Night Sessions

A collection that presents snapshots of the Korean American experience through poems ranging from the hardships of first generation Korean immigrants, their blue-collar work (though many had professional degrees), and arduous immigration to the United States, to the rise of the second and even third generation of culturally Americanized youth attempting to reconcile their bi-cultural heritage. Grounded in the Midwest and Chicago area, the poems invoke the difficulties of mediating American and Korean cultures and languages: the clash between the expectations of becoming medical doctors, versus the desire to play American sports; work on the Sears assembly line, or fulfill aspirations to write.

David S. Cho was born and raised in the Chicago area, along with his brother and extended family, the proud children of Korean immigrants in the early 1970s. He holds a BA from the University of Illinois, MFA and MA from Purdue University, and MAT and PhD from the University of Washington, and has taught in West Lafayette and Crawfordsville, Indiana; Chicago; and Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Formerly an associate professor of English and director of the American Ethnic Studies program at Hope College (Holland, Michigan), he now serves as the director of the Office of Multicultural Development at Wheaton College. He is the author of a chapbook, Song of Our Songs (2010), two books of poems, Night Sessions and A Half-Life (CavanKerry Press, 2011 and 2022), a scholarly monograph on 20th-century Korean American novels, Lost in Transnation (2017).

Father

It is not rain that makes
my father sing a loud
song. I hear a narrow
sound, the thresh of his

sickle, its staccato
making music with his voice.
It draws me near. He calls
this dark marsh field

heaven, the rice to fall,
snow. My father
takes the white
of his palm and lays it

gently on my face.
Two full counts
of callused tenderness,
my eyes sleeping

with the wind. Father says
I am his rice seed,
sprouted to a stalk. The
silence of the field

my only reply. He goes back
to his work, back to make
music, the wooden handle making
his hands hard. He,

the only worker. He
the one worker in this pond.
He in his heaven,
in this field, in his music.

David S. Cho speaks for all of us who have families, who search for words to describe who they are, how they sound, what they say when they love us, instruct us, or find fault with us, and who have come to America and live next door to us and raise their children next to ours.
— Shawn Wong

“How to say clothesline/ how to use the word ferocious in a sentence,” poet David Cho asks, bringing out the careful balance and grace and range of this book. Family, work, two countries, two languages, many secrets—all sleep and wake in these pages.
— Marianne Boruch

April 2011
116 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
978-1-933880-24-2