Perhaps there is one poem in Ko Un’s collection, Flowers of a Moment, that both an evolutionary anthropology student and a South Dakota horseman can enjoy:
*
We can never again speed
on four legs
over those plains
and ridges where the mist has cleared
Ah, the curse of homo erectus
*
No rhyme, no meter, but it strikes home for me…it’s how I feel each time I overlook the Missouri, headed west.
I like Zen poetry. I don’t really know what that phrase means for sure—Zen poetry—but I totally dig haiku, and have thoroughly enjoyed Korean Zen poet Ko Un‘s Flowers of a Moment in fits and starts since I found it on the Bargain Books rack at the U bookstore.
My rhythmic rhyming friend Jinglebob would not call this poetry. It’s form is formlessness, I suppose. Spacing, punctuation, subject matter—unpredictable. The poet finds unexpected hints of universal truths and shared emotion in mundane occurrences and natural surroundings. Beauty in simplicity—a sentence or turn of phrase set apart from its surroundings to make you see in a new way.
Gibberish you say? My “review” or this “poetry”?
I wonder what makes Ko Un a poet. Is anything lost in the translation from Korean to English? Or is it like a photographer acquaintance of mine, who, when I asked why he was considered a pro when both of us shoot dozens of photos to get one perfect shot, said something like, “The difference is, I know when I’ve got it.”
Whereas I generally had to wait until the prints came back to know if the film contained anything worthwhile…
Perhaps that’s the difference: perhaps the poet knows before he shares his poetry which words, which images will resonate, and throws the rest away. Whereas I’m just guessing.
A colleague of mine stopped me a while back to loan me a book I hadn’t asked for. “It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said. “It starts with this old man meeting his dead mother seated on a park bench. It’s kind of a novel, kind of a memoir. I don’t know why, but I thought you might like to read it.”
The book was Here Is Where We Meet: a fiction by John Berger. That’s what she said, or something very like it. And I can’t characterize it much better. I can say that I’m glad I read it. It’s relatively short, beautifully written, intriguing start to finish, with amazing detail about history, anthropology, art, music, and food. I hesitate to recommend it, because I can’t even describe it, but I’d give it 3.5 to 4 stars (out of 5), with the caveat that I’m almost certain it’s going to stick with me and grow on me over time.
It is not a book for young readers, but not because it’s “adult” in the popular sense (although it has a few moments). It’s a mature book. I’m sure if I were to read it again in a decade or two (or had I grown up and come of age during the two World Wars) I would take different things from it. Perhaps I’ll read it again one day.
A few lines struck me as particularly thought-provoking or beautiful. I’m sharing primarily to not lose them when I return the book:
Finally, here is a review that captures my impressions fairly well.
Blogger’s Note: My friend, children’s author Jacqui Robbins (yes, the Jacqui Robbins, and don’t act so surprised!) posted this little gem, which got me thinking about when my own kids began to notice differences in people.
Let me say up front: racism is a real problem in the world. As a result, we have complex reactions to race — we notice differences between people quite naturally, and then (especially as adults) we sometimes overcompensate for our reactions. We react so strongly at times that we can confuse our children by overthinking it. This is how I remember one early incident.
Several years ago, Jodi and I took the older boys to a high-school basketball game. Brendan and Gabe were preschoolers, and we were seated in the crowded home bleachers. The visiting team was from a nearby city, and had players “of multiple ethnicities” on the floor. All one of the starters on the home team, the Warriors, were white — and when that one minority player hit a nice jump shot early in the game, the crowd cheered wildly.
“Who made a basket?” asked Brendan.
“Number five,” I said. “Do you see him?”
Brendan went down the steps a ways to get a better look at the scrambling players. “You mean the brown one?” he called back.
The crowd around us matched the makeup of the starting five: Mostly white, except one family seated across the aisle from us. Jodi and I glanced at them in sudden embarrassment. They didn’t seem to have heard.
“There he is,” I said, pointing. “Number five!”
Brendan craned his neck, then looked back at me. “The brown one!” he said. “That’s what I said!”
“I wanna see th’ brown one!” yelled Gabe.
“Listen,” I rasped as Jodi glanced across the aisle. “His name is Charlie. You guys can cheer for him by name. Cheer for Charlie.”
They did, and after a while, the family across the aisle noticed and smiled proudly. And I started to think: The boys didn’t mean anything by it; they’re just kids, pointing out the most obvious distinguishing characteristic. I laughed at myself. To think that I was worried about a color…
The cheer squad chanted, “Here we go, Warriors, here we go!”
“Let’s go, Warriors!” I shouted, and Bren repeated, “Let’s go, Warriors!”
“Who is ‘Warriors’?” asked Gabe.
“That’s the team we want to win,” said Bren. “The ones in white.”
The other team was pressing hard. “Let’s go, Warriors!” yelled Brendan.
“Yeah,” said Gabe. “Let’s go, whites!”
I was a 105-lb. third-string safety on our freshman football squad in high school — scrawny, slow, with a size-8 head that made me cast a shadow like a keyhole. I got to rotate in and out with two other skinny little guys at the end of lopsided games. I didn’t play much.
Last game of the season, we were playing our hated rivals, Reed City. They had a great freshman squad, and by the end of the first half, we were down 60-0. At half time, coach told the starters, “Well, guys, we’re gonna give the rest of the boys some playing time.” We went back out, and me and the other little guys started our three-man rotation at safety, switching out every few plays.
I was on the sidelines when a stocky third-stringer who was in at noseguard, came off the field looking shell-shocked. “Coach!” he panted. “You gotta get me out of there! I’m getting killed!”
I didn’t think about being 105 pounds of pencil lead. I said, “Coach, I’ll go in at noseguard!”
Coach shrugged. “Alright, Thorp! Stay low and plug a hole!”
I crouched at the line in front of a second-string linebacker half again bigger than me. “Thorp!” he yelled. “What are you doing?!”
Too late to answer. On the snap, I scrambled forward on all fours, looked up, and saw a black jersey and the ball. I jumped on it.
My first sack — heck, my first tackle of the year! They had to check the roster to announce my name. The backups gave up just 12 points in the second half. (Admittedly, Reed City sat its starters, too…) I played defensive line the rest of my high school career. Never started, but I never forgot, either…
Stay low and plug a hole. Words to live by.
