Silkworm's Pansori

Author: David Seung

Publisher: The Song Cave (2025)

David Seung's debut book of poems, Silkworm's Pansori, is a collection of English-language sijo poems: a traditional Korean poetic form that is straightforward in its syntax but emotionally nuanced. Following this historical form closely, these are poems of elegance and understatement, like a painted still life imbued with heartbreaking subtlety and metaphor. Yet the poet can only get so far with this exercise before his own personal history, a family legacy of war and torture, starts creeping in to shatter the otherwise poetic calm. Inserted toward the end of the book is the Korean Declaration of Independence; among the signers is the poet’s great-great-grandfather. Asking the reader to contextualize this document with the history of sijo and his own family saga, Seung gracefully addresses generations of anger and pain, and reflects on the intricacies of human existence.