Occupation
by Suji Kwock Kim
The soldiers
are hard at work
building a house.
They hammer
bodies into the earth
like nails,
they paint the walls
with blood.
Inside the doors
stay shut, locked
as eyes of stone.
Inside the stairs
feel slippery,
all flights go down.
There is no floor:
only a roof,
where ash is falling—
dark snow,
human snow,
thickly, mutely
falling.
Come, they say.
This house will
last forever.
You must occupy it.
And you, and you—
And you, and you—
Come, they say.
There is room
for everyone. |
Discussion Questions
- The poet uses the word, house, as a metaphor. When you think of this word, what thoughts or images come to mind? What thoughts and images does the poet connect to this word, house? What effect does this have on your reading of the poem and your understanding of the meaning(s) of the word house?
- This poem is about conflict. How might you better understand the poem by reflecting upon and discussing the recent world conflicts of the past fifty or sixty years? Does this influence the way you read the poem? Why or why not?
- Why do you think the lines are so short? What sort of impact do they have on you, the reader?
- The poem’s speaker, in reference to the house, says to the readers, “You must occupy it. / And you, and you - / And you, and you -.” What does it mean for us to occupy this house or are we being challenged to defy occupation?
About Suji Kwock Kim
Suji Kwock Kim’s (b. 1969) first book, Notes from the Divided Country, won numerous prizes, including the Walt Whitman Award and THE NATION/ Discovery Award. Her list of fellowships includes a Fulbright and a National Endowment for the Arts US/Japan Creative Artists Fellowship, among others. Defying easy categorization, Kim nonetheless draws on all sides of her Korean-American heritage in her first collection as she illustrates both the horror of national and personal tragedies and a resuscitating vision of resilience. Her poems seem to continuously open—descending a staircase or peeling back a layer only reveals further unexplored territory.
Kim received her bachelor's from Yale University, her MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and attended Seoul University. Her work has many times been set to music. She's also a playwright, and she's collaborated on opera. You can even find Kim on IMDB.com, where she appeared as herself in "Why Shakespeare?" a video short which discusses the ways Shakespeare and live theatre change people lives. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
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