Korean Poetry
April 4, 2011
Garnette Arledge

Cafe Green near Dupont Circle,
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Waiting, hoping, Drew show up

While sitting at the granite bar, a woman of my tribe, who thought she did not know me, mentions to the delicious owner: a new film from Korea she has just seen, recommending it highly to him, a Korean.

He responds that I had extolled Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter the gloriously beautiful Korean Buddhist tough love epic of a decade ago. Something went into me, I just had to see Poetry. Not only am I a devotee of art films, but of course, I revere the bards. So once again, as syncronicitiously as that day in Washington, when son Drew did show up, yesterday driving by an art cinema in rural, but not so rural NY, emblazoned sign POETRY. TONIGHT.

So sure was I that the Rosendale Theater would be packed, I arrived 35 minutes early only to be shocked there were less than a dozen older women, mostly sitting singly, viewers. And true, it was a devastating movie about Alzheimer’s. OR was it?

Not only, in fact it was about dying, my favorite subject. Dying which is Living. Dying well. Dying with honor, self-respect, leaving those behind, stronger, more fully human, contributing to global evolving. When the stranger-doctor pronounces ‘You have Alzheimer’s, dementia’ the character naturally takes a poetry class. Totally logical to me. In fact, registration is full, but she gracefully, shyly, politely barges in anyway. The teacher is Poet. The teacher is her life as it unwinds. Like a good mentor should be, the guide gives slight clues and lives the way. Like the mother spider, the sixty-six year pupil pulls the web of poetry out of herself. ‘Tell the class your most beautiful moment.’ Hers was being seen with eyes of love.

And what an examination of true love. She raises her grandson, her daughter, a drunken cop, the mother of a raped girl, five fathers and their sons, and in the end, with great dignity, having written her one poem from her soul, what? Up to us. Just like our own lives. Up to us.

Highly recommended for its beauty and truth how to be writing poetry with your life.