Modern Korean Verse in Sijo Form

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This book introduces an unfamiliar Korean verse form to western readers
of poetry, and I want to assert immediately that I review it not as an
expert but from the viewpoint of just such a beginning reader. “The
sijo,” Kim explains, “is a traditional lyric of three lines in
verses averaging 45 syllables.” Within these limits, there is plenty
of opportunity for variation, and, given its greater length, the form
appears freer than the better-known Japanese haiku. Indeed, readers
aware of other Oriental poetry will get a reasonable sense of sijo if
they imagine a form halfway between haiku and the shorter poems of such
early Chinese poets as Wang Wei or Tu Fu.

The form extends back for hundreds of years, but Kim limits himself to
examples from this century. As a traditional art, sijo frequently
reflects traditional subject matter: natural beauty, love, grief,
melancholy. But for the Korean people, unhappily, war is also a common
experience, and this poetry readily accommodates references to, for
example, the 38th parallel and a riot-police bus.

More than 60 poets are represented, but because of the brevity of sijo,
each poet is assigned at least three poems, and sometimes as many as 15.
Kim transforms these poems from three long lines in the original to six
shorter ones in English, translating them into a graceful,
smooth-flowing English that displays a fine sense of rhythm and verbal
tact. In Yi Yong-Do’s “Snow,” for example, “Snow descends in
thick flakes / in the hollow of my heart. / I tenderly think of your
love / in the days gone by and I miss it; / mountains and rivers give no
heed, / they remain mute, as always.”

The practice of sijo is amazingly popular in Korea. Newspapers and
magazines regularly hold contests; Kim estimates that there are more
than a thousand living practitioners. Clearly, Koreans have preserved a
cultural tradition—perhaps a cultural innocence—that the west, if it
ever possessed it, has lost.