. Now it's cycling ― not so hard on the knees.

Well, these are examples of sijo in English ― they capture all kinds of human emotions and activities. The sijo is a living art form. Students and others write sijo in English. And now this is the gauntlet cast down at the feet of the Korean educational establishment. The challenge now is for Korea to revive its once-dead poetry, and start teaching living sijo once again.

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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