EJ Koh
Thank You, I Am Sorry
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Dear EJ, lets start with two magic words: Thank You, I Am Sorry - What an interesting title! How did you decide to go with that? Why? I often underestimate these words. Thank you. I am sorry. Though I can’t recall a time I regretted saying them, why would I hesitate to say them generously, frequently? In Korea, there are words we use in place of these: Did you eat? Are you hungry? To them, we say: Yes I ate a little, but I can eat. These exchanges translate into: I am sorry. And: Thank you. If there is power in words, then such words must be used over and over again. With friends, family, even strangers, and especially ourselves. Who got you interested in writing? |
Photography by Jerad Knudson
Make up by Nic Poppe from Tousled |
My teachers come to mind.
Mrs. Dunleavy from the third grade found the spelling tests I trashed in my desk because I didn’t know how to spell words like kite or banana. She was nice about it but I didn’t go to school for a week I think.
Mrs. Guinan from fourth grade told my mother that I was definitively below average. My mother cried while washing the dishes.
But the English teacher whose name I can’t recall, from Davis Senior High—she had big poofy hair and her son was a celloist in the same class—she loved a piece I wrote about my television box giving birth to sarcasm that I adopted and raised as my own.
I didn’t know it then, but each of my teachers slowly, in their way, showed me how to find my own into writing.
“Going up the water, you become more than you could in one life. And that is worth something to every man and woman—enough to write a poem, to re-write it, to read it, to sleep against it, and to shred it into pieces again and again.” Top ten lists sort of don’t work in poetry but who are the top ten poets you adore?
Don Mee Choi, Mark Strand, Kim Myung Won, Nicanor Parra, Susan Davis, Ko Un, Mary Szybist, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Timothy Yu, Eugene Gloria, and the list goes on.
Many of the poets I’ve worked with I admire—many I am lucky enough to call friends.
“Writing was a spiritual surrender, a bar of moral responsibility.” When did you realize that writing was your spiritual surrender? Why is there a need for moral responsibility?
As a poet, I want my life to reflect poetry – I want to be observant, remain humble, and awed by everyday things. There are poets that aren’t stolid, bereaved, and wandering. Poets who lead their lives with polite precision, and yet, whimsy (Sarah Gambito, Timothy Yu, Jane Wong).
In my poetry, I seek to write about things uncomfortable to mention around the dinner table. But amongst the variety of form and language and content, what matters most is that the poet surrenders herself—gets herself to that place of sincerity not frequented by others. Poetry is, in this sense, a moral responsibility.
Mrs. Dunleavy from the third grade found the spelling tests I trashed in my desk because I didn’t know how to spell words like kite or banana. She was nice about it but I didn’t go to school for a week I think.
Mrs. Guinan from fourth grade told my mother that I was definitively below average. My mother cried while washing the dishes.
But the English teacher whose name I can’t recall, from Davis Senior High—she had big poofy hair and her son was a celloist in the same class—she loved a piece I wrote about my television box giving birth to sarcasm that I adopted and raised as my own.
I didn’t know it then, but each of my teachers slowly, in their way, showed me how to find my own into writing.
“Going up the water, you become more than you could in one life. And that is worth something to every man and woman—enough to write a poem, to re-write it, to read it, to sleep against it, and to shred it into pieces again and again.” Top ten lists sort of don’t work in poetry but who are the top ten poets you adore?
Don Mee Choi, Mark Strand, Kim Myung Won, Nicanor Parra, Susan Davis, Ko Un, Mary Szybist, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Timothy Yu, Eugene Gloria, and the list goes on.
Many of the poets I’ve worked with I admire—many I am lucky enough to call friends.
“Writing was a spiritual surrender, a bar of moral responsibility.” When did you realize that writing was your spiritual surrender? Why is there a need for moral responsibility?
As a poet, I want my life to reflect poetry – I want to be observant, remain humble, and awed by everyday things. There are poets that aren’t stolid, bereaved, and wandering. Poets who lead their lives with polite precision, and yet, whimsy (Sarah Gambito, Timothy Yu, Jane Wong).
In my poetry, I seek to write about things uncomfortable to mention around the dinner table. But amongst the variety of form and language and content, what matters most is that the poet surrenders herself—gets herself to that place of sincerity not frequented by others. Poetry is, in this sense, a moral responsibility.
Tiger Balm |
Doom |
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Yellow pears, basketfuls, relate to distance between the you and the me – mu. Startling up as you walk goosefooted through my door. I am heavy. I feel the continent under me. I am 99 percent hydrocarbon. Through me, the cosmos can look at itself. Come to the sink. Let me wash your feet. Why do you call me embalmer when my job is time mechanic? Come with me. I know which home takes the turning, which mind washes in hot water. I am the shelter you need – needle-threaded with the truth of dark wood. |
A man who drinks between my long white columns
tastes history: the first time I touched my breasts, then below, when I changed into an ocean from a dam-- my belly a sculptor of people, fed by the milk-springs of my mountains. The smell of coins mixed with something sweet, like corn, metallic savory of the hard youth I lived while washing my stained underwear in a bucket on the street —hanging on lines that rocked above my head like a nursery. The coloring both lightest pink and hardest rose, freckled where women of my family have freckles. The shade matching the sort of my lips. When my mouth is dry, I too am elsewhere. How about the shape—the suckle, the cinch, the prissy, pretentious and shy until held by the eyes. Soft as the bottom of fruit, bruises; hairs like the hairs inside a bite of mango. A man who places his ear on me hears the roar of his blood surging through him. His tongue speaks until my own speaks the same cooing language. We must enact what it means to live off one another. |
* * *
“I am no engineer or politician. I am not even a medical professional but a deeply indebted academic.” What would the world be without indebted academics who are amazing writers who save themselves and others?
That world might be…intensely productive. Maybe it would be without love.
I’m not sure, but somehow, I get a sense that we are forgetting what it is to love—to forgive, not once, but a hundred times, and if needed, a thousand.
Poets, authors, academics guard what we cannot forget in our society and culture. Such artists let us see where we must go next.
Who is the writer who saved your life, whose works felt better than anything else you had encountered?
Last month I was hiding out by the Gihon River during my residency at the Vermont Studio Center working on my book. I was reading Beryl Markham’s memoir West with the Night. I was looking up at the sky, at the river, at her memoir. It was a powerful read because I questioned what I hoped to find across the country or at the completion of my own book. I learned, maybe Markham was not admired by everyone, but she lived for the sake of living. She did it breathlessly.
You translate from Korean and Japanese. Who are your favorite authors in both languages?
Kim Myung Won’s poetry book Living Through Love and Osamu Dazai’s novel No Longer Human.
What does it mean to have the power of interpreting feelings, emotions, and thoughts of people from different cultures?
I must practice yielding great amounts of imagination, empathy, and risk (because one must take leaps and change words simply because it doesn’t feel right). Since the translation is my interpretation, it’s also a different piece of work from the original. So there are innumerable translations possible for any one piece. But imagination, empathy, and risk can be used to embody the original, and then, leap away from it.
Other than writing, do you follow other kinds of art?
I’m enamored by modern art and sculptures. Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti (whose Palace at 4AM is tattooed on my right arm). I can gaze into Monet’s Water Lilies for hours.
In the Vancouver museum, I saw a large, old white Korean vase that had been painted repeatedly white, as if it might become whiter with every layer, so there’s this grainy, pale, wet texture. And it subdued me.
Being around art other than writing is sometimes the thing I need to continue.
Other than arts, do you worry about politics or fields that might not be easily associated with what you do on a daily basis?
I think about hatred sometimes. Hatred that is visible in conversation, in the news, and at times, in the office. I had trouble understanding that if hatred is a cycle, then how can you interrupt its great momentum? After all, isn’t it sensible to react to hatred with hatred?
When I was in Vermont, by the river, under the sky, I came to the realization that everyone I saw passing by was me and I was them. I am you as you are me.
If I want to stop your hatred, I must first stop mine. When I stop, there is nothing feeding that cycle. I see this in my parents and their trauma growing up in South Korea where violence from Japanese soldiers was normal. I see them stop their hatred over the years, and I see the times in which that is hard to do because of their personal losses. But we do it, because we are all human and we are all each other. We forgive, forgive, forgive.
That world might be…intensely productive. Maybe it would be without love.
I’m not sure, but somehow, I get a sense that we are forgetting what it is to love—to forgive, not once, but a hundred times, and if needed, a thousand.
Poets, authors, academics guard what we cannot forget in our society and culture. Such artists let us see where we must go next.
Who is the writer who saved your life, whose works felt better than anything else you had encountered?
Last month I was hiding out by the Gihon River during my residency at the Vermont Studio Center working on my book. I was reading Beryl Markham’s memoir West with the Night. I was looking up at the sky, at the river, at her memoir. It was a powerful read because I questioned what I hoped to find across the country or at the completion of my own book. I learned, maybe Markham was not admired by everyone, but she lived for the sake of living. She did it breathlessly.
You translate from Korean and Japanese. Who are your favorite authors in both languages?
Kim Myung Won’s poetry book Living Through Love and Osamu Dazai’s novel No Longer Human.
What does it mean to have the power of interpreting feelings, emotions, and thoughts of people from different cultures?
I must practice yielding great amounts of imagination, empathy, and risk (because one must take leaps and change words simply because it doesn’t feel right). Since the translation is my interpretation, it’s also a different piece of work from the original. So there are innumerable translations possible for any one piece. But imagination, empathy, and risk can be used to embody the original, and then, leap away from it.
Other than writing, do you follow other kinds of art?
I’m enamored by modern art and sculptures. Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti (whose Palace at 4AM is tattooed on my right arm). I can gaze into Monet’s Water Lilies for hours.
In the Vancouver museum, I saw a large, old white Korean vase that had been painted repeatedly white, as if it might become whiter with every layer, so there’s this grainy, pale, wet texture. And it subdued me.
Being around art other than writing is sometimes the thing I need to continue.
Other than arts, do you worry about politics or fields that might not be easily associated with what you do on a daily basis?
I think about hatred sometimes. Hatred that is visible in conversation, in the news, and at times, in the office. I had trouble understanding that if hatred is a cycle, then how can you interrupt its great momentum? After all, isn’t it sensible to react to hatred with hatred?
When I was in Vermont, by the river, under the sky, I came to the realization that everyone I saw passing by was me and I was them. I am you as you are me.
If I want to stop your hatred, I must first stop mine. When I stop, there is nothing feeding that cycle. I see this in my parents and their trauma growing up in South Korea where violence from Japanese soldiers was normal. I see them stop their hatred over the years, and I see the times in which that is hard to do because of their personal losses. But we do it, because we are all human and we are all each other. We forgive, forgive, forgive.
Korean War
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You are the North and I am the South.
My tanks aim for you. I shoot you a thousand times. Your missiles launch into my oceans. You raise monuments to scorn me. You eat clams cooked in gasoline. I drink milk and cider. I raise skyscrapers of businessmen. You build towers of empty rooms. You refuse me from where I am most loved. I clean a wintermelon of its guts and seeds cling to my wet fingers. Aren’t you the North, and I the South? Phantom, disease, you’re trembling. There is no patience in my country. There is no safest place in yours. The heart stiffens at the sound of church bells. I wonder where you sleep now. You are the North and I am the South. I cannot see the sky beyond the ceiling. I cannot forgive you for cutting me out. I see all my ground, and you, walking over me—before you were the North and I was the South. A photographer captures a mass execution on film. Men and women tied to posts, blindfolded—Korean spies. The man nearest to the camera fiddles with his blindfold until it rests comfortably over his eyes. |
How do you feel towards social media? How does it affect your work?
Social media I use to share upcoming events and publications. Sometimes I will tell a quick story about how I explained what a blow job was to my fifty-five year old mother. But social media doesn’t affect my work. Except that when I am working, I am almost certainly away from social media, quieting the noise from outside so that what I write comes only from the inside.
A dream from this morning?
This morning, I dreamt that I was walking through a store aisle in Japan looking at kitchen accessories. It was a sterile environment with clinical instruments. I woke up unhinged.
Sometimes, the most horrifying dreams mean nothing at all. But I remember it, and I think, by the time I eat my breakfast, it will surely be gone.
After all, just as feelings of satisfaction and joy are gifts, so must be the feeling of inexplicable grief.
Social media I use to share upcoming events and publications. Sometimes I will tell a quick story about how I explained what a blow job was to my fifty-five year old mother. But social media doesn’t affect my work. Except that when I am working, I am almost certainly away from social media, quieting the noise from outside so that what I write comes only from the inside.
A dream from this morning?
This morning, I dreamt that I was walking through a store aisle in Japan looking at kitchen accessories. It was a sterile environment with clinical instruments. I woke up unhinged.
Sometimes, the most horrifying dreams mean nothing at all. But I remember it, and I think, by the time I eat my breakfast, it will surely be gone.
After all, just as feelings of satisfaction and joy are gifts, so must be the feeling of inexplicable grief.
