Sean Cho A. is the Associate Editor for THRUSH Poetry Journal and an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine. His work can be ignored or future-found in Pleiades, Salt Hill, The Journal, and elsewhere. Find him @phlat_soda.
Sean’s poem “All this” appears in the Fall 2020 issue of Carve. Order your print or digital copy.
Many people look to poetry for reassurance or comfort. They wouldn't find it in "All this." And yet, there can be something bracing, even invigorating, about moving past false hope and bad faith. Is it a kind of pleasure?
Hope doesn’t exist in the object world, hope seems to be attached to future-wants. In its best form it becomes the springboard for real action towards a goal, and in hope’s worst form it’s relatively benign. I can say, “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” and that seems harmless. But then what if I spend all night hoping it doesn’t rain because I have “that big outdoor event tomorrow”... when does hope become worry? Worry is much more troublesome.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this: Hope and worry are siblings. Maybe twins, whose parents dress them in the same clothes on Sundays for church, and for me, (as much as I, Sean, am the speaker of the poem) it seems to be Sunday too often.
False-hope is a great phrase. I’m not sure I know what false hope looks like in the real world sense. I guess winning the lottery could be an example of almost-false-hope, but like that could still happen (is what I tell myself as I look at my student loan debt). I think more terrifying me would be the false hope’s 2nd identity of rightful-worry. The mental labor of being that person who hopes to pick the right lotto number is like being a doomsday prepper: either way if false-hope is indeed false, and rightful-worry is justified, the outcome seems dreadful.
SOOOO... to answer the question directly, yes moving away from false hope does seem pleasurable if not enlightening. Like a “let’s cut our hair off with a butter knife and buy new IDs from some guy on the dark web” kinda thing.
Your poem touches on both personal inadequacy and ecological disaster: "men have uprooted entire forests." Where do these two things meet?
On a good day: When there aren’t too many emails, my dog sleeps in, and I find the right level of toastiness for my asiago bagel, world plights and personal troubles have equal footing in my mind-space. However, unfortunately, I don’t think that combination happens too often.
There’s this really thoughtful movie (I’m going be kicking myself for months for not being able to find/think of the title) about the Rwandan genocide where a documentarian character is returning to the States after months of filming the various horrors, and someone asks him what he thinks the impact of his documentary will be, and he says something to the effect of, “I think people will watch and say that’s horrible, sit quietly for a moment, then go back to eating their cereal.”
I guess I’m trying to say, when I saw that picture of a plastic straw lodged into the nose of that sea turtle, I ordered a set of metal straws and was mindful of my recycling habits, but now, I’ve lost every straw 3 times over. I think that’s the core of what this poem is trying to get to, and “All this” isn’t saying anything earth-shatteringly-brilliant IMO, but maybe it’s giving the readers a moment to ponder. IDK, what responsibilities are mine, and how much happiness can I ask for? To me even the most selfless wants can become troubling real quick.
I'm curious about the subterranean world of your poem. Have you spent time underground—mine tours, caving, or just in a cellar? (If not, what drew you to this setting?)
Are mine tours a thing? (If anyone knows a good Midwestern minetown hmu). I’ve spent the “normal” human amount of time underground, which is to say not that much at all. When this poem made its way to the page to me it was completely metaphorical. Recently I noticed most of my work is written in such a way: to create a world in which the speaker’s emotions are justified.
(Since this poem is relatively “old work” upon reading it now) the poem feels very millennial in the sense that it is chalked full of both the familiar (oddly nostalgic?) and the sensational. I’m not the best source for this but it seems like a diamond miner’s work would be the epitome of mundanely-dangerous, dreadfully repetitive, expectedly-surprise-filled. Which means really “All this” could be about driving on the highway to work, sitting in a staff meeting, and checking for journal acceptance. But searching for diamonds felt more poemy. Like if this poem was about the speaker coming home from work and saying “ugh, I have way too many papers to grade” it would be boring, but “work was lame, just found some diamonds buried under 100 yards of bedrock” now that’s interesting. As a reader I would wanna be like “Hey miner-person, how did you get to the point where finding literal gemstones in the earth is boring.”
Your manuscript Not Bilingual was a finalist for the Write Bloody Publishing Poetry Prize. Is this piece part of a larger work, or could it become one?
Oh, this question is very sweet. It feels like the end of a podcast where the host asks the guest, in some clever way if they have anything to plug. So, yes, Jacob, and world at large (and publishers/editors I’m looking at you Copper Canyon) “All this” is part of my first “manuscript” that I am actively sending out to various contests and such (I use quotes because it feels the gathering of poems are large enough to be considered a collection and the words are as much “about” the singular theme of home as poems can be).
It’s so tempting to use the rest of the space to bloviate further about my own work (and in my first writing of this answer I did) but I was reminded of this quote from Richard Siken, something to the affect of “talking about doing the thing feels as good as actually doing it,” and that has really resonated with this guy.
So, yeah, that’s me the guy who wrote this poemy. This is my first interview, and I hope it reads well, and I am definitely not worried about the prospect of this forever being attached to my name on The Google.
Idk to me the grand takeaway from this rambling + poem is: "hope is good???"