Poet Ed Bok Lee’s first collection, Real Karaoke People, was a national bestseller in poetry, and his second, Whorled, has already been listed on several yearend best of lists. John Freeman writes, “Whorled is a book that believes love is like a superior kind of capital: It’s a force that flows into new markets, sensing absences, and fills them, whether it’s a debased kind of space or an ennobling one.” A powerful endorsement for a powerful book, Freeman’s enthusiasm is justified—I cannot recommend Whorled enough. Ed Bok Lee and I conversed by email, discussing his new book, the past as sacred text, poetry as the dismantler of wisdom, and the Slavic soul.
Growing up you were exposed to a wide variety of religious traditions, from Confucianism to Christianity, from Buddhism to shamanic animism. How has that varied experience affected your writing? One similarity, I would think, is those tradition’s respect for their texts, for text, even when spoken. I sense in your work a respect for text, but also a struggle with the single account.
The “single account” is a good way of putting it. My parents both moved around a lot from their early childhoods on due to repeated political upheaval, and then were immigrants to the U.S., and so maybe because of that, wherever we lived was always pretty bare. They also shared very little of their stories and histories with their children. So, in a way, the past has always been a kind of sacred text to me, luminously blank, always humming at a strange, incomprehensible frequency that I could either try to ignore or engage with in some meaningful way.
What about place? Your parents come from Korea—one from (what is now) North and one from South, and you were raised in Korea, North Dakota, and Minnesota, before studying and traveling through South Korea, Russia, and even Kazakhstan. How does place figure into your poetry, and into your practice of writing poetry?
I love so many of the great Southern U.S. writers who can imbue every sentence with such a strong sense of place. Mine is probably a more a synthetic relationship to place, in part due to what I mentioned above. Or, maybe a more nomadic sense of place. For whatever reasons, I like Milosz’s: “Language is the only homeland.” Each poem can then become like a little home made of wattles, titanium, ink, etc.
I know you’ve worked as a business translator. Have you ever translated poetry?
More Russian creative prose into English. Some Korean poetry, which I’d love to get involved with again.
You’ve said that in your first book, Real Karaoke People, you were looking backwards, but in your new book Whorled you’re looking forward into the future. Could you explain that? How does that manifest itself in the work itself?
Lacan wrote, “The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom.” As I’ve commented elsewhere, to riff off of that, one reason I think I write poetry is not for memory, but to dismantle it utterly and follow where the animating spirits go from there. And, lately, as in the final, title poem in Whorled, that’s been leading me into the future where, for example, 90% of the world’s languages are scheduled to go extinct by 2050.
Your grandmother was an unpublished poet. How old were you when you found that out, and what did (does!) it mean to you?
My grandmother grew up during the Japanese Occupation of Korea (1910 – 1945). Many of that generation of Koreans were forced to learn Japanese better than their native tongue, in their own colonized nation, to survive. She made a point to struggle to write poems later in life in Korean. They truly read like a “secret” tongue. Unfortunately, she died before I knew any of this, when I was in college. When things get particularly hard, thinking about this secret language that was a kind of paradise to her in her life helps me get back on track.
Why Russian poetry? What about it appealed to you so much that you decided to study for a PhD in it?
I was drawn to the Slavic soul, which felt very different than the American soul. It’s hard to generalize, but, for instance, if you look at, say, soul music and the immense influence of Black music in general in America, you can feel and hear characteristics unique to the culture and history it comes out of. Things are changing, but this generally goes for any people’s (especially traditional-based) music, in which you can hear distinct qualities and flavors of the human soul—be it traditional Irish, or Zulu or Balinese music. You can also hear it in any contemporary music, but maybe, maybe we’re too close to hear all that objectively, given the way globalization has shot-gunned. And, regarding Slavic literature, I’m not just referring to a romantic or majestic quality, but equally a strange, warped, absurdist, splenetic soul. At the time, I was starving, and it’s really hard to find that kind of savory stew anywhere else.
I think you’ve contributed to the great savory stew yourself, Ed! Thanks for your time, and thanks for Whorled.
