Cindy Juyoung Ok's "I Was a Highly Awarded"

Thoughts on seeing rather than watching.

I Was a Highly Awarded

child, worked hard to be
beloved by whichever
adults were accessible.
Pretending I sought to
be average in hopes of
social acceptance was
a part of the technique,
because I knew I could
always establish status
and belonging through
concerted effort around
generosity. I assumed
reading first, listening
fast, and remembering
the details of your most
boring story about that
second cousin was my
path to earned intimacy,
to joy. When I became
a ward of the state, all
rights paused, and while,
against my will, a non-
individual, I found that
precocious pays no bills
and the production of
devotion offers little in
the way of tenderness.


from Ward Toward (Yale University Press, 2024)

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When I encountered this poem in the midst of Cindy Juyoung Ok’s Ward Toward, I thought immediately that, well, it was doing something special in all of its work (and play, which there seem to be near-endless examples of, throughout this poem and the book that it is from).

I was in a certain branch of the New York Public Library, which, because of some construction on the branch of the library that is closest to where I live, is a twenty minute walk downtown, a walk my wife and I broke in half by stopping to eat the biggest slice of pizza we have ever eaten. But that is beside the point. Part of the story, beside the point. Okay. But anyways, I was in the library, which maintains a slim shelf of poems in the back corner, and I pulled this book off of that shelf, and I was thumbing through it, first reading a poem titled “River,” which began in a way that, yes, played a bit with expectation and cliche, which is the kind of play I really love, the play of surprise:

It's not true that sand is
uncountable. Everything
is when you have enough
time, vats. The woods,
inevitably, are satire
to the counter, who is
a keeper, not a consumer.

The woods are satire to the counter. I loved that. I still do. And so I kept thumbing! As you might! As I most surely did! My left shoulder rested against one of those stock, mass-produced shelves you might as easily find in a college dorm room as a library. And I read today’s poem, with those lines that end it:

the production of
devotion offers little in
the way of tenderness.

I’ll come back to those lines later, but please know: I spent the walk home repeating them in my head, chewing on them, wondering about them. They are a mouthful of music, and certainly of truth. They mean a great deal.

And so, I checked out this book and brought it home with me. It is a book that, as made evident by its title—Ward Toward, navigates the various wards of society: prison cells, psych wards, hospitals. It navigates, too, the multiplicity of meanings of that word, ward — the dependency of it, the bureaucracy of it. And it navigates, finally, how that word shows up in our world in ways that seem contrary to such dependency and bureaucracy — such as in the word award — but really might be more related to those aforementioned self-limiting structures than one might think.

At the same time, it is a book that plays with language and expectation. Think of the title: Ward Toward. Strange construction, right? A little musical, yes. But strange, right? I think it’s strange because we assume the dependency of a word like ward, and so we expect that dependency to be made evident with a preposition like of, one that makes clear a kind of passivity. We hear ward and we expect of. As today’s poem states:

When I became
a ward of the state

But in the title of this book, Cindy Juyoung Ok doesn’t give us that construction we are used to. Instead, she uses that word toward, and already there is a playfulness, a subversion. The dependency we expected is turned toward us, and the book then centers two things:

1. The way people are often made into and made out to be dependent subjects, unworthy of voice, and,

2. The voice of that aforementioned dependent subject

It also does one another sneaky thing, this title. Break that word toward in two, and what do you get? To ward. Combine it with the first word of the title, and what do you get? Ward to ward. As in: one person who is made out by society to be lesser than everyone talking to another person in that same situation. From one ward to another. A kind of solidarity. A kind of conversation.

Yes, in the title alone, Ok does the playful work of saying: you might expect this voice to mean nothing, but I am directing it toward you anyway.

Such a voice has to matter. This is part of the way poetry subverts the expectations of the state, and of society, and of institutions. It says that voice you dismissed? The one you said had no value? Well, here it is. Listen to it sing.

And I think that is an interesting way to think about today’s poem, too, with its title couching that word — ward — into a word — award — that feels, at first glance, like something that doesn’t contain a word like ward. But it does. It does contain the word ward — a word that refers to someone who is being watched, even though a different construction of it — warden — refers to someone who is doing the watching. Funny thing, language. It’s a real fucker.

And so, today’s poem begins with all the ways that the speaker has become someone who is awarded, which means, yes, someone who is watched, but not with the same kind of gaze that might be offered to someone who is a ward of the state. Someone who is awarded is met with a gaze of approval, the approval of someone who knows that what they are seeing is in line with the values of a dominant society. For the speaker, such awarding comes with both success, as deemed through the eyes of “whichever / adults were accessible,” and the social awareness to self-deprecate oneself (“Pretending I sought to / be average”) when in the company of peers.

But then, once the speaker becomes a “ward of the state,” that sense of being once-awarded (which means, then, valued) is stripped away. They lose their rights. They become a “non-/individual.” The same qualities that might have led them to be awarded — their precociousness, their vision, their imagination — no longer have any value as determined by the state. Such qualities don’t pay. They are worth nothing. And so, the one who was once awarded, which means that they were watched for how they behaved, becomes a ward (interesting, then, how the word award is literally separated at the seams in this case), which means that they are also watched for how they behave, but in a wildly different way.

And yet, though those things — the one who is awarded and the one who becomes a ward of the state — seem different, I think that part of the remarkable work that Ok does in this poem is to point us towards the way they are similar. Yes, the speaker in this poem is watched for different reasons at the poem’s beginning than at its end, but notice the fact that, in both instances, the authentic self is missed. When the speaker is awarded, they are a character of assumptions and pretending. They make a “concerted effort around / generosity,” but that effort is only because they are “pretending” that they sought to be “average” in other ways. In other words, one wonders: what is authentic? The self is sacrificed for the illusion of a self. And then, when the poem ends, the speaker, as a ward of the state, is no longer even assumed to have an authentic self, or, if they are, such an authentic self is assumed to be dangerous, or disruptive, or both and more.

There is a deep tragedy at the heart of this poem, which is that, at times, there is a self always trying to be a self that is not entirely itself, and then, at other times, there is a self always trying to be recognized as the fully realized self it is. And, at both times, that person’s full self is never really seen. This is not just a tragedy of this poem, but also a tragedy of living in a society that valorizes achievement at the expense of authenticity.

All of this makes me think of the poem’s final lines:

the production of
devotion offers little in
the way of tenderness.

What is missing throughout this poem is tenderness. It is missing with the child who is awarded, who is praised not for their authentic behavior or authentic generosity, but rather for their production of what goodness in such spheres might mean. And it is missing in the way that same child, when they become a ward of the state, literally becomes the absence of a person, a non-individual.

That absence of tenderness echoes throughout Ok’s book. In her poem “Ten Sessions,” Ok writes:

Client, make sense.

A client, too, is a kind of ward. And here, then, is a demand for them to be less of who they are, to form their various complexities into a wholeness that is more easily digestible. The same way that, when we are watching something rather than really trying to see it, we sometimes want it to cohere, to make sense, rather than for it to be exactly what it is.

And so I am thinking of that. I am thinking of how a ward is someone who is watched, and I am thinking of how watching someone is different than seeing them, which is a precursor to knowing them. And I am thinking of how, when we live in a world that prioritizes watching over seeing, we live in a world that prioritizes the production of devotion over the more complicated work of offering tenderness. We are, each of us, wildly and entirely who we are. This means that we make sense probably less often than we don’t make sense. And this means, too, that in that process, we are still trying and breathing and living. Our process of being who we are is not, and can never be, despite what a society that privileges production and consumption and achievement, entirely one-dimensional.

We have choices, I think, in such a world. There is one choice, which is to find the parts of ourselves that are easiest to digest, and to become objects of production, producing the illusion of devotion and the reality of achievement. Or, we have another choice: we can resist the desire to self-produce ourselves into more simple objects of humanity, and instead commit to seeing and knowing rather than watching. More complicated, yes. More trying, certainly. But more tender? Always.

One sadness of the world — of many sadnesses — is the way that some people don’t really have those choices, and have to perform the precarious balancing act of finding a way to be valorized by society in order to simply be able to afford to live, while maintaining, at the same time, an inner life that is greatly calibrated toward tenderness and complexity. This balancing act is a feat. I think people probably navigate it every day in ways that are so hidden and so ordinary and, I’m sure, so deeply and profoundly exhausting.

One final thing about this poem: I’m struck by the fact of one great subversion performed in its lines, which is the way that it makes music, even as it reaches its conclusion. Listen — and, like, really listen — to the final lines again:

When I became
a ward of the state, all
rights paused, and while,
against my will, a non-
individual, I found that
precocious pays no bills
and the production of
devotion offers little in
the way of tenderness.

Notice the echoes, the rhythms, the little cocoons of song that emerge out of these lines. The way “will” finds a partner in “individual,” which finds its partner in “bills,” which finds its partner in “little.” The way “precocious” and “pays” and “production” pop, one by one by one, right after the one before.

This is that thing I sometimes forget to talk about in these little essays, but it is the thing that strikes me, sometimes, the most. And I think I’d call it competency. I think I’d call it skill. I think I’d call it work and play at the same time. Sometimes, you read a poem, and you realize you are in the hands of someone. You, as a reader, become held by someone who is crafting a worldview, a song, a house, a structure to hold you in. And they do it well. And so, maybe without thinking, you trust them. Because there is rhythm. Or because there is consonance. Or alliteration. It’s like how, before witnessing someone make a bouquet out of a bunch of disparate flowers, you might think — wrongly — that merely anyone could do such a thing, because flowers, like words, have a tendency toward the beautiful, and so, you think, arranging a bouquet must be merely an act of arranging. But then, you see it happen. You really see it. The ease becomes a kind of skill and vision, and both things — skill and vision — merge to form a kind of magic, and there you are, a little dumbfounded, which is another way of saying awestruck, holding flowers that someone arranged for you in a way you probably could never do yourself. And so, reading a poem becomes like witnessing such a feat, realizing, hopefully, that there is something magical happening in the work of it, and then, as a result, you get say holy shit or thank you a million times over, because you are grateful. Awestruck. Mystified. Maybe crying.

This feeling: it’s a little like if I didn’t know that was possible met I had no idea and hung out for awhile before when you put it like that joined their table.

And that feeling: it’s another reason I keep in my back pocket when I get a little sad and wonder if life is just one long litany of failures. It’s not.

So yeah, what am I trying to say? I think I’m trying to say that those lines? At the end of the poem? Yeah, those lines? Here they are again:

production of
devotion offers little in
the way of tenderness

Yeah. These lines? I have them memorized now. And I won’t forget them. They’re in the vase of my mind. They’re by the window. And as the world moves by, and as I move through the world, I’ll remember them. Because of the way they were arranged by someone more skillful than me. And because of the way they speak to the life we both live among. The person arranging the flowers and the person holding them. Different people, same life. These lines. They’re right next to vase that holds these lines, by Raymond Carver:

It’s the tenderness I care about.

And next to another vase that holds these lines, by Aracelis Girmay:

& so to tenderness I add my action.

And so, with tenderness, I commit to seeing, rather than watching.

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Some notes:

1. I’ve been following the work of the Gaza Sunbirds, a Palestinian para-cyling team also doing work to share resources and support relief efforts in Gaza. You can support their efforts to compete in the Para-cycling World Championships here, and also support their ongoing work in Gaza here.

2. Consider donating to the work of Doctors Without Borders to support their ongoing work in Gaza.

3. As I will continue to mention, Writers Against the War on Gaza has been a powerful resource that has, in these days, reminded me of all the various potentials for solidarity in this moment. You can follow them on Instagram here. Here, too, is a link to the New York War Crimes page — their ongoing publication.

4. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.