By Mark Peterson
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Years ago, when teaching sijo in my university pre-modern literature class, I would ask if students knew haiku. Then they would respond that they had learned, and written, haiku in high school. As the years went by, I found students were learning haiku earlier and earlier in school ― now they study haiku in the third or fourth grade. There are numerous books of haiku poetry and countless websites on haiku. Truly haiku has become a part of American culture.
There is an old Korean saying, "My cousin bought some land and I got a stomachache." The meaning may not be apparent; it expresses jealousy ― feeling envy to the point of pain for the success of another. That's the way I feel when I think of my desire to see sijo planted as firmly in American education and culture.
My desire to see sijo taught in America is not without foundation ― it's starting to happen. There are several schools that are teaching sijo, often as a follow-on to a study of haiku. There is evidence on YouTube ― several teachers have posted lessons on how they teach sijo in their schools.
One key motivation for many schools is the annual sijo contest held online sponsored by the Sejong Cultural Society based in Chicago. The contest has been held for 11 years and has grown to over 1,000 entrants each year. At the outset, most of the applicants were Korean-American, but in recent years Korean-Americans are a small percentage compared with the numbers of non-Korean-Americans that enter the contest.
The Sejong Cultural Society has a website that records the sijo contest winners over the last 11 years ― sejongculturalsociety.org. The winners, first, second and third place, and several honorable mentions, are listed with their poems. They cover all kinds of topics ― and here is where sijo has a broader appeal, and broader variety of topics, compared to haiku that tend to be limited, not always, but generally, to topics of nature. And the sijo is fuller in its expression and covers more details and emotion. The study of sijo is a natural partner, from the perspective of the American school, of the Japanese haiku.
Sijo can be introduced as the "next step" ― a poetic form that comes from Korea, the country next door to Japan, that is also a short form, three-line poem, but which has a format that is just a little longer and adds more variation to what the students learn with the haiku.
To illustrate the difference (and since most Korean readers are not familiar with haiku) let me give a few examples. This is considered a classic by a famous writer, Basho.
A silent old pond
A frog suddenly jumps in
The sound of a splash
My favorite sijo was written by Jeong Mong-ju who, in 1388, was invited to join in creating a new dynasty at the fall of Goryeo and the founding of Joseon. He was a loyal Confucian scholar-official, who, out of loyalty, could not turn his back on the Goryeo King even though he knew he would die if he refused to join in the coup d'etat. So he said:
Though I die, and die again; though I die one hundred times,
After my bones have turned to dust, whether my soul lives on or not,
My red heart, forever loyal to my King, will never fade away.
To jump to the present, here is a poem written by an American high school student, titled "Emma":
My new dog, little Emma, a gift to us from the heavens.
My aunt passed, stupid cancer, my mom distraught. Everyone muted.
I can look into Emma's eyes, she's still here, on four paws.
We hope to see sijo grow in popularity and value to where sijo is as well-established in America as haiku is today. And it's a reasonable goal. Sijo is the next step beyond haiku ― both are three lines, haiku is simpler, sijo just a little longer. Sijo can better tell the story, convey the emotion and express creativity.
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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