This month's voice:
Yeon-seong Park, "'He was my North': The Journey into Auden with Prof. Bom"
Introduction
Lindsay Herron
Editor, KOTESOL Voices
If you've ever visited the Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter, you've probably encountered this month's voice, Dr. Yeon-seong Park, an active participant whose reflective practice sessions, book reviews, and imaginative reworkings of songs tend to be quite memorable. In her contribution to KOTESOL Voices, Yeon-seong explains her passion for the work of poet W. H. Auden--an interest with its origins in a particularly impactful professor. Coincidentally, April is also National Poetry Month in the United States; and with the 2022 KOTESOL International Conference, with its theme of "More Than Words: Teaching for a Better World," starting on April 30, it seems particularly apropos this month to spend some time reflecting on the teachers and mentors who have shaped our lives and paths, as Prof. Bom shaped Yeon-seong's. Happy reading!
"He was my North": The Journey into Auden with Prof. Bom
Yeon-seong Park
“If you choose to study W. H. Auden, I will be your doctoral advisor,” Prof. Dae-soon Bom told me when I visited him in Fall 1985. Just a moment prior I had expressed my desire to study Emily Dickinson or Wallace Stevens. But at his suggestion, I gave in. Six years later, I had completed my doctoral thesis, “Love in Auden’s Poetry,” tracing how the concept of love as Freudian Eros reached a dialectical synthesis in Agape in Auden’s poems. My advisor said, “You will not break from Auden.” But contrary to his thought, I stopped studying Auden after I failed to get hired as a full-time professor several times.
While I was applying myself to teaching conversational English as an EFL instructor, I got a call from my advisor. “How many literary articles have you published so far?”
“Four, sir!” was my answer.
“Then let us make a book on Auden by collecting my articles and yours.”
With a financial subsidy from Chonnam National University, our co-authored book, W. H. Auden, saw the sunlight in 2005. From that time on, I resumed studying Auden again. “W. H. Auden’s View of Art in The Sea and the Mirror,” “W. H. Auden and Italy,” “Ecocritical Reading of Auden’s Poetic Works—With a Focus on His Austrian Days” (in collaboration with poet J. Douglas Stuber), and “The Cultural Influence of W. H. Auden in Mass Media” have been published one by one.
Besides encouraging me to study literature again, my advisor built a bridge for me to visit Auden House located in Kirchstetten, Austria. In the spring of 2013, my husband and I were riding in Mrs. Gabi Kreizinger’s car on the road to Auden House. Gabi was an Austrian friend of pianist Yeong-suk Bom, my advisor’s daughter, who studied and taught music in Vienna. Owing to them, I could accomplish one of the most exciting trips of my life. Looking around the house where Auden’s manuscripts and books were kept was really intriguing.
Even though my advisor passed away in 2014, he still lives somewhere in my soul. Last year I earned a national research grant to write “The Fascination of Nature: A Comparative Study Between Gary Snyder and Bom, Dae-soon.” My advisor was not only a renowned poet but also a great fan of Mt. Mudeung, located in Gwangju. He climbed it 1,100 times and reached its summit, Seoseokdae Peak, 150 times. In my study, I want to compare the concept of “the wild” in the work of the two poets. When I started my academic journey four decades ago, I never imagined that I would eventually study my own advisor’s poems. I feel grateful to him now because he guided me in the right direction.
About the Author
Yeon-seong Park is currently a research professor funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Formerly, she taught ELT courses at Chonnam National University in Gwangju for twenty years. She co-authored W. H. Auden (2005) and has published several papers both on ELT and on modern British/American poets.
Email: pyspark@yahoo.com
