Yearn Hong Choi. Moon of New York. Baltimore, Maryland

Yearn Hong Choi. Moon of New York. Baltimore, Maryland. PublishAmerica. 2008. 105 pages. $16.95. isbn 978-1-60610-780-1

  

The reoccuring themes of family and home loom large in these lyrical poems. Yearn Hong Choi landed in Seattle in 1968, a poor young Korean man who came to town with only seventy dollars and ambition in his pocket. His autobiographical verse serves to remind us that we can’t go home again and expect to find it unchanged. 

     A gentleness of spirit pervades the wistful memories of family in a series of poems: “Name,” “Photo Album,” “Departing,” and “Mother and Dove.” This same gentleness of spirit sees the sublimity and beauty in the natural world. He loves the woods in all seasons. The trees give comfort even while humankind interrupts their space. There is frequent reference to the sea and it is both a cause of uncertainty—and a path to a new life—yet he yearns for the solidity of land. This land becomes palpable in poems of the Arizona and New Mexico desert. This same western landscape, from which he sees the expansiveness of the universe, at times overwhelms the poet and leaves him speechless. 

     The only thing the reader may not be sure of is the rationale for the order in which the poems are presented. There may be a chronological order in which he has revisited the places and scenes. Yearn Choi uses language that is simple and direct in poems that are accessible to the general reader. His metaphors come from the eye and the ear. 

     What holds this book together is its collection of images and memories that give meaning to life. He asks the big questions on the mysteries of life on which we all reflect from time to time. Yearn Choi tells us about himself in dealing with the vagaries of life and his poems illuminate human experiences by their connectedness to those questions: who we are, where we are, and where we should be. He keeps returning to his homeland and memories of family, to the family home, his grandmother in the potato fields of Idaho, his children, retirement, and always back to Korea, as in the beautiful lines of “To Koh Choong-suk,” where he remembers: LiPo drank alone by the moonlight / but I drank all night long next to you. / We were two happy drunkards in the world. As this poet navigates the regions of our feelings and emotions, he stops to look while the rest of us drive on by.

J. Glenn Evans

Seattle, Washington