Tap Dancing on the Roof (4 page)

Laundry

I love sitting among the heaps of warm, soft, clean-smelling clothes.
My mom folds. I try to match socks, imagining them in Heaven:

Cries of surprise, then celebration! Joyful reunions!

Shower

Hurry, wash fast, sister's used up most of the hot water again.
Soap, scrub, rinse. Rub and wrap. Hair shining, skin glowing, smelling fine:
From a tiled cocoon, a butterfly with terrycloth wings.

Bedtime Snacks

Good: Cookies and one glass of milk
for two dunkers—me and my dad.

Better: Popcorn, a video,
and sleeping bags stuffed with friends.

Best: Blanket pulled up over my head—
book, flashlight, and chocolate bar.

Brushing

Whenever I forget, my dad makes me get out of my warm bed.
The bathroom light is too bright. I squint, squeeze out too much toothpaste.
I wish I could skip it, just once.... Eshkoozh me, I can't shpeak jush now.

Day's End

All around, the volume turns down low.
The dark grows gently to fill
each room with peace, and me with sleep.
My mind slips out to play...

...in a world without walls.
Kaleidoscope ... Calliope ... Collage!

While many poets and readers expect "syllabic" verse forms like haiku and sijo in English to contain a specified number of syllables, the Asian tradition places more importance on the number of stresses. A haiku in Japanese has two stressed syllables in the first line, three in the second, and two in the third. Similarly, each line of a sijo in Korean has two halves, with three stresses in one half and four in the other.

Historical Background

Sijo-like poems were written as early as the sixth century B.C. Originally, they were songs with musical accompaniment, and some are still performed this way today. The songs often praised the beauty of the seasons.

Following the invention of the Korean alphabet
(hangul)
in 1446, the lyrics of such songs were written down, and sijo was eventually accepted as a poetic form. Because hangul is very easy to learn to read and write, these short poems soon became accessible and popular among both poets and readers.

The subject matter of sijo also expanded to encompass a wide range of topics. Unlike traditional haiku, which are limited to topics about nature, sijo are written about personal experience, relationships, and everyday moments, as well as depicting the natural world. Here is an example of a traditional sijo:

I like you, bamboo, for you are the truest of true friends.
When I was young, I made you into stilts and played on you.
Now you wait outside my window, until I need a walking stick.

Kim Kwang-uk (1580–1656)

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women who worked as singers and entertainers for the king and his court developed a tradition of sijo written about love and romance. The body of work created by these courtesans—many of them anonymous—makes sijo one of the few poetic forms with a strong legacy of women poets.

Koreans are proud of sijo's long history and popular appeal. It is a form that I think deserves to be more widely used and better known.

For Further Reading

The only collection of sijo for young readers in English that I know of is Virginia Olson Baron's
Sunset in a Spider Web
(New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1974; out of print).

Other collections:

Contogenis, Constantine, and Wolhee Choe.
Songs of the Kisaeng.
Rochester, N.Y.: BOA Editions, 1997.

Kim, Jaihiun, trans.
Classical Korean Poetry.
Fremont, Calif.; Asian Humanities Press, 1994.

Ko, Won, ed.
Contemporary Korean Poetry.
Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1970.

Lee, Peter H., ed. and trans.
Anthology of Korean Poetry.
New York: John Day Co., 1964.

Rutt, Richard, ed. and trans.
The Bamboo Grove.
Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1998.

Finally, a fascinating and extensive explanation of the justification for the five-line structure for sijo in English is presented in one of the more recent collections of sijo available in the U.S.: O'Rourke, Kevin, ed. and trans.
The Book of Korean Shijo.
Cambridge and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002.

Some Tips For Writing Your Own Sijo

If you choose to write in the three-line format, each line should contain about fourteen to sixteen syllables. Some writers might find it easier to use the six-line format, where each line should contain seven or eight syllables.

Advanced poets can try working with the stress count instead of with syllables. In this case, each line should have two halves, with three stresses in one half and four in the other (either 3 / 4 or 4 / 3 ). An even more sophisticated structure is the five-line format, in which the fourth line is always exactly three syllables. This structure attempts to echo in English the rhythm of traditional sijo, which were sung. (For further explication, please see O'Rourke, as cited in For Further Reading.)

Start with a single image or idea. Try to make the first line a complete unit of thought. This is easiest to do by writing it as one sentence.

In the second line, develop the image further by adding details, description, or examples. Again, think of this line as a single unit or sentence.

Most poets regard the last line—the "twist"—as the hardest part of writing sijo. I try to think of where the poem would go logically if I continued to develop the idea of the first two lines. Once I've figured that out, I write something that goes in the opposite direction—or at least "turns a corner." For example, in "Breakfast," the logical extension would be another line about eating. Instead, the poem ends with an image of sleeping.

Sijo are traditionally not titled, but modern poets often title their poems, as I do mine.

Sijo can rhyme or not, as the writer chooses. "Art Class" is an example of sijo using end rhymes. "October" and "From the Window" contain both internal and end rhymes.

I hope the sijo in this collection will inspire readers to try writing their own.