Koon Woon, 1949-2026

When I learned in August that Seattle poet, memoirist, and editor Koon Woon had died, I added to my morning list, “write blog post for Koon.” What happened?

This morning, I am remembering Koon’s generosity. And I have much to be grateful for, as Body My House would not exist had Koon not contacted me in 2018 and asked if I had a poetry manuscript Goldfish Press might publish. I recall that I was busy with teaching, and with family responsibilities. I didn’t have a manuscript. Although I was already percolating the poems that would become The Pear Tree, I wouldn’t be able to finish that book until after my mother’s death. And who knew when that would be?

You must have so many poems, Koon said. Send me sixty other poems and we’ll talk.

Toward the end of the process, I wasn’t happy with the design. After much hand-wringing, I contacted him, offering to pay an outside designer. I feared Koon would refuse and we would end by parting ways, the book unpublished, feelings stomped. Instead, his email back to me was jolly. Yes, of course, whatever I wanted. He ended with “Less work for me!”

So, my apologies for the late eulogy, coupled with my certainty that Koon would laugh, and respond in his typically gracious manner.

In addition to his work on Chrysanthemum and the press, supporting other poets and the poetry community, Koon wrote several books, including Water Chasing Water, poems, and Paper-son Poet, his memoir. His poems chronicle his journey from China to America, from Aberdeen to Seattle, through bouts of homelessness and mental illness to his life as a writer. His particular genius is precise description and image, as in this passage about his grandmother’s hands:

The past folds up like an origami bird,
Will not dissolve like candy.
Grapes cling to the vine, hands weave bamboo baskets,
Hands supplicate and light incense,
Buddha holds her in his palm.
I fold paper for hands of ancient vine,
Hands that couldn’t come along
And hands will open gates if I should return.

—Koon Woon, excerpt from “The Memory of Hands”

I found other tributes on the Internet (see below), and want especially to point you toward this one (courtesy of Cascadia Poetics LAB) with its link to Koon’s interview with David Gilmour.

To Koon Woon, life is a series of rented rooms. Some—like the village [where] he was born or the three-bedroom house on Oak Street in Aberdeen that he moved into at age 12—are literal. “Everybody in a sense is living in a rented room,” he said in a phone interview last week, “In a more profound way, we are all renting time on Earth.”

—Ryan Teague Beckwith, Daily World writer (from Paper-son Poet, p. 130)

Koon Woon’s influence will continue, but his physical presence in the world is much missed.

https://iexaminer.org/noted-seattle-poet-koon-woon-passes-away-he-was-a-rare-authentic-voice/

https://kaya.com/2026/08/koon-woon-in-memoriam/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/koon-woon