Even to many Americans familiar with haiku, the Japanese poem in three lines, the sijo, the native Korean poem in three lines, may come across as esoteric. Such unfamiliarity with sijo is less due to some impenetrable complexity of the Korean poetic form than its lack of exposure in America.
Thwarting that trend and introducing sijo to Americans is one ardent goal espoused by Professor David R. McCann, Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature at Harvard and the Director of Harvard’s Korea Institute.
Over the course of two days, Prof. McCann did just that; introduce sijo to an American audience. The Korea Institute hosted the first-ever Harvard-Manhae Sijo Festival at the Thompson Room in Harvard’s Barker Center on May 15 and 16, with poetry readings, musical performances, and academic presentations.
Prof. McCann read his own sijo creations. A Night in Andong, a witty piece with an animated content, is about a tour of back-alley wine shops and two grunting pigs.
Prof. McCann read the poem in Korean, which elicited approving laughter and a warm applause ensued. He delivered the sijo with a healthy pause in between the syllables, which seemed to buttress the form and content of this particular poem.
Originally sung, sijo is a native Korean verse form written in three long lines. “The brevity of the form and the expressiveness associated with their origins in song make them an excellent vehicle for turning the experiences of our daily lives into poetry,” said Professor Bruce Fulton of the University of British Columbia.
Sijo has “an opening, a development, and a twist, so much like that in life,” said one of the members from Every Other Thursday Poets. “It was breathtaking and left me speechless. I was dumbstruck,” said one of the attendees.
Sponsored by the Manhae Foundation and the Sunshik Min Endowment for the Advancement of Korean Literature, the special cultural event filled the room with energy and excitement. The audience was treated to the whole gamut of the poetic form; from the traditional form to works by contemporary sijo poets to performances of sijo in traditional musical setting with the kayagum (12-string instrument like a zither) and taegum (wind instrument).
The voices of Bancroft High School Creative Writing Club (previously videotaped), Every Other Thursday Poets, and Heinz Insu Fenkl of State University of New York represented the various microcosmic representations of the broader world contained in sijo—in English.
Professor Yongmin Kwon of Seoul National University said, “Japan’s work and efforts to popularize haiku has worked, so we feel there is a great potential in globalizing sijo.” On the second of the two-day event, Prof. Kwon gave a special lecture about prospects for the modernization of Korean poetry along with Professor McCann.
“I’ve noticed on the internet that there are sijo clubs in other parts of the continent, such as Toronto and Berkeley. What I’m hoping is to connect the networks of people interested in sijo,” Professor McCann remarked. “Youtube set-up on line, reading their poems, and sharing it that way is one of the ways,” he said with a disaffecting smile that failed to conceal his serious intent.
Prof. McCann revealed his interest in holding similar sijo events in Korea with some poets from the U.S. visiting Korea to acquire a sense of the rhythms of life in Korea and hear the language. He further added, “I hope to visit some schools in this area and introduce the sijo form to students. I think it really has some strong appeal.”
With Professor McCann’s recent release of a series of English translations of Korean poetry, this festival as a platform for spreading the word on sijo looks promising. The event apparently won over new admirers of sijo and demonstrated that the universal appeal of poetry can break down both ethnic and information barriers.
