JB Life March 2017

ARTS
The Woman Who Works
at the Botanical Garden
She has just learned
to use email &
when a rare species
blooms sends out
a message further
than she has ever
traveled “Hey come down
here right away…” pressing send
she imagines should have
the kind of pull
to draw them in
for a moment to have a look
After closing the gate
to the garden she is
standing in line
buying catfood She waits
like everyone else but there
are things she knows
that can’t wait
its placed on it.”
His piece “Sewol (The Passing of Time)” also
serves as a somber demonstration of how words
and form can come together to convey feeling,
commemorating Korea’s Sewol disaster. The
“meditation” (as Dean refers to it) sinks and
spirals down over six pages, with a single word
thoughtfully placed on each line.
“One word on each line is meant to slow the
reader down, to experience time passing, becaues
‘Sewol” means the passing of time, so in
this elegy I have selected the form, because who
would ever want that end to come— one word
per line is enough, and of course each line is a
kind of heart beat that leads up to how the poem
ends.”
Like the “Sewol” piece, many works in Dean’s
collection connect to Asian events and culture…
an inescapable theme due to not just living in
but immersing himself in the respective cultures
he’s encountered here. He reads and speaks
Chinese and feels strongly connected to its poetic
tradition. While fairly new in this country, he
hopes to gain the same sort of connections here.
“Learning to read Chinese poetry in Chinese
was very important to me. If one can speak of
a lineage, those are the roots of a type of deep
meditative lyric poetry, and inevitably this poetry
takes in the landscape,” Dean says.
“Poetry is also an important part of the Korean
Tradition. And there are many poets from the
Jeolla region. It is not an accident that I moved
here. My wife is from Gwangju, but I was eager
to move to this region. Not that I expect to be a
part of something, but there is an energy. Poetry,
good poetry happens at more of a geological
pace. These mountains, the Honam plain, the
people, they speak to me.”
The stories of Dean’s individual poems are
journeys themselves. Ask him of the inspiration
for a certain piece and you will no doubt hear
the place he first thought of it, whether a British
museum or a plane from Stockholm to Sweden,
as well as any events that shaped its growth over
time. While in some cases poetry is a quick act
driven by the moment, a talk with such an artist
makes it clear that even the shortest poem we
read may be a year or twenty years in the making.
At the time of publishing, Dean and his wife
had just welcomed their first baby, Haru. When
the heavy task of caring for this new heart settles,
Dean hopes to do some book readings around
Jeonju, perhaps starting an English literary magazine
of some sort highlighting the Jeonbuk area
as well.
For more information or to find a copy of Cardiography,
visit the book’s page via Finishing
Line Press: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/
product/cardiography-by-ash-dean/.
All photos and poetry
courtesy of Ash Dean.
Late Summer Full
humidity & mosquitos
roadside peaches under neon
all night long the frog song--
Bats chasing happiness
::
There is a street
where women sit
in glass tanks
flooded with pink light
Of all the ways
that desire leaves the body
I have mastered none
::
like the old lawn mower
I could not start,
no matter how hard I pulled
on the cord
::
so i got the scissors
and began cutting the grass
blade by blade,
perhaps this is the season
to accomplish nothing
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Jeonbuk Life 37