Dialogue

Reinterpreting the Classics, by Daniel Choi

In the spring of 2022, I completed a series of nine poems inspired by Beethoven’s nine-symphony cycle.

In his time, Beethoven was regarded as a revolutionary in classical music. He dramatically expanded the scope of an orchestra by incorporating instrumentation for trombones and even a full choir. He also infused his music with drama and soul, so that music became more than a genteel pleasure for aristocratic elites. The humanity of Beethoven’s music helped bridge the Classical period with the highly charged, emotional Romantic period. In short, Beethoven reinterpreted the classical repertoire passed down to him.

Inspired by him, I sought to reinterpret his symphonies—a classic staple of today’s classical music—through my poetry. My poems focus on my Korean-American heritage and my parents’ immigration story, exploring the causes and effects of migration, as well as what home means to me.

My Mom’s Korea

Daniel Choi, May 2022

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No.  1

An expanse of fertile land, waiting to

Be fashioned into something more than what

It was, by millions of hungry kids who

Spent long nights at hagwons: It was clear-cut.

Every morning in Incheon, as the sun 

Bathes the soil in light, I see my mother 

Slouched at the bus, coming home from hagwon.Tired but filled with wonder at her other

Mother. She wrings life from the shapeless land.

A city with Samsung, K Pop, would rise 

Not fickle, no, not feckless, they had plans.

Emboldened by fantasy and surprise.

And yet my mom’s Korea is to me

Acute awareness of inconstancy.

My Grandma’s Garden

Daniel Choi, May 2022

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2

Arirang, arirang, 

the aloe veras seem to sing.

I wonder if they 

come from the same ones great-grandmother planted.

But I hardly ever 

Seem to look at them anymore.

Elegy for Incheon

Daniel Choi, April 2022

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3

When people see two immigrants huddled

By the train station, they can’t see a world

Apart: no kimchi, translations muddled 

Deferred to the point of deafness, names hurled.

Should we have left? Left Incheon, the land of

Sun and hagwon and kimchi and mother?

Where you don’t need translators, where you love

Sleepless nights with the moon and its brother?

But Incheon was bottled up, locked away,

At least on that day the pair came ashore.

For the time being, they learned a new way

Of life. They stepped into the corner store.

A foot in two worlds, worlds that seem as foreign as 

“Hey what’s up man” and “안녕하세요."

Dreams Deferred

Daniel Choi, April 2022

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4

“If you leave and forsake me my own,

Ere three miles you go, lame you’ll have grown.”

Incheon seemed to murmur, the voices growing out of

The potted aloe veras, flowing in from the windows, 

spilling out from the shoe cubbies.

What happens when your deferred dream doesn’t explode?

Do they nag at your insides, tearing at the seams?

Boiling like cyanic acid, the smell still floating in the air at the dollar store across the street,

The pavement languishes under the brooding sun.

Maybe this is what Undine felt like: 

Trapped between the lines drawn by a man 

Whose fantasy grasps at the underwater lake fathoms away

Twirling up towards the surface, a chance to see his face?

But clutching merely at thin air. To see my face clearly would drown him.

He never gets close enough to the truth. 

Kimchi Underground

Daniel Choi, April 2022

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

The fault is in our stars,

Which ordained that some day 엄마

(And Penelope) Would bear the fruits of her toil,

Just as she would bear me.

True, there are fewer hagwons here.

True, her neighbors don’t understand 

Why the best way to plant kimchi is to put it in garbage cans underground,

Just as she didn’t know that “What’s up” isn’t talking about the sky.

Yet we cannot stumble down fault lines etched by the stars,

For they are but specks in the sky!

Incheon in Queens

Daniel Choi, March 2022

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6

As the sun shoots its rays 

At my Velcro shoes,

I cannot face the blinding sky.

So I look down

At the pavement, at the faded purple

Chalk with the outlines of hopscotch

Wilting under tires and litter.

A crushed Kool-Aid can blossom here, a portrait of Hamilton on a bill there.

My mom is holding my hand, and it seems

Like I’m just an extension of her, a shoot 

From her hibiscus. She, too, refuses

To meet the sky, instead examining the cracks in the ground.

What does she see there? No Kool-Aid or Hamilton.

Maybe a fertile expanse of seeded soil,

Or her mother’s aloe veras. Seven year old eyes 

Turned toward something she can see that I can’t see.

Instead I count the number of sidewalk

Cracks, making sure not to step on one.

Her feet don’t notice the sidewalk. 

They tread on the ground reverently.

As if it were her mother’s garden back in Incheon.

Of course, I had no way of knowing

How one should walk in Incheon’s gardens.

I still don’t. 

The Bach Garden

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7

Daniel Choi, May 2022

The sound of Bach can make you feel like you’re

The freshly watered soil, like a bud

At April’s end. A worm caught in downpour.

My Bach makes pockets of life in the mud.

Grow Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach,  

Plant fugues in the key of Seoul Major, and

My kids will grow the soil one day; the stalk

Of harmony buds, watered by the hand

Of Bach, will tower over the rest. It all

Started when my mom bought me a piano

In Apartment 3B, and had me haul

Some sheet music, to learn joy and sorrow.

I, too, will buy my kids a grand Steinway

To help them grow gardens above the gray.

House Upon a Hill

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8

Daniel Choi, May 2022

It’s true that the first generation seems 

Boldest. Like Odysseus, and his brave skin

Sailed the seas and fought mad Cyclops, the seams

Of the old tearing, as the new grows in.

not a gleaming metropolis, my mom

Needed only a house with fertile ground,

good roofs, a place to pray, to sing a psalm,

A nursery for kids; foundations sound 

‘Gainst this painful construction, I can’t sin

I reap the sweet fruits from  bitter roots 

Of her work. Sacred work I now begin 

Unlike Orpheus I ascend with lute.

If I let this house fall to disrepair,

I’d certainly be full of great despair.

Ode to Korea (For My Mom)

A Reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9

Daniel Choi, May 2022

To a mother country, whose name is so foreign yet rolls off my tongue

When my mom told me I was “Korean American” I didn't really know what that meant

Like a pot of kimchi buried deep within the ground, being Korean wasn’t something that bothered to reveal itself

But now, as I take in the tangy pungence, the delicate spices, I see what my mother means when she says she wants to go home someday.

But how could I know what home smells like? I know what home sounds like

I play home when I modulate from the key of Seoul Major to Mi Minor, with some Queens-applied chords for variety and flavor.

Home is the liminal space between the second and third quatrain, the happy hunting grounds of the volta.

 To Friends

Daniel Choi 11/20/21

Someone to cry with and laugh with

Like water for a seed

An umbrella during the rain

Someone to see the rainbow with

Shelter made by nature, not man

Someone to tread a path with

The Lowly Worm

Daniel Choi, 2/20/21

The lowly worm, squirming and twisting, the primordial ooze of us. 

The lowly worm, surely but slowly gnawing at us from within, failing to see above its eye level.

For we must not concern ourselves with lowly worms that may destroy our body.

For if God is with us, who can be against us?

If God is with us, what fear need we have?

Why don’t we accept death as an old friend?

For why must we fear death if we will be reborn, rising from worm rotted remains, finding renewal in human ties, in shared joys, and most of all, in shared understanding of the suffering, the love, of our Redeemer?

This Time of Year

Daniel Choi, 12/18/20

The holidays, a time of festivity and cheer.

Reflecting on the year past,

Awaiting the year to come,

Gratitude for what we have,

Appreciation for our ability to celebrate,

These things just can’t be wrapped neatly with paper and a ribbon.

They can’t be reduced to a parcel or package,

Shared on a certain day.

They can’t be treated like things you can exchange for something else,

Things that are valuable only this time of year.

No, they must have been given and received all year long, long before the gift giving season.

Treat every day like the holidays

At Least

Daniel Choi, 11/1/20

At least there is bread in front of me for lunch, even though
I don’t know what’s for dinner.

At least I can see the trees, even though I can’t hear the birds chirping.

At least I can learn at school, even though I can’t call anyone Mom or Dad.

At least I have good friends, even though I don’t have my mom with me.

At least I can stroll through nature and look around at the blue sky, even though
I may not be able to jog.

At least I can listen to music in the radio, even though I can’t see the people
dancing in the television set.

At least I can understand other people’s minds, even though I can’t understand complex theories.

I understand what I don’t have and I appreciate the many things I do have. 

Success and Failure

Daniel Choi, 11/15/20

Life is hard. I don’t deny that.

But there is something remarkable that

Happens every time we struggle, every

Time we fail, we find our better angels

And we stop and marvel at

The beauty of the 

Absurdity

That is

Life.

But every time we succeed, every

Time we breathe, exhilarated, at the finish

Line, on the cusp of it all, we look back at the moments of failure,

And we are grateful, for it is not the critic that counts, but the credit belongs to one in 

The arena, who strives valiantly, marred by blood and dust.

To this we say thank

You.

Why is War?

Daniel Choi, 3/7/2020

The ancient Greeks idolized Mars: his brash

Temper, eyes aflame, fingers smeared in mud.

They killed in his name, possessed by a rash

Choler, seeking the salvation of blood.

Ships yield to Time, which has doggedly flowed.

People ask: Why Vietnam? Why blood shed

Senselessly? A fork in the moral road.

Soldiers trudge, weighed by memories of red.

What has Time taught? What gravitational

Force had pulled the ancient vessel to Mars?

Is the mark of that force untraceable?

Yet with modern America it jars.

The evasive force hides in plain sight. It

Is fixed in Time’s sea, all vessels’ cockpit.

On Love and the Seasons

Daniel Choi, 1/9/2020

Enraptured by poreless skin smooth as snow,

My craving Eye blushes with drunk delight.

Sober Brain, shocked by rash Eye’s allegro,

Implodes as mad Eye glazes at mere sight.

Aloof yet symmetrical, you, snowflake,

Flee roving Eye as hares voracious dogs.

Wherefore? You are crystalline, not opaque.

With wit of shape, you enlighten us hogs.

But now? Skin shattered by fate, reality.

Jaded dogs avert their course. Eye contempts

Withering trees, yet Brain laments vacuity

Veiled tenuously by carnal refulgence.

Heed not capricious mortal Eye but Soul’s

Nature. Journey life on perpetual soles.

Cinderella and Prince Charming

Daniel Choi, 11/30/2019

What happened after the two married?
They Lived happily ever after, say their

Children. Glass-slippered, pure white fiancee

And regal Prince, with mane like Lion’s hair.

Once every month Prince would decide to save

Her. Damsel in distress, he says. Most

It was a dragon, though over time’s wave

It’s someone who left a mean FaceBook post.

After, gentleman Prince takes her to bed.

Ignoring her cries, he says, “What pretty

Face!” He sits on the throne! Slippers are red.

Caressing his prize. Saved out of pity.

But after, Prince goes to joyful Snow White.

Damsel in distress, he says: “I give light.”

Fly Above the Flock

Daniel Choi, 11/19/2019

You croon like a gray pigeon, following

Your flock of clones metallic. Smothered by

Wings left and right, up and down, yes, shielding

You from the cold, but also constricting. Why?

Reshaping your brittle metal, you draw

Ire from Nature, who demands, teeth clenched,

To know why you defy her constant law

And suppress your mix of the elements.

But what is life in lives identical?

Shatter the fetters of your caged songbird.

Be a squawking macaw in the jungle

Rich with scintillations that seem absurd.

Know thy vibrant imprint on blank canvas

Soars above confines that mark the mindless.

Celebration

Daniel Choi, 11/27/2019

Like a young hare, I frolic in the lush green meadow, full of buoyancy, of carefreeness, of vitality.

I have not a modicum of anxiety. After several hours scampering about the fields, I return to my house, where my mother fixes me hot dinner.

Then, I go to bed, falling asleep to stories, to the moonlight that suffuses my room and gently caresses me.

With a sudden biting jolt, I wake up bathed in sweat. A douse of water and several pills calm me down a little bit.

Only a few more days left, said the doctor. Recently, I’ve been having these dreams.

They caress me, transporting me to a world above my somber house, a gray atmosphere burdened by parental sighs and tears.

Constantly trying to feed me, my mother and father bloat me, making me a puffer fish.

They only stuff me, weighing me down.

But there is a beauty in this tenuousness. My life is like a tense string- I just need to let it go.

As I dream, I feel a little bit of myself leaving my body every day.

Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll be gone.