Courtesy of Pete Coco, photographer
Daniel Nemo: Having just finished reading The Corrected Version, I’d like to start by congratulating you. The book spoke to me with a new and wholehearted voice. Tell me, what was your experience growing up Asian American in the US? Did it take time to develop a sense of belonging?
Rosanna Oh: Thank you for your kind words. I could probably write a book in response to your first question. To me, the term “Asian American experience” is tricky to parse because it’s so broad—it encompasses such a vast continent of countries that share complex histories and relations with one another. One’s experience also depends on a multitude of factors including, but not limited to, religion, gender, sexuality, citizenship status, and socioeconomic status. My friend, who is fourth-generation Chinese American on one parent’s side, grew up in a predominantly Chinese American neighborhood in Texas. I know other Korean American children of immigrants whose parents were educated in the US and worked white-collar jobs that afforded them a comfortable lifestyle. Not to mention refugees, adoptees, and multiracial Americans. Etc., etc. I’m fairly certain that my life would have turned out differently had I been born a boy or the youngest child.
I can speak with some authority about my experience as a first-generation Korean American woman who grew up in a homogenous Long Island neighborhood that quickly morphed into a diverse one, and as the firstborn daughter of immigrant shopkeepers. I recall standing out as one of the few Asian Americans in school and being teased for my appearance. But I also had some wonderful teachers who encouraged my writing and were invested in my success. I had a group of brilliant friends who shared my interests in art and writing.
My feelings of being otherized arose from interactions with customers at my family’s grocery store, and from other first-generation Korean American students, a majority of whom arrived sometime in middle school and high school. Several were quick to criticize the roughness of my Korean and call me whitewashed to my face. Even though I was born in Daejeon, even though I took ESL classes until the fourth grade, I was not Korean enough.
At Yale, which I attended as an undergrad, I formed lifelong friendships with other first-generation Korean Americans with similar backgrounds and values. Developing a solid sense of belonging as a Korean American writer happened much later. I took my first Asian American literature course as a twenty-five-year-old PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It gave me a new framework and language that deepened my thinking on identity, diaspora, and history.
During the pandemic, I found my community on my bookshelf. Some books that everyone should read are Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, Jay Caspian Kang’s The Loneliest Americans, and Cho Nam Joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982.
DN: How did your early environment influence your writing? What’s your favorite childhood memory?
RO: I pay tribute to my parents for everything they did to give us a well-rounded education, and for encouraging my interest in the arts. My father loves literature, so he made sure that our house was stocked with books. He’s also a gifted storyteller. My mother studied art in college, and she’s the sort of person who has always kept fresh flowers around the house. All this made my path to poetry possible.
My parents have run a grocery store for more than thirty years. It’s my second home that I continue to visit. Helping out on weekends and holidays gave me a work ethic that has served my writing well. Interactions with customers also influenced me. Many white customers, who were from my grandparents’ generation, treated us like second-class citizens. I remember them talking down to or screaming at my parents, whom they believed were stupid because of their accented English. In a way, I’m grateful to them; they made me even more determined to succeed.
Others were incredibly kind and respectful. We consider some our family friends. One retired teacher gave me a Barnes & Noble edition of Jane Eyre that I still have. She never explained why she chose that book, but I can make a guess. Here was a heroine who dared to live a life on her terms, with courage and a fierce intelligence, despite her situation. That book literally changed my life.
Not sure whether this memory is my favorite, but it appears so vividly now: when I was four or five, we lived in a house rented from a kind family that also owned the stationery store next to our store. My brother and I crayoned pictures and tic-tac-toe boards all over the walls. Miraculously, my parents tolerated our artmaking on more than one occasion.
DN: One of the first poems in the book, “Erasures,” seems to me to convey a complex problem of opposites pitched within the drama of resettlement. It acts as a play between cultures, between materialism and caring for others, harshness and empathy—‘Greed must exist in the service of others.’ Is this a statement that perhaps becomes the expression of a coping mechanism?
RO: That’s a persuasive reading. I first heard those words in a lecture delivered at my family’s temple, at a time when I was struggling to define my values as a writer. The aesthete in me loves poetry, fine art, and classical music. But I also identify with the working class, acutely aware that having studied such subjects at a prestigious university was a privilege.
I returned to Seamus Heaney often while writing The Corrected Version. Some lines from “Erasures” pay homage to Heaney’s “Digging,” in which the poet-speaker assumes the role of the anthropologist who is tasked with preserving his family’s and country’s histories: “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it.” This, I decided, was what I wanted to do.
DN: What a great poem “The Problem with Myth” is—so deceptively straightforward, ingenuous almost, while at the same time drawing attention to, among other things, the fragility, the partiality, the beauty and peril of human perspective. It seems the meaning of the book title is revealed here: correcting reality to a version of reality—one that is, suitably, or tragically, drummed into a fixed system of belief—into certainty. Is reality-making as survival mechanism one of the central ideas of the collection?
RO: I love this question. Yes, I think so! Reality is subject to one’s perspective, isn’t it? And like poems, our lives consist of the choices we make and the consequences of those decisions.
DN: How does the compiling and containing of your own narrative in a book impact the continuity of that very narrative—which is, by all means, your life?
RO: I don’t consider myself an autobiographical writer, as the term may suggest a limited imagination. (I’m also not the most interesting person I know!) I admit that some of the poems in the collection are based on my life. But many aren’t, such as the ekphrastic poems and even the ones with mother and father figures, including “The Problem with Myth.” Sometimes a poem is a response to a writing prompt with colorful constraints (for example, use the word “shit”). Often, a voice or a fiction that I invent takes over my brain.
A sort of amnesia set in after this book ended. I have a long way to go as a writer, but I do feel a sense of inner peace. I wrote many of these poems a decade or so ago in school; they are the work of a young idealist and aesthete who was in many ways stubbornly naïve. I have endured some harsh winters since then. Hopefully I have grown wiser rather than cynical. I would not be able to write those poems again.
DN: Tell me about your creative process. Do you find that form dictates the content of the poem or does it tend to work the other way around for you?
RO: Form and content equally inspire each other for me. A successful poem demonstrates intelligent choices with both to achieve alchemy. A poem that depends on form alone can risk appearing contrived or anemic. On the other hand, a poem that ignores form misses some possibilities that language can offer. My favorite poets understand how following and breaking form can add texture to and elevate the content of a poem, as Elizabeth Bishop demonstrates in “One Art.”
DN: How would you describe your poetry style? What are some of the most pressing aims of your work?
RO: Recently someone told me that my poems made him feel human. Could this statement suffice as a description of poetry style? I’m terrible at describing my writing. In college, I wrote free verse. In my MFA program, I wrote in meter and form. As a PhD student, I fell in love with the Language poets (especially Lyn Hejinian) and Korean American writers (such as Myung Mi Kim and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha). Keats once compared human life to “a large Mansion of Many Apartments,” and I like to believe the same about poetry—that it, too, has many rooms to visit.
Currently, the most pressing aim of my work is to surprise itself. Evolving as a writer requires persistent estrangement from oneself and from language. I’m thinking of incorporating translation of Korean and French writing into my practice, to cultivate a new awareness of English. I’ve written all the poems that I could about my family’s grocery store, too.
DN: As Sandra Lim remarked, there is a tacit questioning in nearly every statement and account in the collection. Is there a spirituality to be experienced when the limits of hope and certainty are pushed?
RO: Yes, spirituality can be available in such a situation. Recognizing that much of the universe exists beyond our human understanding is humbling, but also liberating. Once I finally learned that many things are out of my control, I began to live and write more freely.
DN: I love the understated, crepuscular pulsations of grief present throughout the book. How does one manage going down the twists and turns of the grief spiral? How do they negotiate their inmost story, their true identity, with a sense of duty? Is that ‘the mind repeating itself out of hope’?
RO: You remind me of Philip Larkin’s poem, “Days”: “What are days for? … Where can we live but days? … Ah, solving that question / Brings the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields.” I have always harbored an obsession with death, and had panic attacks as a child because of it. That we are born to die seems like a cruel joke. The grief you sense is probably rooted in that knowledge.
The poem you quote from, “Woman with Leaves for Hands,” is a nod to Wallace Stevens, a hero of mine. I was interested in the ways the human mind is its own world, in which reality could be engaged with, ignored, or created. I think the poem suggests that each choice has consequences—a thought that strikes me as Buddhist, actually.
As a Korean American writer, I care deeply about the ways in which we negotiate our selves in the communities we are born into and choose. Ever since I encountered Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” which considers these dynamics in the context of American democracy, I’ve extended this line of questioning to my own life as I reflected on my Confucian upbringing. The movie The Farewell has a moving quote: “You guys moved to the West long ago. You think one's life belongs to oneself. But that's the difference between the East and the West. In the East, a person's life is part of a whole.” This quote to me isn’t a statement condemning individuality, so much as an illustration of another value system that many of my non-Korean teachers and classmates couldn’t understand.
As for your question on navigating grief: nurturing a full life and prioritizing self-care (especially mental health) have been immeasurably helpful in my darker moments. Outside my writing life, I work as a marketing executive in the life sciences industry, play with my dog, travel, connect with friends, take nature walks, rest, and exercise. In other words, I try to engage with the world, even in the absence of hope.
DN: What’s next for you?
RO: Some readings at poetry events with writers I admire. I’m also writing some new poems that have so far diverged from my earlier work. Which is a good sign.
Rosanna Oh: Thank you for your kind words. I could probably write a book in response to your first question. To me, the term “Asian American experience” is tricky to parse because it’s so broad—it encompasses such a vast continent of countries that share complex histories and relations with one another. One’s experience also depends on a multitude of factors including, but not limited to, religion, gender, sexuality, citizenship status, and socioeconomic status. My friend, who is fourth-generation Chinese American on one parent’s side, grew up in a predominantly Chinese American neighborhood in Texas. I know other Korean American children of immigrants whose parents were educated in the US and worked white-collar jobs that afforded them a comfortable lifestyle. Not to mention refugees, adoptees, and multiracial Americans. Etc., etc. I’m fairly certain that my life would have turned out differently had I been born a boy or the youngest child.
I can speak with some authority about my experience as a first-generation Korean American woman who grew up in a homogenous Long Island neighborhood that quickly morphed into a diverse one, and as the firstborn daughter of immigrant shopkeepers. I recall standing out as one of the few Asian Americans in school and being teased for my appearance. But I also had some wonderful teachers who encouraged my writing and were invested in my success. I had a group of brilliant friends who shared my interests in art and writing.
My feelings of being otherized arose from interactions with customers at my family’s grocery store, and from other first-generation Korean American students, a majority of whom arrived sometime in middle school and high school. Several were quick to criticize the roughness of my Korean and call me whitewashed to my face. Even though I was born in Daejeon, even though I took ESL classes until the fourth grade, I was not Korean enough.
At Yale, which I attended as an undergrad, I formed lifelong friendships with other first-generation Korean Americans with similar backgrounds and values. Developing a solid sense of belonging as a Korean American writer happened much later. I took my first Asian American literature course as a twenty-five-year-old PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It gave me a new framework and language that deepened my thinking on identity, diaspora, and history.
During the pandemic, I found my community on my bookshelf. Some books that everyone should read are Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, Jay Caspian Kang’s The Loneliest Americans, and Cho Nam Joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982.
DN: How did your early environment influence your writing? What’s your favorite childhood memory?
RO: I pay tribute to my parents for everything they did to give us a well-rounded education, and for encouraging my interest in the arts. My father loves literature, so he made sure that our house was stocked with books. He’s also a gifted storyteller. My mother studied art in college, and she’s the sort of person who has always kept fresh flowers around the house. All this made my path to poetry possible.
My parents have run a grocery store for more than thirty years. It’s my second home that I continue to visit. Helping out on weekends and holidays gave me a work ethic that has served my writing well. Interactions with customers also influenced me. Many white customers, who were from my grandparents’ generation, treated us like second-class citizens. I remember them talking down to or screaming at my parents, whom they believed were stupid because of their accented English. In a way, I’m grateful to them; they made me even more determined to succeed.
Others were incredibly kind and respectful. We consider some our family friends. One retired teacher gave me a Barnes & Noble edition of Jane Eyre that I still have. She never explained why she chose that book, but I can make a guess. Here was a heroine who dared to live a life on her terms, with courage and a fierce intelligence, despite her situation. That book literally changed my life.
Not sure whether this memory is my favorite, but it appears so vividly now: when I was four or five, we lived in a house rented from a kind family that also owned the stationery store next to our store. My brother and I crayoned pictures and tic-tac-toe boards all over the walls. Miraculously, my parents tolerated our artmaking on more than one occasion.
DN: One of the first poems in the book, “Erasures,” seems to me to convey a complex problem of opposites pitched within the drama of resettlement. It acts as a play between cultures, between materialism and caring for others, harshness and empathy—‘Greed must exist in the service of others.’ Is this a statement that perhaps becomes the expression of a coping mechanism?
RO: That’s a persuasive reading. I first heard those words in a lecture delivered at my family’s temple, at a time when I was struggling to define my values as a writer. The aesthete in me loves poetry, fine art, and classical music. But I also identify with the working class, acutely aware that having studied such subjects at a prestigious university was a privilege.
I returned to Seamus Heaney often while writing The Corrected Version. Some lines from “Erasures” pay homage to Heaney’s “Digging,” in which the poet-speaker assumes the role of the anthropologist who is tasked with preserving his family’s and country’s histories: “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it.” This, I decided, was what I wanted to do.
DN: What a great poem “The Problem with Myth” is—so deceptively straightforward, ingenuous almost, while at the same time drawing attention to, among other things, the fragility, the partiality, the beauty and peril of human perspective. It seems the meaning of the book title is revealed here: correcting reality to a version of reality—one that is, suitably, or tragically, drummed into a fixed system of belief—into certainty. Is reality-making as survival mechanism one of the central ideas of the collection?
RO: I love this question. Yes, I think so! Reality is subject to one’s perspective, isn’t it? And like poems, our lives consist of the choices we make and the consequences of those decisions.
DN: How does the compiling and containing of your own narrative in a book impact the continuity of that very narrative—which is, by all means, your life?
RO: I don’t consider myself an autobiographical writer, as the term may suggest a limited imagination. (I’m also not the most interesting person I know!) I admit that some of the poems in the collection are based on my life. But many aren’t, such as the ekphrastic poems and even the ones with mother and father figures, including “The Problem with Myth.” Sometimes a poem is a response to a writing prompt with colorful constraints (for example, use the word “shit”). Often, a voice or a fiction that I invent takes over my brain.
A sort of amnesia set in after this book ended. I have a long way to go as a writer, but I do feel a sense of inner peace. I wrote many of these poems a decade or so ago in school; they are the work of a young idealist and aesthete who was in many ways stubbornly naïve. I have endured some harsh winters since then. Hopefully I have grown wiser rather than cynical. I would not be able to write those poems again.
DN: Tell me about your creative process. Do you find that form dictates the content of the poem or does it tend to work the other way around for you?
RO: Form and content equally inspire each other for me. A successful poem demonstrates intelligent choices with both to achieve alchemy. A poem that depends on form alone can risk appearing contrived or anemic. On the other hand, a poem that ignores form misses some possibilities that language can offer. My favorite poets understand how following and breaking form can add texture to and elevate the content of a poem, as Elizabeth Bishop demonstrates in “One Art.”
DN: How would you describe your poetry style? What are some of the most pressing aims of your work?
RO: Recently someone told me that my poems made him feel human. Could this statement suffice as a description of poetry style? I’m terrible at describing my writing. In college, I wrote free verse. In my MFA program, I wrote in meter and form. As a PhD student, I fell in love with the Language poets (especially Lyn Hejinian) and Korean American writers (such as Myung Mi Kim and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha). Keats once compared human life to “a large Mansion of Many Apartments,” and I like to believe the same about poetry—that it, too, has many rooms to visit.
Currently, the most pressing aim of my work is to surprise itself. Evolving as a writer requires persistent estrangement from oneself and from language. I’m thinking of incorporating translation of Korean and French writing into my practice, to cultivate a new awareness of English. I’ve written all the poems that I could about my family’s grocery store, too.
DN: As Sandra Lim remarked, there is a tacit questioning in nearly every statement and account in the collection. Is there a spirituality to be experienced when the limits of hope and certainty are pushed?
RO: Yes, spirituality can be available in such a situation. Recognizing that much of the universe exists beyond our human understanding is humbling, but also liberating. Once I finally learned that many things are out of my control, I began to live and write more freely.
DN: I love the understated, crepuscular pulsations of grief present throughout the book. How does one manage going down the twists and turns of the grief spiral? How do they negotiate their inmost story, their true identity, with a sense of duty? Is that ‘the mind repeating itself out of hope’?
RO: You remind me of Philip Larkin’s poem, “Days”: “What are days for? … Where can we live but days? … Ah, solving that question / Brings the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields.” I have always harbored an obsession with death, and had panic attacks as a child because of it. That we are born to die seems like a cruel joke. The grief you sense is probably rooted in that knowledge.
The poem you quote from, “Woman with Leaves for Hands,” is a nod to Wallace Stevens, a hero of mine. I was interested in the ways the human mind is its own world, in which reality could be engaged with, ignored, or created. I think the poem suggests that each choice has consequences—a thought that strikes me as Buddhist, actually.
As a Korean American writer, I care deeply about the ways in which we negotiate our selves in the communities we are born into and choose. Ever since I encountered Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” which considers these dynamics in the context of American democracy, I’ve extended this line of questioning to my own life as I reflected on my Confucian upbringing. The movie The Farewell has a moving quote: “You guys moved to the West long ago. You think one's life belongs to oneself. But that's the difference between the East and the West. In the East, a person's life is part of a whole.” This quote to me isn’t a statement condemning individuality, so much as an illustration of another value system that many of my non-Korean teachers and classmates couldn’t understand.
As for your question on navigating grief: nurturing a full life and prioritizing self-care (especially mental health) have been immeasurably helpful in my darker moments. Outside my writing life, I work as a marketing executive in the life sciences industry, play with my dog, travel, connect with friends, take nature walks, rest, and exercise. In other words, I try to engage with the world, even in the absence of hope.
DN: What’s next for you?
RO: Some readings at poetry events with writers I admire. I’m also writing some new poems that have so far diverged from my earlier work. Which is a good sign.
|
Read "Picking Blueberries" from Rosanna Oh's new collection of poems The Corrected Version.
Rosanna Young Oh is a Korean American poet and essayist who was born in Daejeon, Korea, and grew up on Long Island. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Best New Poets, Harvard Review Online, Blackbird, The Hopkins Review, and 32 Poems. Her poetry was also the subject of a solo exhibition at the Queens Historical Society, where she was an artist-in-residence. A graduate of Yale, the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she lives and writes in New York. The Corrected Version is her first book.
|
The Corrected Version, by Rosanna Oh (Diode Editions, 2023)
|
