The Poetry and Song of Ishle Yi Park

The Korean-American writer and musician tells how she stopped writing and dropped out of sight in Hawai‘i after a fast-paced start as a poet that included an award-winning early collection and three years as Poet Laureate of Queens, New York City’s most diverse borough. Now she has a novel version of Romeo and Juliet, told in verse, from a major publisher, and a Nā Hōkū Hanohano nomination for Sweet Gold.

Ishle Yi Park Is Back On the Grid Again

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A Korean-American poet, writer, musician, teacher, hula dancer, lomi-lomi practitioner, certified yoga instructor, surfer, and mother, Ishle Yi Park has been described by The New York Times as having “the voice of an angel and the soul of a rock star.” The first woman poet laureate of Queens, New York from 2004-2007, Park published her first book of poetry, The Temperature of This Water, in 2004; it won three literary awards, including the PEN America Open Book Award for Outstanding Writers of Color.

Her new book Angel and Hannah: A Novel in Verse (One World/Random House, 2021) is a moving and lyrical retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story set in 1990s New York between a young Asian (Korean) girl and Latino (Puerto Rican) boy. It was a Goodreads “Book of the Month” selection. 

In addition to stories and poetry, in May Park was named a Nā Hōkū Hanohano finalist for best instrumental album. Sweet Gold is one of a three-CD set, in which she performs as Lani Park.

Park lives with her keiki on the Big Island, immersing herself in rural life. Lani (as I call her, having met her here in Hawai‘i) and I typed late at night back and forth as our connection went in and out, the crackling of the connection punctuated by the sound of coqui, little frogs, in the night.

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Stephanie Han

First—Angel and Hannah is a fantastic and beautiful book! I was so impressed with the lyricism, the honesty, the refreshing reminder of what it means to love and the complications of love through difference and a raw portrait of youth. This is really a work of love and art. Congratulations!

Ishle Yi Park

Thank you, Stephanie! Gomahwuhyo (thanks!) Means a lot coming from you, unni (sister). This book is a tribute to first love, and is dedicated to all lovers. Aloha.

Stephanie

Of course, I must ask, what inspired this retelling? Having read The Temperature of This Water, I can see the jumping off point, but please tell…

Ishle Yi

This retelling or modern-day remix of Romeo and Juliet is inspired by young lovers of color creating a new world today with their bravery. I want young people to see and feel and experience their lives as sacred, and their first loves as epic and profound as any classic. The high school that I attended focused strongly on European American literature and we studied Latin and read a lot of Shakespeare and his classical buddies. While I was entranced by the lyricism and pure beauty of the stories, I very much felt completely invisible and not reflected or represented in any of the literature we studied in school. So this book was a way of reclaiming and inhabiting this classic sonnet form with our own raw, real, modern-day stories, with young lovers of color from our time and age, and forcing this centuries old-form to live and breathe and weave in and out of space and time with other contemporary poems which are free verse and written in hip hop bars.

Stephanie

I know you are both a published poet and a fiction writer so what prompted an entire novel-in-verse versus a straight fiction work around this subject? Your genre choice?

Ishle Yi

To be honest, what prompted my genre choice is the fact that I prefer writing poetry to fiction, still. I find it easier and more manageable and magical; fiction feels like a marathon of pure labor and poetry still sometimes feels like skipping in a field of poppies and butterflies in comparison, haha. It was just way more manageable for me to think of the story in a series of short poems, an arc of them through the four seasons blazing in my heart, than a novel at first. Each sonnet that I channeled while in writing retreats came through as a gift; sometimes I’d awaken with whole stanzas ringing in my ears and visuals of the poem came in like a hazy movie; it was only up to me to record and capture it with my pen and bedside journal before it faded away.

Also, I knew I wanted to include hip hop bars alongside sonnets because the two forms are actually very similar, so I wanted to make a secret, fun entertaining game for poetry lovers—to try to figure out what sonnet form a poem is written in, and why. I originally had only envisioned it as a short collection—chapbook size. With time, it grew and blossomed into a novel-in-verse, like a child who grows up to do more than you expect, haha. ;) 

Stephanie

I have read that Angel and Hannah was a decade in the making—tell me a little about the stops and starts with this book. How did it shift? Is this the book you had intended to write? Why or why not?

Ishle Yi

Yes, this book took a lifetime, a decade, and a huge journey through space and time to make, but it is all worth it. I am so grateful. Truly, thank-full beyond words to be here now, enjoying this moment. Mahalo ke Akua.

I read a quote recently from Zora Neale Hurston that really resonated with me and answers your question beautifully: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” At the time that I started this book, I was still in my twenties, still living in New York, and perhaps too close to everything to be able to see the bigger story and be able to write it with wisdom or perspective.

Those were the years that asked a lot of questions. Now, in my forties, I feel I am living in the years that answer. I’ve been blessed to live a wild, wonderful, deep life, and now is the time to settle down and write to try to make sense or beauty out of it. I feel like these later years are all about making the best of it; taking the raw compost of those years and making flowers. And I’m enjoying the ripening, the resting, the diving deeper inside—I’m enjoying the journey.

To better answer your question, there were years when the babies were little when I had to stop writing completely, because I was a single working-class mother feeding and providing for two little keiki on my own. Those were lean, off-grid living, hard years, but we survived, through the grace of God.

I started again when I found time and space to write again, when my babies became old enough to feed themselves. I feel like I have a second wind now, a second chance to renew this career I felt like I abandoned when I became a mother, and it’s really good to finally feel like I can balance both at the same time. 

Stephanie

Writers write for themselves, but also, I think sometimes people write to one person, sometimes to a group—who was your intended audience? 

Ishle Yi

My intended audience is myself, my lover, my younger self, any and all Asian-American young women, and any poetry lovers and true romantics who like to revel in the music and magic of words.

Stephanie

How do you see your work adhering to and deviating from the framework of Romeo and Juliet?

Ishle Yi

Well, both stories of course contain star-crossed lovers from families who are less than thrilled about their union, and follow a traditional story arc with the tension building towards a climax near the end—except in Romeo and Juliet, this is accomplished in acts, and my book is divided into seasons. It deviates vastly from the traditional framework because at the end, our two lovers survive and in their own ways, thrive. This is very important to me, to create honest and enduring characters of color who make the best of their situations and continue to live and find a way—I didn't want to kill them off in my world. It’s time to envision new stories with happier endings for us and people who look like us. And the tragedy in my version is not in their love, but in the world that refuses to make space or acknowledge their love as sacred.  Finally, this is a story of a working-class love, not an affluent love. So those socio-economic and inter-racial tensions are explored. But in the end, love is love is love—and Angel and Hannah’s attempts to bridge these two apparently vastly different love stories show you that heart of young love remains the same, no matter who you are or where you are from.

Stephanie

Tell me about some of the literary choices you make—shifts in point of view, telling the reader you won’t be following conventional rhyme. What were your guiding rules, if any that you made and decided upon to build this world?

Ishle Yi

It’s funny—when I first started this collection, I adhered very strictly to meter and  form with every sonnet, so it was very clearly obvious to a sonnet lover what is an Elizabethan versus a Petrarchan sonnet. But after creating a number of these, I started feeling constricted and a little bored and chained in by the traditional form. So I allowed myself to loosen up and have fun, to refuse to make myself a prisoner to the form but to play with it instead. And this freed me to write more raw, emotionally honest sonnets, and sonnets with dialogues, conversations, and dreams.

Then all of a sudden da Corean side of Hannah’s family enters da story, and they refuse to be boxed into sonnets, no matter how hard I try! So most, if not all, of Hannah’s relatives speak in free verse, as they insisted upon it. And the poems dealing with Hannah’s culture and people also came out messy, spilling like rivers with han and ancestral joys, baggage, conditioning and trauma, and I just had to make space for all of that how it wanted to come in. I can't make it neat because it’s not neat; and to sanitize or try to contain their stories in that form felt like an unnecessary and disrespectful, almost like another form of colonization. I didn’t want to confine them. They come as they are, free. I let my readers know this so that their expectations are not set too high, haha, and so they can sit back and enjoy the story without being tyrants for perfect form. 

Stephanie

I note and love that you invite the reader into the world, but you don’t try to explain everything. This was written for people of this world and unapologetically so. Tell me about this choice. I think many Asian-American writers feel the need to explain their community to outsiders. I don’t see this here—and what was your choice about this.

Ishle Yi

Yes, this is completely intentional, because my job is not to be a cultural tour guide and a foreign language dictionary—it’s to be a storyteller. If it’s a good story, you will feel immersed in the community described in the book and revel in the worlds created by the words; if it is not; you will close it and go on other journeys in other novels. I feel like good readers are not afraid to do their homework if they are really interested in finding out more.

Stephanie

The world of women—“Girlfight,” “Girls Night Out”—these are a few of the poems that discuss the violence and that exists in this world. Throughout there’s an understanding that violence lurks, that Hannah is not safe here, and there is too, a kind of persistence that she has to continue living amidst this violence. And I am wondering what is it that draws her in so deeply?

Ishle Yi

I love these questions because you’re not afraid to go there—to go deep! Yes, I wonder too, what it is that drew Hannah so deeply into this other world—think a part of it is this mystique with the bad-boy allure Angel seemed to possess in the beginning combined with his beauty, quiet, kindness, and sensitivity; I think she was simply not afraid to dive deep with him, and was perhaps too young  and  naive to know exactly what kind of dangers she was exposing herself to.

On a larger scale, I felt the need to include these brutally harsh but honest poems about domestic violence in the Korean American and Puerto Rican communities because as hush-hush as its kept, the truth is that both cultures have this unspoken issue and problem in common. And if we look deeper, we see that both Angel and Hannah's mother-lands were colonized by the United States, so these poems are meditations, in a way, about the effects of patriarchy, colonization and poverty upon these young women of color, how men robbed of power take it out on women, and how these power dynamics trickle down to color, stain, and bruise their everyday realities.

Stephanie

And then, I have to ask, we see Hannah saying to Angel, I want out of here. And there’s a vague reference, I don’t want to give it all away, but to a faraway island. And here you are the KA woman from Queens, no longer in NY, but instead in HI. Tell me about your journey here—how did it come about?

Ishle Yi

I came to Hawai‘i for the first time when I was sixteen years old, and I had a surfing adventure and immediately fell in love with the ocean, with the welcoming weather, and the aloha. It was a short trip, but it planted a seed in my heart that this is where I want to raise my family.

After years of performing, traveling, and touring the United States and other countries, I was looking for a place to nest and call home. I remembered Hawai‘i, and so I applied to the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. I got a full scholarship to their PhD program, so that was my ticket in. I didn’t do very well in the program, unfortunately, because by then I was tired of traditional Western education and had just completed over 14 years of schooling; I was more than ready for a break and was just doing it to make my parents happy (still).

I was da barefoot hippy musician student singing in trees on campus and missing class for every good swell, who gave awesome grades to da local kids even tho’ their grammar was pidgin because their stories were heartfelt and entertaining, which my professors hated. It was not a good fit. I found myself auditing, attending and enjoying way more classes at the Center for Hawaiian Studies than in the UH English program; the plant medicine and local cultural information was much more useful on a practical level for living on the islands.

Really, I came here to get closer to nature and raise a family, and that’s what I did. My parents eventually forgave me for not pursuing their dream of me becoming a professor when they realized my dream was to become a mother. And now that they have grandchildren, they’re over the moon.

Stephanie

How has Hawai‘i shaped your writing and ideas of place? Your conceptualization of your identity as a Korean American? 

Ishle Yi

My writing has softened and deepened in my time here in Hawai‘i. Living on the islands, time slows down and allows you moments to think, breathe deeply, and reflect. My Caribbean literature professor and writer Kamau Braithwaite (rest in peace) had an interesting theory about circular islands creating more of a holistic, circular spirit and mentality in the person living on the island, and missile-shaped islands containing more of that masculine, aggressive energy. I moved from a missile shaped island (New York) to a round island (da Big Island), so I definitely feel that shift and transformation in my spirit and personality, from a more aggressive kind of personality to a more gentle-natured soul. Now, I consider myself a Korean-American Islander (KAI, haha) who loves da kai. I am one of those turtles that traveled far, to rest on a sacred land my ancestors only imagined.

Throughout history, a lot of passionate Korean Americans lived in Hawai‘i, from Syngman Rhee to Kathy Xian and her family…it’s an honor and a blessing to live here, and I want to be one of those Korean Americans who does Hawai‘i good by writing stories, planting trees and seeds, and singing songs to soothe da soul. That is my purpose here in life, and I am blessed to do it in one of the most sacred and amazing places on earth. 

Stephanie

You are a Nā Hōkū Hanohano nominee this year—congrats! Boom! It was a big year! Were you surprised? What is the significance of this, it seems like a sign of belonging and participation—I know you identify as being a New Yorker, but there has to also be something too that has allowed you to immerse yourself here in local culture. Your musical genre—Hawaiian influenced music—please elaborate!

Ishle Yi

Mahalo nui loa, sister! Cheeehooooo! Yes, I was definitely stunned and happily surprised to be a Nā Hōkū nominee this year—it is a true honor and a blessing and a privilege, and I am thank-full. The music of the islands is so enchanting, sensuous, spiritual, and playful—was immediately taken by it upon arriving to Hawai‘i. I bought an old-school record player when I lived in Kaua‘i, and collected a lot of the classic Hawaiian and island albums—that was a beautiful time in my life, when I was pregnant with my firstborn daughter, listening to these songs which soothed my soul  and  brought me back to a simpler time, a classic era.

I want my acoustic songs to have that wistful, nostalgic, homegrown feel—to soothe the soul and transport listeners to a dreamy world—I feel Hawaiian and island music has this power, this mana, and this magic.

Over the years, I was blessed to dance hula and  learn from some of the great kumu hulas of our time, from Kumu Hula Healani Youn (Miss Aloha Hula 1986) to Kumu Hula Mapuana da Silva and Kumu Hula Nani Lim Yap, and it is my way of connecting, showing respect and aloha to the culture and the people of Hawai‘i. Hula is prayer, hula is story-telling, hula is sacred, hula is Life.

I made a promise to myself when I moved to Hawai‘i that I would try to learn as much as possible about the kanaka maoli culture, language, and lifestyle as possible, to show respect, and live aloha. It is part of our kuleana, I believe, living here as “settler” Asian Americans, to do our part. I live here, my children were born here, and my ashes will be scattered in the waters here. I want to do my best to be a gift to da ‘āina and da people here; that is my pure intention.

Sometimes people mistake or misunderstand my desire to show respect for the Hawaiian culture as a desire to appropriate the native culture, but I honestly feel like if these people really knew anything about me, they would know the fierce and undying love and pride I have in being Korean American and would not make this mistake and misassumption. I *wish* there were more Korean Americans living around me so I can practice aspects of my own culture more!—do tae kwon do, pilbong drumming, norebang  and eat kalbi together—but that simply doesn’t exist here on the Big Island. So to show respect and learn, I dance hula, practice lomi lomi, and learn la‘au la pa‘au, as pass this onto my daughters.

I am truly thank-full though, that people like the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards folks and the musicians of HARA can see that I am doing what I do out of pure respect and appreciation of the Hawaiian culture, and to hopefully perpetuate the creation of beautiful and sacred music for our islands. It means the world to me.

Stephanie

How long have you been composing and singing? How has music, lyric writing influenced your literary style, if at all? As a poet, do you write first, then compose the music? Tell me about the difference between your creative process as a poet versus musician?

Ishle Yi

I was always the lil’ resident singer and entertainer in my family and my Korean American community. My apa loved to sing at our Korean geh gatherings, and I would always stand and sing too, from the age of 3. Korean love songs like “Pyunji,” or classic Korean folk songs like “Arirang.” Adults always got a kick out of it. When I was in high school, me and my Korean American girlfriends would practically live at the norebangs (Karaoke, or literally ‘song-rooms’) in K-town. So within my Korean American community, I was always called upon to sing, but my American friends had no idea about this whatsoever. Double consciousness, a double life.

I’ve studied Korean traditional drumming in the Pilbong mountains of Korea and learned minyoh (Korean folk songs) in the countryside of South Korea, and sang “Arirang” side by side with a North Korean army leader in North Korea—it’s the one skill I have that really endears me to my people, and vice versa. It’s how I connect. I went on a back-to-the-motherland trips to North and South Korea in my twenties, and the strongest and purest way I connected with people was through song.

I started playing guitar when I was 12, but only began sharing my songs outside of my Korean community in my early 20s, inspired by Korean American musician poets like Dennis Sangmin Kim (Denizen Kane). I began ending all my poetry sets with a short acoustic set of music at all my college shows for fun, and because my apa came to one of my college poetry shows once and said, “You talk too fast! Too hard… I don’t understand nothing… But I like it when you sing at the end.” Haha. So honest, Korean parents.

My creative process is a lot more loose as a musician. It involves more magic, moonlight, plant medicine, prayer and freedom. I compose best in nature or in a quiet room at night. It takes a lot of space, time, and play, and patience.

Usually chords and melodies and a mood come first, and then a chorus that I weave verses around. As a poet, I am much more methodical and structured, and conscious of my goals and intentions. I feel I have to be more alert, awake, and organized for the poetry. I need coffee when I write poetry, haha. Music is straight pleasure, and poetry is more about transforming pain into beauty through words. It’s a deeper journey inward for me, and harder, like mining for raw jewels. Music is like dancing—floating on air and in sound. 

Stephanie

You are now a parent of a daughter who is heading to the age of Hannah when she meets Angel. Thoughts on this? Your short fiction I read alluded to your mother as a reader, and here you are—a write. Any ideas if this literary interest will head into another generation?

Ishle Yi

Aigu. Sigh. This is an interesting question, because it’s true. My daughter is only ten years old, but she is blossoming rapidly before my very eyes. She is almost as tall as me, lean and curvy already and stunning. She is still such an innocent in many ways… It makes me worry, haha. Like, once we were standing outside of a Thai restaurant waiting for takeout and these three tough-looking local boys on dirt bikes straight up burst into a three-part harmony a capella love song, staring at and serenading my daughter on a moonlit night! And she was just smiling, oblivious, playing with some app on her phone. The good thing is that we have a very honest and open relationship. I’m praying it stays that way and that she will be able to come and talk to me about her problems instead of sneaking around and lying, like I did, haha. I’m trying my best to be the cool mom, so she sees me as a friend she can confide in more than an authority figure.

Honestly, I'm not that worried about it… I’m excited for her. She’s a cool, capable, creative, sensitive, and responsible young soul. Wise beyond her years. She’s the kine that acts more grown than her own mama sometimes, haha.  And yes, she loves to write—she’s always working on one story or another, and she loves anime… I love diving into her worlds already; she's a great world-creator; her genre is fantasy right now.

Stephanie

You are teaching a class this summer for girls grades 9 and 10—Exploring Romeo and Juliet. You are an experienced teacher; what is your approach to teaching?

Ishle Yi

Yes. Excited to explore love with young readers and writers through Romeo and Juliet this summer. My approach to teaching is to try my best to be as supportive, encouraging, and fun as possible. I like creating safe space in my classrooms (virtual and real) so that students feel comfortable, seen, heard, and respected, and providing maps, poems, songs, tools, hints, and tips to help guide writers on their journeys.

We all have so much beauty and life within us; a good teacher can help us develop our skills, provide honest, compassionate, and help-full feedback, and inspire us to blossom and share our gifts. I give you books and reading and assignments and help to guide discussions to hopefully open a door to expand your consciousness. If you know of any girls in grades 9-10 who may resonate with this, please let them know they are welcome to join this gathering! Aloha!

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For more information about Ishle Yi Park go to ishleyipark.com and kehaulanimusic.com. Click here to register for Exploring Romeo and Juliet, click here. There is a 10% kamaʻāina discount for Hawai‘i residents.

Banner image by Sarah Humer. Author image courtesy of Ishle Yi.