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Chiwan Choi: The Fire This Time

By Jack Grapes on February 1, 2017 inLiteraturePoetry

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When Chiwan Choi first walked into my class over 25 years ago, he was a 17-year old teenager, quiet and introspective. The writers in my Method Writing class were all adults, well into their 30s, and many even older. Some had already written books, novels, poems, plays, screenplays even (what a concept in Hollywood!), and were all excellent writers. Chiwan snuggled into a nondescript spot on the couch, scrunched between a guy who planned to win the Nobel Prize and a gray-haired woman who had already won one. I don’t think either one planned to learn new tricks, despite Method Writing’s array of linguistic tricks and literary constructs. Everyone in the room, I’m sure, were thinking to themselves, should I read my story about incest or abuse or sexual escapades in front of this 17-year old boy who seemed so innocent and naive.

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Then after the first week of introductions and discussion of process, everyone went home to write based on the first concept of Method Writing. I didn’t want to call on Chiwan right away; I wanted to give him time to acclimate, have a chance to hear the others. About halfway through the class, after the break for coffee and cookies, I called on Chiwan. He pulled out a piece of paper from his back pocket and unfolded it several times until it bloomed in a creased sheet of 8 ½ by 11 loose leaf paper. And he began to read. And it was one of those experiences you have when all your assumptions fall away and you’re left in awe. Chiwan was a writer – even more so, a poet. Not one line was stale or forced. It was as if the words came out of necessity. There was wisdom that startled the gray haired lady to his right and intellectual configurations that humbled the guy who planned on the Nobel Prize.

Where did he get this? I’m not even sure Chiwan could have told us if we’d asked him. His family had left Korea when he was five. But he was pretty much an American teenager. This American teenager wrote like a master. A master who didn’t need to pretty anything up, didn’t need to show off his intellect, a master who could draw a straight line without a ruler, a master who could hit the high note without straining.

Chiwan continued to study with me for many years. I pretended to teach him for many years. He went through the many levels of Method Writing, and then we freelanced. I assigned him poets and writers to study from Bukwoski to Dante, from Frank O’Hara to Marcel Proust. I pretended I was the one making his writing even better. I didn’t want to give myself away, so I kept things simple. Chiwan was always up to the task, and always brought in work that humbled every one of us in class. When it was his turn to read, he pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of his back pocket, unfolded it, then read without any hint of performance. But it was a performance nevertheless. As Robert Frost said, feats of performance and association. The mind and heart clicking, revealing the soul of a story, the truth of an image, the grief of a loss.

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Picasso said that when he was a child he could paint like a master, and that he’d spent the rest of his life trying to paint again like a child. I think the same could be said for Chiwan. I’d like to say each book he wrote got better and better, but that would be a simplification. Chiwan wrote like a master as a 17-year old teenager, and he still writes like a master. What has evolved has been more challenges to himself, more discoveries of the heart. His first two chapbooks were a delight, then his first full-length book of poems The Flood in 2010, then Abductions in 2012, and now The Yellow House, a book of such breadth and depth it’s hard to hold it in one’s hand and not have it catch fire.

As Chiwan’s teacher back in those days when we all huddled in my apartment on Orange Street, I’d like to say I’m responsible for Chiwan’s wonderful writing. But as I said, I just pretended to teach him. In many ways, Chiwan taught me. Get his books. See what I mean.

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About the author

Jack Grapes

Jack Grapes

Jack Grapes is a poet, playwright, publisher, actor and teacher. Over the last 40 years, he has taught thousands of poets & writers using his book Method Writing: The Craft of the Invisible Form. He has also taught in over 100 Los Angeles schools as part of the Poets in the Schools program, and has published dozens of chapbooks featuring their work. With Bill Cakmis, he co-wrote and starred in an award-winning play, Circle of Will, a metaphysical comedy about the lost years of William Shakespeare, which won several theater critics awards for Best Comedy and Best Performance by an Actor. The play was also produced as a musical. He also co-authored with Allan Yasnyi a musical How Much Can a Grecian Urn. He was the editor and publisher of the literary journal ONTHEBUS, which ran from 1989 to 2017 and included the work of thousands of poets and writers from Los Angeles and throughout the U.S. and poets in translation from around the world. Through Bombshelter Press, he has published over 100 books by California poets. He is the author of numerous books of poetry and non-fiction, including Method Writing, Advanced Method Writing, and How to Read Like a Writer. Forthcoming in 2018 are two works of non-fiction: The Tender Agonies of Charles Bukowski, a book of essays, and Etherized Upon A Table, a two-volume "History of Modern Poetries from Homer to the present." A spoken word CD, Pretend, was produced by Poetry East, and a new spoken-word CD, The Man in Charge of Watering, is due later in 2018 produced by Bill Ratner. Books currently available on Amazon are The Naked Eye: New & Selected Poems, 1987-2012 (2013), Poems So Far So Far So Good So Far To Go (2014), All the Sad Angels (2015), and Wide Road to the Edge of the World (2016). A new book of poems is forthcoming later in the year, Any Style. Due for publication by Chatwin Books, edited by Phil Bevis, will be Jack's two-volume Collected Poems, The Last of the Outsiders. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Lori and their cat, Charles Aznavour, affectionately known as Chuck.

← 
Newer Comments  →
  • R. Keller

    I cannot wait to read this book, buying it now. Thank you, Chiwan. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Cultural Weekly. I am so fortunate as I have had opportunities to be with Chiwan, and to be illuminated by his work. Life is good.

  • carol

    I was that grey-haired woman who sat next to the young man in Jack’s class. It’s true that Chiwan startled and delighted us week after week, year after year, with the words he scribbled on those pieces of paper. We all felt his power. Chiwan showed us his heart and his liver and his guts, and that’s not all. He has my respect and admiration as a poet. And, Jack is the greatest writing teacher that ever walked this earth. And, I’m still here.

  • Lisa Segal

    Chiwan writes poetry in which the complex and complicated seem simple to see and write. No one sees or writes like Chiwan. Once he writes it, it’s simple to see.

←  
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