Read it a long time ago but the final stanzas struck me like lightning and have since remained always turning and turning in the foreground of my conscious mind. www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/natash...

My initial gut reaction ofc was bafflement bc of the out-of-nowhere Korean mention in a black US poet laureate's poem But upon reading on there was total understanding. That is certainly a line you could only hear out out of a Korean poet.

I interpret this poem as being about all the “well-meaning” but actually incredibly offensive, ignorant garbage everyone in her western society told her about how she ought to “move on” after her mother was murdered by ex-husband. Which is the typical western mentality around grief and trauma.

“Imperatives” are commands. The poem lists commands other people put on her to Just Move On after injustice and trauma. “Imperative” also means Necessity. She also lists times she had to “move on” from these interaction in silence, realizing it’s futile to try to talk sense into any of them.

Her friends, her family, her community, the legal system—all failed at every step to recognize the signs before the fact and failed to provide any kind of real moral support after the fact, because they are entrenched in a culture of ignorance.

I’ve cited before from the author of The Body Keeps the Score: someone who is left to feel helpless because they were never properly acknowledged or supported through trauma often cannot Move On the way someone may be able to do when they received sufficient support or justice.

The final stanzas are about how the single person who properly understood and empathized with the immensity of the rage and grief she was carrying was a Korean poet. The final lines convey that some forms of grief one does not “just move on” from, but goes on carrying throughout their life.

It’s called a “folk saying” of Korea and not attributed as the poet’s individual opinion, implying Koreans have a different Cultural Attitude around grief. She uses in the title the phrase “Carrying On” because it has multiple meanings: “moving on” vs “to proceed with,” or “to go on carrying.”

“What’s the Worth of carrying grief?” Stupidity and naivety is presenting the carrying of grief as a personal choice or a stubborn Decision, and failing to understand it is just the nature of grief. You don’t shed it or bury it somewhere. It remains inside you. Some grief you carry until you die.