Wednesday, May 10, 2023

GAS Featured Poet and Musician: Suchoon Mo

 


Suchoon Mo, Korean Army veteran, lives in the semiarid part of Colorado.   He  came to the US under sponsorship of an US Army war veteran with Bronze Medal with Valor.   He pursued higher education and received his Ph.D. in psychology from University of Pennsylvania.  He is a professor emeritus of Colorado State University, Pueblo.    He is the author of a number of scholarly monographs and research articles dealing mostly with time perception and time perspective.    His poetry and music composition appear in Seattle Star, Fishfood Magazine, Kissing Dynamite,Jonah Magazine, Modern Literature, Ephemeral Elegy, North of Oxford, Scarlet Leaf Review, Literary Nest, Modern Literature, Modern Poets Magazine, Snake Skin, Dissident Editions, Aji Magazine.   And others.  Both in music and poetry, he tends go on opposite direction of modernism.    In fact, his first two poems in English were published along with a poem by William Carlos  Williams in "East and West" in India in 1959, a few years after he left Korea and arrived in the US as a war veteran.
 


Ballad Of War
 
an old requiem
is my serenade
I no longer sing
 
rusted machine guns
buried mines
they are mute
 
deep in the mountains
far in time since gone
beyond and beyond
 
memory does not age
it only fades away
to the place where I was once




In The Paradise
 
in the middle of the desert
there is a kingdom
 
in the middle of the kingdom
there is a casino
 
in the middle of the casino
there is a chapel
 
in the middle of the chapel
there is a casket
 
the casket is empty
you are in the paradise
 


Serenade
 
one gray autumn day
it was raining
 
there was a railroad station
long abandoned since
 
she stood there alone
wet and cold
 
the train left
I never saw her again
 
I am now old
and she was young
 
 
 
A Mantra

under a full moon

one solitary monk
recites a mantra
in a temple

under a full moon
one thousand frogs
recite a mantra
in a pond
 
 


 
Keep Going

leave the temple behind
leave the cemetery behind

keep going

a stranger in a strange land
you have come this far

keep going

find the place far away
where you died once

keep going
 
 
 
Two Shadows

two shadows
on the road
going somewhere
or elsewhere

side by side
close together

one is mine
the other one is yours
isn't it?

going somewhere
or elsewhere
or nowhere
 
 


No comments:

Post a Comment