Hastily Scribbled Notes The poems in this collection are the result of a small experiment in two sections of English Composition II during the spring semester of 2001--my last semester at Daejin University after four and a half years, and my last semester in Korea after almost fifteen years. In addition to the usual paragraphs, essays, and even a research paper, I asked each student to write five poems. In fact, there was some resistance at first to the idea of writing poems in an "academic" writing class, especially when many students had never written a poem even in Korean. But in the end, they did it (and I would argue that they did it very well), and most of them even said they enjoyed it and learned from the experience:
Writing poems in English helped me so much. Through writing poems, first, I could improve my English ability.... Second, I also could improve my imaginative power.... When I imagined something, everything looked beautiful and lively.Each student was asked to choose his or her two favorite poems to revise, rewrite, and edit carefully for inclusion in this collection. So what you will find here are the poems the students themselves considered to be their best. In these poems, students express their opinions, feelings, hopes, and dreams. They write about themselves, other people, and the world--both the way it is, and the way they think it should be. They remember their childhoods, old friends, special days, and first loves. They describe their successes, reflect on their failures, and openly admit their love of strawberry ice cream and chocolate chip cookies.Because I am not skilled in English composition, it is too hard to express my heart and idea with English language. But while I wrote the poems, the fear of English composition disappeared at least.... After I read all of my poems again, I saw myself, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Most of all, I hope this collection will help the writers remember what they were like and what they cared about when they were students at Daejin University in the spring of 2001. Of course, I also hope anyone else who happens to pick up this volume will enjoy reading these poems as much as I enjoyed watching each of them develop from vague ideas and hastily scribbled notes into poetry throughout the semester. But even if they don't, I know it really doesn't matter, because the real value of these poems, of course, lies in the process of their creation. These students not only wrote poems--a difficult enough task in itself--but they did it in a foreign language. So, in that sense, these poems have already accomplished their most important purpose...
To My Students
I remember my Korean students.
Maybe they think I don't, but I do.
I remember their smiling faces,
How easily they laughed at my not-so-funny jokes,
And how often they complained about homework and grades.
I remember their difficult questions,
How hard they tried to learn my language,
And how their eyes lit up when they finally understood.
But most of all,
I wonder if they remember me...
From the foot of the beautiful Wang Bang Mountains,
Rodney Tyson
June 13, 2001
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