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

Tag: letters

  • 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

  • Sunday Letter – 1

    Sunday, August 23, 2026

    Hi Freddo,

    I thought the heat had gone and had prepared for autumn clothes, but it was a vain hope. It was a trick of nature. The heat persists, and it is very hot. So, I have been staying in the living room with my cats because it is the coolest room and has an air conditioner. I hear that the heat wave has hit Italy, too. I hope you are okay.

    I just finished reading Elizabeth Taylor’s A View of the Harbour. It is about an English coastal village called Newby, where people’s lives are interwoven through weakness, treachery, and misunderstanding, for which they pay with loss and departures. It is written in the third person—an omniscient point of view that sees all and knows all. The perspective often shifts to that of the elderly, bedridden Mrs. Bracey, who watches people as if she were watching a television soap opera. But she can’t see the stories behind the people she watches, and, in fact, she doesn’t care. I wonder if God would be like her. He sees us from above but doesn’t want to interfere with our affairs, even when we want him to, because God couldn’t care less about them unless they relate to his worship.

    It seems that the sea always provokes the passion smoldering beneath conventions and norms, stirring the urge to let the flame ride the crest of the waves, clash furiously against wave upon wave, and then become one with the deep blue. In this regard, the sea alters none of it: human instinct, desire, the primitive id. The harbour is the superego because we know what we should and shouldn’t do under the community’s safe-harbor rule. Seen from the sea, the harbour is prudence.

    These are the things that came to mind after reading the book. I suspect that this multiplicity of interpretations is what Taylor wanted. In the post–Second World War era, people had lost their collective values and systems of belief, leaving them in an existential dilemma. But the sea doesn’t know it. The harbour keeps all of it inside, like a graceful swan with her legs paddling frantically beneath the water to preserve her poise.

    What do you think? Do you want to read the whole book? If you do, you will feel as though you are watching a British television drama, with various characters who seem ordinary yet harbor extraordinary secrets, and stories that unfold without ostentatious romance, extravagant affairs, or dashing bravado. For me, it’s viewable because it is relatable.

    Are you coming to California after the heat has subsided on both sides of the ocean? Let me know, and we can plan something together, like Prudence and Geoffrey in the book.

    Regards,

    stefania

  • Paul Gauguin: With Sixpences Beneath a Visiting Moon

    The Writings of a Savage by Paul Gauguin

    With sixpences beneath a visiting moon, Gauguin could produce wonder. He was an artist in an endless pursuit of the rising sun at the dawn of a day with a flaming glory in dazzling magnificence. He was an intellectual with a wealth of knowledge drawn from a wide range of reading and classical Jesuit education. Gauguin was a man of irony, with contrasting colors reflected in the soul’s spectrum, from the passionate red to the sanguine blue, hopeful green, and melancholic purple, which is why he left Vincent Van Gogh alone in Arles, in never-ending loneliness. He craved recognition in a grand salon, yet he longed for independence on an island beneath an ancient sun. So, naturally, I wanted to know about Gauguin from his own writings, not from another in the form of a biography. Hence, The Writings of a Savage by Paul Gauguin.

    The book is an attractive compendium of mostly letters to his select few friends and, occasionally, to his wife, as well as essays and articles on the arts and religion, demonstrating Gauguin’s erudition and introspection. While reading the book, I could not help but think that if he had been a professional journalist or an art critic, his artistic talent would have basked in the glorious dawn sun rather than a struggling painter always on the verge of starvation. But most of all, what I wanted to know was if Gauguin had cut off Gogh’s ear, as I heard the rumor. Before reading this book, I had already assumed Gauguin was a man of temper because his image was incompatible with the Dutch painter’s delicate, sophisticated, and sensitive appearance and temperament. But while my prejudice was not entirely faulty, Gauguin proved himself innocent as he talked about it before his impending death away from civilization. Besides, my reading of Gauguin’s writings convinced me that he was not culpable for the injury, even if some like to assemble circumstantial rumors to make the French pariah artist appear jealous and violent toward the suffering Dutch genius. Gauguin might have been passionate, but his passion is directed toward his artistic creation of the worlds he sees in his mind, while the snobbishness of critics and bureaucrats curates the works of painters who know nothing about the arts.

    Imagination, innovation, and independence are the jewels of Gauguin’s prime colors that create his artistic Elysium. Gauguin was liberal in social stance, especially against clericalism, but sovereign in his artistic philosophy that how to draw doesn’t mean an exact copy of the figure because that’s not the purpose of art for art’s sake. As the title suggests, Gauguin was a noble savage who, as a disciple of Rousseau, returned to a primordial state of humanity to escape the over-intellectualized inertia of civilization, which depreciated and ignored his art. I still can’t say the book converted me to the cult of his paintings, which differ from those of Renoir, Monet, and Pissarro. But the book is a medium of looking through the labyrinth Gauguin has built, leading to his secret garden, wondrously vibrant and dazzlingly radiant.

    If this review moved you, you can support my writing at Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/steph79650

  • prompt 86

    If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?

    Camille and Toro from L to R

    Dear Toro and Camille,

    You may not understand human letters, but I know you understand my heart because when I write, it is my spirit addressing the world, and now you, even though I am writing this letter to you during my lunch in the office now.

    I always tell you I love you, and I do mean it, and I am thankful for you choosing to live with me when I saw you for the first time at the orphanage. I am sorry for not being able to provide us with a pleasant home environment in all aspects – from our tiny one-bedroom apartment to living with a mom who is sensitive because of her highly acute sensory system, which prevents me from letting you roam around. I feel like I am a terrible guardian who inhibits your instincts. But I also think there’s light ahead of us, a light that will lead us to a brighter future, which includes our living in a lovely house or an apartment commanding a great view so that you can see me coming from work through the windows. How about that?

    We rode the same galaxy train to a star across the rainbows, where we will live together forever. I know you guys all go to Cat’s Star later, but we will bypass there for a groovier kind of star. So, I will not let you go of – in any manner. We will stay together no matter what. Someday, we will travel together and see the world. I love you so much in every universe.

    With All My Loving,

    Stephanie

  • Prompt 78

    In what ways do you communicate online?

    I love writing everything from jotting down To-Do Lists to journals to columns for my blog and emails on and off work. And I write non-discriminately, using pen to paper and computers, including iPhone and iPad.

    I used to love Twitter before Elon Musk took over with the name “X” because when it happened, my ten-year-old Twitter account was hacked, plastered with scammed business messages with all my writing prompts, including little poems, vanished into a digital void all of sudden. I took it as a divine sign to avoid the X, which I gladly followed.

    I have always loved writing letters about the favored articles I read in magazines, such as BBC History Revealed, where my letters have been printed, because they reflect my thoughts and feelings unadulterated, which could and might have been misinterpreted in speech. Speaking is the most direct and fastest way of communication like cutting the Gordian knot with one fell swoop of a sword. Still, it can be discriminating in judging the speaker in a biased way by the external aspects of the speaker, such as appearance and accent. What’s spoken cannot be retracted. There is no way of editing what you have said pace writing. Writing is more generous and redeeming than speaking. Forget the fear of perfect grammar that will stifle your creative energy. You can write short flights of fancies as they spring from your mind and resculpt them with chisels and hammers later.

    My nine-year-old blog is where I can be myself without exposing myself blatantly, although I resist regarding a blog as a social media. So, I defy being called a blogger, which gives a sense of being on par with a YouTuber. As mentioned before, by writing, people can perceive me truly as who I am, not what I look like, which reminds me of an anecdote about a Turkish astronaut from Little Prince by Antone de Sain-Exupery. When the astronaut attired in the traditional Turkish costume presented his brilliant discovery of unknown stars at the international conference, no one took him seriously. Yet when he appeared again in a tailored suit at the same conference the next day, the attendants recognized his achievement and esteemed him highly.

    The invention of writing has a relatively short history, dating back to around 3400 B.C. by Sumerians. Socrates hated writing because he thought it could take away one’s attention to listening or was not an effective learning method. But I thank Sumerians and Phoenicians for inventing and developing writing systems as my favored means of communication.

  • To Beloved

    Dear Toro and Camille,

    The words I am writing in this letter to you are the voice from my words, and I am addressing your soul’s heart to heart. I know you may not understand the complexities of human language, but my heart and soul are the basics of the words, and I know you will understand what I am trying to say anyway…

    Camille

    I am so sorry that I can’t provide you with the ideal environment for both of you, my sweet darlings, in my present situation. You know that I can’t let you out of our little bedroom whenever you want to go to the living room where the mother stays. She doesn’t like you to be around because she is jealous of my love for you. But she refuses to know that she loves me, not because she never does and has always been unkind to her only daughter. She is not evil but an ill person inside and outside due to her unspoken history of mental illness. I know it, but it’s a taboo that her family wouldn’t disclose. I know this because I am very keen on psychology based on human behaviors. I think you have already sensed it with your supernatural feline senses. What a fate!

    Toro

    When I utter a cry of fate, my soul cries at my fate of being unable to give you the necessary environment to thrive as happy cats. Of course, I always bring you to the doctor when you show symptoms of bodily discomfort, however slight they may be. But when I see my brother’s and cousin’s cats happily and freely roaming around their lovely homes, my heart breaks, and my soul cries inwardly and outwardly. How much I love you guys so much! Toro, you have been with me in every moment of my darkness and occasional lightness. You are always with me when life is unkind to me with the cold shoulders and icy glances. How comforting to stroke your cushy furs through my fingers lying next to me! You are my faithful companion. And Camille, since you came to me, your sweet purrs and meows have consoled my wretched soul. You are such a sweet soul. To people who believe animals have no souls, I defy to see their eyes straightly and speak to them softly that you love them! They know they are loved, and I know my darlings realize it! They know I am sad and happy. They are my only friends in this cold world.

    So, I am asking you to hold on to hope that someday we will live in a lovely home where you can freely and happily roam around, run around all the rooms and floors, cajoling and frolicking to your content and being yourselves. Therefore, I wonder if you want me to accept Brother Joe’s proposal to move to Korea and live in his luxurious apartment with a spacious loft for you and me to live comfortably. What do you think? You think it’s okay?

    Doubt that the stars fall from the sky. Doubt that the sea is blue.
    Doubt night becomes day. But never doubt I love you.

    All my love,
    Stephanie