DREAMING OF FRIENDS
A tiger in my dream chases me, and I wake cold in fear
My mother tells me that people don’t give up when they love you.
I dream of the tiger again. This time, we become friends.
—from 2014 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Grace L. Park: “I find that my poetry is strongest when it’s from my experiences. In fact, one of my favorite quotes is one by John Steinbeck, who said, ‘A story to be effective [has] to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering [is] the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there [are] no rules.’ These sijos are two of my attempts to capture some of my experiences and how they’ve affected me.”