Poetry with a Twist

Linda Sue Park introduces U.S. students to an art form that originated in sixth-century B.C.E. Korea

Jennifer M. Brown, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 1/10/2008

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If you’re eager to expand your students’ knowledge of traditional forms of poetry, Linda Sue Park’s book of 27 sijo poems, Tap Dancing on the Roof (Clarion, 2007) may be just the ticket. Up to now, Park has primarily written novels—introducing young people to Korean history through titles such as her Newbery Medal-winning, A Single Shard (2001), and When My Name Was Keoko (2002, both Clarion).

With Tap Dancing, the author invites readers to experience a Korean tradition, one still honored in that country today. Park explains that sijo, when translated into English, generally consists of 3 lines, each with 14-16 syllables. The first line of the poem introduces the subject, the second line develops it, and the third offers a twist. While sijo shares some similarities to haiku, it diverges from it in a few significant respects, including a wider range of topics, and the surprise in the last line.

How did you discover sijo?
It was not a form I knew as a child, I found it as an adult.

The first four books I wrote were historical novels set in Korea. I had to do a lot of research for those books because [growing up in the Midwest] I was learning mostly American history. I knew a lot about Korean culture, the food, the holidays—but not a lot about Korean history. I read everything I could get my hands on to research those novels. Some of the books I hauled home were books of poetry.

The twist in the last line is one of the important ways in which sijo differs from haiku. Is that the most challenging part of writing this form?
[The last line] is definitely the most challenging part of writing sijo. With classical haiku, you’re supposed to be able to hold an image of nature and an idea of the human condition together in one thought—that connection is often made in the last line of the poem. I call [the last line in sijo] a twist, but [it is often called] “the turn.”

Did you find that once you began writing these poems it was hard to stop?
There was a time when, for everything I saw or did, I’d sit down and write a sijo about it. For me, writing is a way to learn about something. I was trying to learn about sijo, and of course reading about it, but writing these poems is one of the best ways to appreciate how deceptively simple they are. Like haiku, they look easy, but the good ones are hard to write.

Did you come up with the pairings—such as placing “Overnight” on the same spread as “Vanishing Act,” both having to do with the transformative quality of snow? Or the close observations of nature in the positioning of “From the Window” and “Crocuses”?
Originally I divided the collection into two sections, “inside” and “outside” poems. “Inside” was structured as a child’s day, and “outside” took readers through the year. At some point my editor asked me if I was married to this [structure], or could I change it?

I loosely kept those time frames: “Breakfast” opens the collection, [“Day’s End”] closes the book. I kept the [seasonal] structure, interweaving those poems. When I handed the book back to my editor, I said I would be comfortable with whatever the illustrator decided to do. I am in awe of illustrators. I hand them boring white typewritten pages, and they turn them into something really, really special.

You mention in your author’s note that women who entertained the king and his court wrote sijo back in the 16th and 17th centuries. Was that a surprising discovery?
On one level, it didn’t surprise me because if you think of recorded human history as we know it, you know that there were women who had interests in sculpture, in artwork, in writing. Though they were not encouraged to express them, they would have found a way somehow—such as women writing or painting under men’s names.

In my book, Seesaw Girl (Clarion, 1999), I gave [the character Jade Blossom] the desire to paint even though it was something only men [of the 17th century] did. Prior to the 18th century, there’s just one [Korean] woman whose paintings are signed, and she was a courtier, with a very high position in the Korean court—there were women who found a way. That must be true of every age and era.… To have a form with a legacy of known women poets was very exciting to me.

What do you hope students will gain from your collection of poetry?
René [Saldaña, a young adult author and teacher of children’s literature] told me that he was using the book with his classes, and that he was excited about [it] because it added something to what was “American.” He said, “I’m telling students, ‘Do you see how [Park] is teaching us how to be American, she’s putting to use every bit of her American-ness, in this one book, a Korean poetry form, but [there’s] nothing Korean [in the content].’ ”

Hear Linda Sue Park pronounce some of her character's names

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