Soju-Shi

Kim Seong-Kon

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In my book of poems, Radiant Snow, I've titled one section "Plagiarisms," in which I strongly mimic poems by well-known poets, sometimes as parody, other times as serious indebtedness, as is this one:

Soju-Shi

Though bright old moon yet may,
My best of five friends fine,
Implore me still to stay,
Drink in the night's moon shine,
I see another way,
'long sunken columns' line

I was inspired to write this by one of Kim Seong-Kon's Wednesday columns in the Korea Herald, a column in which he presents a similar poem from the Joseon period, if my memory serves me well.

I called my poem to Kim's attention, and he wrote back:

[Thank you for calling my attention to] your poem . . . inspired by my column. I am as flattered as I can be. It is a moving poem and I like it a lot.

I leave to my readers the homework of finding the poem and poet cited by Kim in his column . . .