Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: italy

  • Sunday Letter – 2

    Sunday, September 6th, 2026

    Hi Freddo,

    It’s September, and fall will arrive soon. In fact, the cooler temperatures are already its harbingers, and I am all for it. How’s the weather in Rome? And how are your projects coming along? Last time I heard, you were working on a translation of a certain book from English into Italian. Are you still working on it? Can you tell me what the book is about?

    I want to show you my prose poem I wrote yesterday. It’s one of my recent experiments with story-like poems. I write poems that read like prose. The best thing about prose poems is that there is no complication of characters with existential dilemmas and metaphysical questions about who they are—questions that not many people care about. But these days, too many poems and stories can read like ideological catalogs, social agendas, or personal traumas that are not easy to read and take to heart. While I get that shared traumatic experiences may help those who find themselves therein, that is not my cup of tea. I don’t want to write about my ethnicity or race in the context of living in America as an Asian immigrant woman. I don’t want to be labeled as an “ethnic” woman writer whose work is shelved outside of the so-called mainstream book sections in bookstores. That is why I admire someone such as Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote The Remains of the Day. His background does not prescribe the consciousness, subject, or voice he is permitted to inhabit; you would not necessarily know that a Japanese-British man wrote it in posh British English. There are no boundaries of race, gender, or age in the language of the mind and heart. You can be whoever you want to be and show the world the way you are.

    Today’s letter reads like a rant from an anxious woman irritated by a boisterous party of popular or best-selling writers. So be it. I do not want to be restrained in the realm of written words where I can be myself. I do not like being boxed in by what people expect me to be and write, because that is not who I am. You would find it a bit hard to relate to my literary zeal to write the truth about myself because you would not feel the pressure of ink in your own color, but that is okay. I do not expect you to understand my stance. However, I would be incredibly happy to see you on my side when people scoff at my poems and prose.

    Dreaming of a dusk on the Aventino Hill looking over Rome with you,

    Stefania

  • Ballad of Dido and Aeneas

    6858611048029cebdb3615280c191a3a--oil-on-canvas-dido
    Aeneas leaves Dido, courtesy of pinterest

    From a land ravaged by a wooden horse with a golden apple for the fairest of the divine beauties appearing to a prince so young, so impetuous in judgment thereof,

    There came a poor beautiful stranger destined for the supernal fate to rule the mortal to the diamond eyes of a maiden queen ethereal in beauty, graceful in act and hapless in love.

    Blindsided by Juno’s machination, swept by passion growing strong, growing stronger for the stranger,

    The queen bade him with tears and roses in succession day and night, in desperate attempt to keep his presence, his body and his soul, all but an entreaty so futile,

    So forlorn, with a promise of her kingdom and her fidelity in return for nothing but his surrendering of himself to her and herself to him till the mortal fate was ended, till one had to cross the River of Styx.

    Alas, but the queen’s to be thwarted, she’s to be abandoned by the divine plan forced by the arrival of Mercury, god of war whispering to the poor stranger for the imminent departure for destiny far more magnificent, far more supreme,

    As dictated by Jupiter, god of all regions crossing death and life forever who put forward a divine plan over mortal feelings however pitiable.

    Thus did the stranger set to sail the seas full of perils ever more.

    The queen defied, she cried, she pleaded, but all ended in nought as the poor stranger was to depart cruelly with no tender words of love that’s planted, nourished,

    And admired by the queen so now distraught by his betrayal of her love with her plea wreathed in tears and flowers.

    Now her love became her poison consuming all of her ever more,

    Now he became her foe ravishing all of her in surrender of love.

    But what of it when all’s ended in a sea of heartaches thousand times, with no reason to reign as a queen without her lover by her side?

    Nothing, nothing’s to remedy her spirit that’s broken thousand times, for nothing, nothing would console the lonely queen in cruel abandonment,

    But the last will to burn her body and soul consumed in madness of passion on an ancient funeral pyre that engulfed every part of her whispering to her departing spirit that love would come never more – Nevermore!

     

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  • Italy Dreamin’

    Amalfi Coast photo book, Italy (60 photos) : Europe series 4Amalfi Coast photo book, Italy (60 photos) : Europe series 4 by Akira Okubo

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

     

    When my spirit feels weary of existential dealings of daily life and whets a desire of carefree escapade from the reality I am anchored in, I tend to daydream about places I want to travel alone. John Steinbeck once admitted that oftentimes, reading magazines and books full of colorful pictures of foreign countries would be more satisfying than actually going there, save all the hustling and bustling, flotsam and jetsam related to traveling. Hence my choice was this beautiful pictorial read of Amalfi Coast in Italy on my Kindle Fire. The delightful pix of southern Italy will take you out of your humdrum life while looking at them; they bring vibrancy of the ambience of the region to your eyes and allure your heart to the romance with the beauty in a heartbeat, alone with yourself.  The rustic and restive sensuousness of the scenery as vividly illustrated in the pictures will dazzle the reader’s eye like a beautiful paramour secretly pleading with you not to leave.

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