(This is the second part of an interview with Koon Woon. The first part appeared in the March Issue)
Koon: Imitating other Masters is a good way to learn poetry, but you must remember that poets are all different, every poet’s voice is different. That's what's most important. It’s what makes poetry distinctive. What is his meter, what is his rhyme? What ideas does he have? Is he an intellectual poet? Is he an emotional poet, a social poet? What kinds of things is he preoccupied with?
When you do poetry long enough, you kind of find what works for you. You send things out and see what gets accepted, what doesn't. You go to poetry readings and see what moves people, what doesn't.
Leopoldo: So how does the notion of good or bad intersect the world of distinctive voices and whether poems move other people. It's almost as if they are different worlds. In your mind, do these two worlds intersect?
Koon: Yes, they intersect. Poets like E.E. Cummings. He's the first one to do what he did. but his poems are very social and political. You have people like Pablo Neruda who was also a brilliant poet highly political and highly emotional. In one of his early poems, when he was 19, he wrote, "tonight I will write the saddest lines ". It was about a girl he loved who didn't love him. So, you get all kinds of poets. You get romantic poets. You get political poets.
Leopoldo: My thought is that many people when faced with these examples of ‘good’ poetry are more inhibited than inspired so they don't try writing any poetry at all.
But I think the best reward that I ever got in poetry was to clarify to myself what my thoughts are, my feelings are. Writing poetry helped me get insight into myself and into my illness.
Koon: There's a certain amount of talent. I wouldn't try to be a rocket scientist for one thing. I don't have that ability in physics. There's a certain amount of talent you got to have. But then there's hard work. I've been writing and studying poetry close to 35 years. So, there's a lot of hard work I put into it. If you do one thing in life you can't do another. So, in a sense it's a gamble.
But I think the best reward that I ever got in poetry was to clarify to myself what my thoughts are, my feelings are. Writing poetry helped me get insight into myself and into my illness.
Leopoldo: You’ve lived in what you called a timeless village, you have lived in Aberdeen, you've been homeless, you've lived in the international district. What place has turned out to mean the most to you in terms of who you are?
Koon: When I was 35, I didn't have enough money to live on, even in the rooming house in the University District. I got a room through by mother and my uncle in Chinatown in a tenement building, a room 10 by 12 with a wash basin in the corner, a toilet down the hall and a bathtub. I cooked and I slept and ate all in the same room. I even did my laundry by hand in my room. If it was wet outside, I hung up my clothes inside to dry.
That's when my cousins came from China, a family of 6. I felt my responsibility to take care of them in this country. My family sponsored them to come over, pay the bond, but they couldn't get welfare for five years. so, I had to get jobs for them, I had to teach them English. I tutored my cousin two years in English, did all their legal and financial business for them, took them where they needed to go, doctors and this and that. So, I learned responsibility towards other people. I helped them read a letter, anything they had to attend to.
The owners of that building decided to renovate. They were going to get money from the city. I was starting to write for the Chinatown newspaper. They came to me and said how about writing an article about renovating this building? We're going to make it bigger, cleaner, more modern so people will have a better place to live. So, they wined and dined me for a couple of days. I asked my cousins if that would that be a good idea.
They said you could look at it another way. We're living here cheaply, so we can buy a house maybe in Beacon Hill because we expect to live in this country and the children and grandchildren will live in this country. The rooms will be bigger. That means there will be fewer people living when the building is renovated. So, that wouldn't be a good idea.
So, I went against it. Somebody from KOMO TV got hold of it and a Chinese woman interviewed me in primetime five days in a row. I spoke for five minutes against renovating the building. So, it finally stopped them from renovating the building which might make a few people homeless. We couldn’t afford the rent anywhere else in the city. The building still stands there. it's called the Republic Hotel.
It's one part of my book, The Truth in Rented Rooms. I was there for 7 years living in a tiny little room. Nobody knew who I was, which served a good purpose, so I could work on my poetry at my own pace, in my own style, on my own topics.
Leopoldo: So, in that 10 x 12 room, you not only developed your own poetry, but became politically and socially active.
Koon: Yes. Remember when Nelson said, “don't pay attention to what seems to be going on around you but just work at a steady pace and all kinds of good things will happen to you.”
I also lived in West Seattle from 1980 to 1983 on Juneau Street. People are more neighborly. They are more friendly. One thing I noticed right away was the amount of people with dogs. taking dogs out for a walk, morning and night. West Seattle has the right mix of minorities here. I notice a few Chinese here. I don't seem to be an oddball.
Leopoldo: You recently moved to West Seattle. What is there about West Seattle that you notice?
Koon: I also lived in West Seattle from 1980 to 1983 on Juneau Street. People are more neighborly. They are more friendly. One thing I noticed right away was the amount of people with dogs. taking dogs out for a walk, morning and night. West Seattle has the right mix of minorities here. I notice a few Chinese here. I don't seem to be an oddball. In Aberdeen I was like that. it reminds me of Aberdeen in a way. It is like a working-class neighborhood largely, lower and middle class I presume. I don't know for sure.
Leopoldo: What is been your experience of poetry at C & P coffee?
Koon: I think it's a very lively and democratic place to read. You get people with all abilities, all kinds of different approaches to poetry. I tend to read printed poetry because that's the way, in my time, thirty, forty years ago, it was more like that. These days, it's more spoken poetry. I like the friendly atmosphere. You can stay as long as you want. It's close to where I live.
Leopoldo: What are your hope for the Poetrybridge community in West Seattle?
Koon: I hope there will be more people that get together in poetry groups. Just private people getting together, meeting together to discuss poetry, mainly as a good excuse to discuss community and political and social matters. But poetry is a very big part of it because you delve into your emotions, you delve into your psyche, what's really deeply important to you in the community.
Leopoldo: What similarities and differences do you see between poetry and storytelling?
Koon: I think one definition of poetry is enhanced prose. There's prose poems and poetic prose. There's very little difference between the short story and a long narrative poem. I take the divisions we draw as artificial. There's a continuum in everything.
Leopoldo: What didn't I ask you that you wish I had?
Well, how do we make poetry matter? We have to publish more, we have to learn how to be more effective when we write poetry.
Koon: Well, how do we make poetry matter? We have to publish more, we have to learn how to be more effective when we write poetry. For some of us it's a skill that we have to perfect, like being a good oil painter, sculpture anything like that. Some people do it just for their own spiritual development and enjoyment.
I have always encouraged poets. Some of the people I published in Chrysanthemum, my little magazine, have gone on to win prizes. One woman was published and became a translator. One won a $50,000 prize. One woman got an award and now she has an anthology. She told me if I hadn't accepted her poem she would have quit then and there. that would have been the last straw.
Leopoldo: What do you think motivates and encourages people to either be recognized or experience the spiritual development and enjoyment that you talked about.
Koon: I see myself as a mentor. I have a godson whose English is not up to par with the rest of the community because his family always speaks Chinese at home. I tutor him and he graduated from college. Because I'm a disabled person, he works with disabled people as a way of returning the help I gave him. So, what goes around comes around I guess.