Li-Young Lee Report

Perhaps rather than the cliched Shakespearean question of "what's in a name?", people should be inquiring, "what's in a background?". For poets, the answer most certainly is reflected by their work and a heavy influence of their style, focus and interests. Li-Young Lee is no exception. Born in Indonesia to Chinese parents, Lee spent much of his early life on the run. His parents had formed a doomed union from the start, being that his mother was the daughter of the first president of the Republic of China and his father was the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, it seemed, his family being associated with Chinese gangs and shady dealings. Although his father was actually an important doctor, Lee's parents were exiled from China and moved to Indonesia during Lee's infancy. His father, while an esteemed physician as a well of a founder of Gamaliel University in Indonesia, was subject to harsh anti-Chinese beliefs that were beginning to develop in Indonesia, as was the entire Lee family. It wasn't until 1964 that the 7-year-old Lee's family, who had been on the move for five years, finally settled in the United States. All of this proves relevant because Lee, who hadn't started talking till a late age anyway, stopped speaking once his family relocated to the US. Embarrassed by his inability to speak the language, Lee's only friends were other refugee children who also spoke different languages. Their similarities and connections lay in their mutual inabilities to communicate.

And so it was that Lee was no stranger to feelings of exile, isolation and loneliness, themes that make a strong appearance throughout much of his poetry. The theme of family is also a very present one among Lee's collections; his poems often discuss the topic of his father's own tenderness and their relationship, as well as speaking of his mother, their family tradition, and then his own relationship with his wife and feelings of being a father.

Much of the beauty in Lee's poetry exists because of the way he treats his poems- as "descendants of God." He has been revered for his use of "silence" in poetry, as well as for the near-mystical quality many of his poems have. Perhaps the very greatest quality of Lee's poetry is in its rawness and  unequivocal  humanness. He writes about the blasé every-day mundanities of life in such a way that makes them seem fresh and incredible. 

In Lee's poem "Braiding", he manages to not only make an every-day activity seem exotic and beautiful, but also to draw deep connections from his routine with his own love to that of his parents before him. He writes of sitting with his wife, gently combing and braiding her hair in such a potent way that the reader feels that they are there, in the room, intruding on some incredibly intimate moment of Lee's life. The line, "My father did this for my mother,/ just as I do for you," speaks volumes about how much it really means to Lee to be able to do this with his wife, as he remembers it being a tradition his own parents shared when he was growing up. That line alone sums up a lot of what is so incredible about Lee's family: it's deep intimacy, simplicity and focus on family and heritage. 

He also writes very frankly, yet reverently about sex, and manages to weave in much of what is saying with thinly-veiled Biblical references, as exampled in these lines from "The City in Which I Love You": "My tongue remembers your wounded flavor./ The vein in my neck/ adores you. A sword/ stands up between my hips,/ my hidden fleece sends forth its scent of human oil." His gentle pacing and employment of powerful, carefully chosen language, bring to mind the suggestion that his poems are so wonderful because of their use of "silence." To put a finger on Lee's ability to this is difficult, and yet, when one reads his poems, it is very obvious that this assessment is true. His work does have some remarkable, almost unnameable quality that conjures up silence, peace and calm; quiet, and waiting. The reader cannot help but feel at rest while reading his reverent words, even though he speaks of searching for his lover and passionately needing to be with her and to "have" her. Sometimes, when reading, it is possible to slip for a moment and wonder if one is not reading the words of King Solomon himself from the Biblical passages in Song of Songs. 

In poems such as, "I Ask My Mother To Sing" and "For A New Citizen Of These United States", Lee's strong connections to his heritage and his unusual and difficult upbringing as a refugee are evident. In "I Ask My Mother To Sing," he writes of his mother and grandmother, singing together songs the events of which he does not know, but still adores hearing about. "I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,/ nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch/ the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picknickers/ running away in the grass. And yet from the way Lee writes, it is hard to believe he hasn't seen all these sights himself; he seems so knowledgable and quietly impassioned about them. The  poem ends with his mother and grandmother coming to tears together, but continuing to sing of their people. In "For A New Citizen Of These United States," Lee speaks, as if to another refugee child like himself, pleading with the other not to be sad if he cannot remember all of the things of his heritage and home. He writes, "But birds, as you say, fly forward./ So I won't show you the letters and the shawl/ I've so meaninglessly preserved./ And I won't hum along, if you don't, when/ our mothers sing Nights in Shanghai./" Lee writes so tenderly and beautifully about moving on from his heritage and letting go of the pieces he has held on to as he becomes a citizen of the US, that one cannot help but feel a clenching of his own heart as he considers the pain and confusion Lee must have endured as a small boy, not really sure what country or home to latch onto as his own.

After even just a mild examination of Lee's poetry, it becomes quite obvious why he is so acclaimed as a writer of faith, home, heritage, family, love and the ever-present silence. It seems that few could measure up to Lee's immeasurable ability to pace his words, though he speaks of history, of sorrow, pain, loss or passion; there is always a certain calmness lying underneath and even in confusion, a simple understanding. For one who has suffered so much pain and uprooting throughout his life, Lee has certainly done something beautiful with all his suffering, and turned it into poetry that sings, that pays homage and devotion, that lifts up souls before placing them gently back down on earth again. 

Ten to Grade

1. Drunk Preacher
2. Image Poem #7
3. Making Faces
4. Easter Photographs
5. Haiku: Seasons
6. Image Poem #1
7. Crushes and Fibromyalgia
8. Miss Havisham, The Smoker
9. Image Poem #2
10. The Words the River-Merchant's Wife Said

Based on Photography

Her body
A tree
Both grown from the earth
Life source
Black and white
A tree trunk strong and sure
She towers up from the ground

Easter Photographs

The mother takes a photograph every single Easter Sunday
And though she never foresaw it then

It makes a rather convenient timeline now
For others to view their falling apart

Jesus is risen and three little girls
Wear white dresses with blue flowers
Standing next to a boy with sharply combed hair
And a dark blue suit
A background of trees and sunflowers so tall
They dwarf every child, save the tallest sister

He lives and the second sister
Has shot up like a root this year, taller than all of them
The little boy is frowning and has chocolate on his face

And the youngest sister isn't wearing shoes

Our King has returned and if possible
The second sister seems even taller
The little boy is sitting on the ground obstinately
The oldest sister staring off at the clouds
And the littlest has a tear in her pink filmy dress

The stone has been rolled away and finally
The boy has grown, so that he now rivals the second sister in height
And both of them glare at the camera
The elder sister smiles broadly but if you look closely
Her cheeks are tear-stained
The little sister's sash is untied

The tomb was found empty and the second sister
Wears a dress cut two low in the front
And has noticeably stuffed her bra
The brother's tie hangs loose around his neck and his hands are jammed in pockets
Big sister is standing behind the youngest
Whose eyes are trained on ants on the ground

Hallelujah they cry and in this picture the scenery has changed

An empty, dry field is the backdrop

The second sister has a heavy cardigan on and watches the camera angrily
Her dress poorly tailored in an attempt to hide that she is five months along now

The brother wears thick eyeliner and a cigarette dangles from the hand

That is not flipping off the camera

The eldest sister's hair is in a thick braid and her eyes look tired
Her smile thin
Little sister's hair has not been washed or combed at all

That is the last year they take photographs.

Crushes and Fibromyalgia

You are- I think- and this is quite a presumption-
The reason for poetry’s invention.
How did the poet wax eloquent
On the matter of kissable smiles
Or dew-swept brows
Or curls to rival those of that very-anatomically-explicit statue of David
Which always finds its way into the textbooks
(Because there’s got to be an educational way to slip a penis in somewhere), 
Or eyes darker than the bitter coffee I drink here in New York
(I drink it black now; have you tasted the brew here? Sugar only makes it worse),
Without having ever looked upon your face?
And never having felt the instantaneous, and quite literal weakness
That settles in my limbs at your very presence
(You ought to know, the weakness comes and goes. The doctor, before just giving up again, as doctors often do, used to speculate that it might be fibromyalgia, or even  multiple sclerosis. I find it darkly funny that you seem to have a way of incurring those very symptoms which signify a major neurological malfunction.)

How, I ask, again, how
Could the poets put pen to paper
Before the muse was even born?
Each lyric, each line, each love-infused sonnet
That drips honey-sweet with adoration and love
Is now faded, pale, and  moth-balled
Archaic, didactic and uninspired
In the shadow of your smile.

This. This is why poetry was created.
So that I might have a medium
For expression and obsession.
God knew that I would need it
When I met you. 

Web MD

I don’t want to write a poem right now
But the vividness with which I can picture your eyes
Tearing into me
The vividness with which I can picture the length of your body
So solid, yet molding, against me
The vividness with which I can see your fingers
Strumming and plucking and playing with…
Your guitar strings, that tea bag, a forkful of spaghetti, my heart
The vividness with which I can see your face, gentle, scratchy, glad
Begging me to trace my fingers over every pore
Is forcing me
To write down how much want I have
And to wonder how much want one is able to have
Before their heart cannot physically bear it anymore?

I wonder if I should look it up on WebMD. 

Miss Havisham, The Smoker

An antique wooden clock
Doubles as a jewelry box
And squats on a desk;
The hands don’t even tick anymore.
Even if the thing still had batteries jammed in it
It is broken.

The little drawer holds a pair of some lady’s gold earrings
I say some lady’s
Because I, certainly, am no lady…

The secret compartment behind the clock face
Conceals a lighter and four stale Camels
Hidden inside an Altoids tin
Bit and pieces of sweet-smelling tobacco
Spilling out the paper ends and
Mingling with the vague scent of peppermint
As time goes on.

Except time never really goes on, does it?
It has stopped.
The intricate hands set very deliberately at eight-forty PM
The same time Miss Havisham stopped her clocks in that Dickens novel
You know the one you never read your freshman year of high school.

All this probably speaks to something
A metaphor about time and decay
But all you can think is,
I want to have a smoke

Failing to see the irony
That your life is time
Your lungs decaying daily
And the saddest part of all
Is the clock isn’t even an antique at all.
It was bought for seven dollars
At the Salvation Army Store.